Dr Gareth Loudon

BSc (hons) PhD CEng FIET FHEA
e: gloudon@cardiffmet.ac.uk
t: 02920 41 6661
w: www.lightminds.co.uk

Specialist Subject Areas

User-centered design, ethnography, usability testing and evaluation, prototyping, product innovation, creativity, play, product development.

Qualifications

BSc (1st Class Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Leicester University, 1988.
Ph.D. – Advances in Knowledge Based Signal Processing, Leicester University, 1991.

Biography

I am Head of Masters Studies and a Principal Lecturer at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University (UWIC).

My research interests focus on creativity and the product innovation process, combining ideas from anthropology and psychology, engineering and design. I am one of the co-founders of the Programme for Advanced Interactive Prototype Research (PAIPR) at Cardiff Metropolitan University (UWIC) (see http://paipr.wordpress.com/people/gareth-loudon/) and I also run a research project called “Creating New Realities” (see www.lightminds.co.uk/uwic for more details on this work).

I have been active in academic and industrial research for the last 23 years. I have also taken several research ideas all the way through to commercial products for companies such as Apple and AsiaWorks. I have several patents to my name and over 40 publications in total. I have won many awards including Best Software Product Award at COMDEX Asia, and for my concept design work from IDSA/BusinessWeek.

I graduated with a 1st Class Honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1988 and a Ph.D. from Leicester University in 1991. I am a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Current research

My current research work in the Programme for Advanced Interactive Prototype Research (PAIPR) focuses on methods for the rapid design and development of computer embedded products such as mobile devices and medical devices. My work covers four key areas:

- Fast prototyping approaches

- Physicality

- In-context testing

- Augmented and virtual environments

My other area of research focuses on creativity and learning. The work draws on knowledge from the fields of design, psychology, anthropology, quantum physics and neuroscience.

Principal Publications and/or Exhibitions

Click here to view Dr Loudon’s papers and publications on Cardiff Metropolitan University’s DSpace repository.

Journal papers

• (2008) Gill, S., Loudon, G. and Walker, D. Designing a Design Tool – Working with Industry to Create an Information Appliance Design Methodology to be published in the Journal of Design Research, Inderscience Publishers Ltd. Vol 7 Iss 2.

• (2008) Gill, S., Walker, D., Loudon, G., Dix, A., Woolley, A., Ramduny-Ellis, D. and Hare, J. Rapid Development of Tangible Interactive Appliances: Achieving the Fidelity/Time Balance. In Hornecker, E., Schmidt, A., and Ullmer, B. (eds) Special Issue on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, International Journal of Arts and Technology, Volume 1, No 3/4 pp 309-331.

• (2006) Loudon, G. Nice technology, shame about the product, Invited article in IET Communications Engineer magazine, August/September issue.

• (2002) Sacher,H. and Loudon,G.H.. Understanding the wireless interaction paradigm: From 3G technology to customer solutions, Interactions (ACM), Volume IX.1, pp.17-23.

• (2001) Sacher,H., Tng,T.H. and Loudon,G.H.. Beyond Translation: Approaches to Interactive Products for Chinese Consumers – International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 41-51.

• (1998) Chen,H.., Loudon,G.H., Wu,Y.M. and Zitserman,R.. Segmentation and Recognition of Continuous Handwritten Chinese Text – International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Aritificial Intelligence, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 223-232.

• (1994) Sehmi,A.S., Jones,N.B., Wang,S.Q., and Loudon,G.H.. Knowledge-based systems for neuroelectric signal processing – IEE Proceedings Part A, UK, Vol. 141, No. 3, May, pp. 215 – 223.

• (1992) Loudon,G.H., Jones,N.B. and Sehmi,A.S.. New signal processing techniques for the decomposition of EMG signals – Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing journal, UK, Vol. 30., pp. 591-599.

Conference papers

• (2010) Woolley, A., Loudon, G. and Gill, S. ‘Contextual Testing in the Mobile Phone Design Process; A Case Study’, Proceedings of DESIGN 2010

• (2009) Culverhouse, I., Gill, S., Woolley, A., and Loudon, G. “Construct, Deconstruct and Reconstruct: Exploring interactive sketching of information appliances”, Proceedings of the International Association of Scoieties of Design Research (IASDR) Conference, October 18-22, Seoul Korea.

• (2009) Hare, J., Gill, S., Loudon, G., Ramduny-Ellis, R., and Dix, A. “Physical Fidelity: Exploring the importance of physicality on physical-digital conceptual prototyping” – to be published in proceedings of INTERACT 2009, the 12th IFIP TC13 Conference in Human-Computer Interaction, August 24-28, Sweden.

• (2006) Loudon, G., Gill, S. and Walker, D. How Different Prototyping Methods for Information Appliance Design Affect Usability Test Results Poster presentation at the Usability Professionals Association Conference, Broomfield, Colorado, June 12 – 16.

• (2005) Gill, S., Johnson, P., Dale, J., Loudon, G., Hewett, B. and Barham, G.: The Traditional Design Process Versus A New Design Methodology: A Comparative Case Study Of A Rapidly Designed Information Appliance; Human Oriented Informatics and Telematics Conference, University of York

• (2005) Gill, S., Loudon, G., Hewett, B., Barham, G.: How to Design and Prototype an Information Appliance in 24 Hours – Integrating Product & Interface Design Processes; The proceedings of The 6th international conference on Computer-Aided Industrial Design & Conceptual Design, Delft University of Technology, May 29 – June 1.

