Dr Alison Crerar

Faculty Research Training Coordinator, Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative industries

e-mail: a.crerar@napier.ac.uk

Tel. +44 (0)131 455 2710

Office. C58 Merchiston
Working days: Tue, Wed pm, Thurs.

Research Interests

Member of the Centre for Interaction Design

Qualifications

BA(Hons) Music University of Liverpool, 1977.
MSc Software Development and Analysis, Heriot-Watt University, 1981.
PhD title and abstract, CNAA, 1991.
MBCS, CITP 1995.

Awards

British Computer Society Award, 1991, for 'Microworld for Aphasia'.
Keith Medal and Lecture Prize, Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Science and Technology, 1992.

Professional Memberships and external activities

Committee Member, Edinburgh Branch, British Computer Society (BCS).
The British HCI Group
BCS Disability Group
Organiser for Scotland and Member of the Management Group of ITCH a network of IT professionals helping disabled people with technology.

Publications

Publication list.

Teaching areas and School responsibilities

I was for 20 years a member of academic staff in the School of Computing, specialising in Human Computer Interaction and Masters dissertation work. My current part-time role is devoted to designing, running and monitoring the effectiveness of the Faculty's programme of research skills training for PhD students.

Current PhD supervisions:
Iain McGregor

Completed PhD Supervisions

M. A. Beveridge PhD 1998 A multimedia microworld for the treatment of asyntactic sentence comprehension.
C. J. Macaulay PhD 2000 Inside the palimpsest: a study of newsroom information gathering.
S. Wilkinson PhD 2002 Evaluating book and hypertext: analysis of individual differences.
J. Sykes PhD 2004 The Cognition of Large Information Spaces.
S-H. Choi PhD 2005 Interactive Multimedia: design for learning and teaching.
N. J. Whitton PhD 2007 An investigation into the potential of collaborative game-based learning in higher education.

Consultancy

I undertake HCI consultancy in the following areas:

  • Training in the ethos, principles and practice of user-centred design
  • Requirements capture
  • Design and conduct of usability evaluation studies specialising in elderly and disabled users.
  • Conduct of expert walkthroughs
  • Designing software for wider access (physical and cognitive disabilities)

    I undertake medico-legal Expert Witness work specialising in IT and Disability

    Brief Academic Biography

    The conversion from Music to Computing was via a Scottish National Certificate Course at Stevenson College, Edinburgh, followed by an MSc at Heriot-Watt. After the MSc I spent a semester in 1982 at Stanford University, California. The idea was to study CAL for music education, but the AI Dept proved more seductive, and there, in the lectures of Winograd, Feigenbaum and others I became fascinated by the modelling of cognitive processes, particularly natural language processing and music perception. On returning to Scotland I joined Ferranti as a Systems Engineer, working on head-up displays for military aircraft (this was a poor second to starting a PhD with the late Prof. Sidney Michaelson on computational style analysis of music - but funding was as difficult then as now). After a year with Ferranti I joined Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh as lecturer in IT. There I was introduced to the paramedical professions and soon gravitated to the Speech Therapy Clinic - where an interest in pathological language began. After 3 years at Queen Margaret College, I joined Napier in 1987. In 1989 the award of a Scottish Office grant enabled me to take two years' study leave to work on the diagnosis and treatment of agrammatic aphasia. This work resulted in the award of a PhD and a British Computer Society IT Award both in 1991. Since then my teaching and research interests have been strongly influenced by the experience of designing software for 'extra-ordinary' users. Between 1999 and 2006 I designed and ran the Master's Dissertation Programme in the School of Computing. In 2007 I reduced my contract to half-time for health reasons, taking up a Faculty-based role devoted to PhD research skills training. Strangely, university re-structuring has resulted in an exciting and unexpected mix of disciplines in the Faculty, bringing Music, Communication Arts and Design together with Computing, Engineering and Built Environment. So my background in the Arts is useful once again: funny how a coherent story often shakes out of a seemingly 'random walk' through some interesting territory.

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    Last updated 13/10/2004