This week we had the vsit of PhD. Mrs. Hellen Petrie, Professor of Human Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York (UK). During her shor but valuable stay, she has been doing some activities:

Wednesday, 27th May

Morning: a seminar with GRIHO research group members. This was a informal meeting where we interchanged knowledge about who we are and what we do. This was the schedule (presentations avaliable):

• Presentation of GRIHO research group and current research/projects, by Roberto García, Director of GRIHO
• Research activities by Sergio Sayago, visiting PhD teacher
• York presentations and Research activities by Helen Petrie
• Accessibility and Heuristic Evaluation last PhD works, by Toni Granollers
• Emotions and Technology, by Jordi Virgili, GRIHO researcher

Afternoon (from 17:00 to 19:00) class to the HCI students: “Research Methods in HCI: Collaborative Heuristic Evaluation and Verbal Protocols”

Thursday, 28th May

Talk to teachers in the context of INSPIRES research institute titled:

Technological developments for visually impaired people: recent successes and future needs

• This talk will discuss recent research conducted by the Human Computer Interaction Research Group at the University of York into developing technologies for visually impaired people and giving them better access to mainstream technologies. I will discuss three very different projects: WebAIR, a project to help web developers understand web accessibility better; OptiNav, an app to help visually impaired people to navigate the “last 10 metres” in unknown environments; and DescribeIT, a crowdsourcing project to describe images in online digital learning resources for blind students.

Helen, many thanks for this visit