• (2002) Loudon,G.H., Sacher,H., and Yu, L.. The impact of video usage in mobile communication, Third Wireless World Conference: The Social Shaping of Mobile Futures.

• (2000) Loudon,G.H., Pellijeff,O. and Li,Z.W.. A Method for Handwriting Input and Correction on Smartphones, Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Amsterdam.

• (1998) Loudon,G.H. and Leong,M.K.. Retrieval of Chinese Documents using Handwriting Input – 3rd International Workshop on Information Retrieval with Asian Languages, Singapore, pp. 28-33.

• (1997) Chen,H., Loudon,G.H., Wu,Y.M. and Zitserman,R.. Segmentation and Recognition of Continuous Handwritten Chinese Text – 17th International Conference on Computer Processing of Oriental Languages, Hong Kong.

• (1996) Loudon,G.H., Chen,H., Wu,Y.M. and Zitserman,R.. The Recognition of Handwritten Chinese Characters From Paper Records – IEEE TENCON, Digital Signal Processing Applications, Australia, pp. 923 – 926.

• (1995) Gao,Y., Hon,H.W., Lin,Z., Loudon,G.H., Yogananthan,S. and Yuan,B.. Tangerine : A Large Vocabulary Mandarin Dictation System – International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing ’95, USA.

• (1994) Yuan,B., Gao,Y., Hon,H.W. and Loudon,G.H.. An Unlimited Vocabulary Speaker-Dependent Chinese Speech Recognition System – The 3rd National Conference on Man-Machine Speech Communications, PRC.

• (1994) Schlindwein,F.S., Kazim,S., Loudon,G.H. and Jones,N.B.. Separation of foetal and maternal ECG via diagonal factor analysis and inverse transfer function – World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, pp. 931.

• (1994) Gao,Y., Yuan,B., Tng,T., Loo,G. Loudon,G.H., Yogananthan,S., Hon,H.W., Chow,Y.L., Beauregard,G., de Souza,P., Austin,S. and Fineberg,A.. Mandarin Chinese Dictation System – Research & Development – Proceedings of the International Conference on Chinese Computing ’94, Singapore, pp. 95-101.

• (1991) Jones,N.B. and Loudon,G.H.. A set of classification techniques for the extraction of motor unit potentials in electromyography – World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, published in Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing journal, UK, Vol. 29 Supplement Part 1, pp. 566.

• (1990) Loudon,G.H., Jones,N.B. and Sehmi,A.S.. Intelligent decomposition and interpretation of myoelectric signals – Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering, J.C.H. Goh and A. Nather (Eds.), Singapore, pp. 362 – 365.

Patents

• (2003) Loudon,G.H, Chen,H. and Tng,T.H. Recognition Process, Patent No. US2003086611

• (2003) Loudon,G.H, Pittman,J.A. and Wu, Y.M.. Methods and apparatus for handwriting recognition, Patent No. US6556712

• (2002) Loudon, G.H. and Tng, T.H. Mobile Communications Device, Patent No. WO02082251

Awards

UWIC Learning and Teaching Fellowship Award

Prince of Wales Innovation Scholarship

Three Bursary Awards for Research Students

Bronze award at the Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) organized by the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA)

Silver award at the Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) organized by the Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA)

Best software product and Best of the Best Award at COMDEX Asia for Apple’s Chinese Dictation Kit product

Modules Taught

PDM105 – Engineering Science for Product Designers

PDM107 – Engineering Science

PDM108 – Electronics for Product Designers

PDM207 – Mechanical Engineering Studies

PDM212 – Project Selection and Management

PDM309 – Dissertation

APD404M – Research Techniques, Principles and Practice

APD405M – User Testing & Evaluation

RPD404M – Managing the Product Development Process

MBA 499 – Dissertation Supervision

ADX401 – Professional Methods in Art & Design

Supervision of Doctoral Research (titles or broad areas of investigation)

Joanne Hare: Physicality in the Design Development of Information Appliances.

Ian Culverhouse: Investigation into Potential of Rapid Low Fidelity Interactive Prototyping Techniques For The Design Development of Information Appliances

Dimitrios Zampelis: The Potential For Augmented Reality Systems In the Development of Rapidly Produced Tangible Prototypes of Computer Embedded Products by Designers

Farida Al Rashaid: Mundane objects beyond novelty

Bethan Gordon: The potential for low tech. augmented reality to simulate context of use scenarios in user testing

Paul Wilgeroth: Graphical Presentation Of Design Specifications

Sharon Prendeville: An Exploration On Ecodesign Knowledge Transfer And Communications In A Welsh SME

Claire Andrews: Can We Design Better Products For Everyone By Learning How Blind/Visually Impaired People Interact With Technology?

Gina Deininger: Where is human creativity located?”

Previously

Alex Woolley: Contextual testing of interactive prototypes at the early stages of the design process

Steve Gill: Exploring The Issues Surrounding The Rapid Development Of Information Appliances By Designers