Ambient-Assisted Living: Freedom to Roam

The TSB project, Freedom to roam project is a £3M consortium project, led by CBSL, that includes Newcastle City Council, Hull City Council, O2 Telefonica, Northern Rock Foundation, Scottish Centre for Telehealth, Quality of Life Partnership, The Essentia Group, Trackaphone Limited and Northumbria University. The project has been designed to address issues such as social and digital inclusion, information and advocacy (e.g. access and use of personal budgets), telecare and telehealth and independent living.

Our role, as the only academic partners is to facilitate user centred requirements gathering and evaluation to ensure that the project is user rather than technology led. We are utilising scenarios and storyboards to identify future acceptable roles and requirements for technology in older adults lives to support mobility, reduce social isolation and find information.

Author: James Nicholson

James is a Lecturer in the School of Computer and Information Sciences. James is interested in many aspects of cybersecurity and privacy, including usable security, social engineering, lay users’ understanding of cybersecurity, multifactor authentication, everyday surveillance, and inclusive cybersecurity. Previously, James was a senior researcher in PaCT Lab working on the Cybersecurity Across the Lifespan (cSALSA) project. The project explores how cyber-security is understood, and the attitudes and behaviours of people to cyber-security and risk. During his time in PaCT Lab, James also worked on Choice Architecture for Information Security (ChAISe), Digital Economy Research Centre (DERC), and the Horizon 2020 project CYBECO. Prior to PaCT Lab, James worked at Open Lab, Newcastle University on the TEDDI and SiDE projects. James’ work has focused on improving user authentication, both by repurposing existing graphical authentication systems and by evaluating novel ones. He is also interested in user privacy and how groups of users (children, parents, older adults) experience location tracking technologies, as well as how CCTV video can be crowdsourced to de-centralise the surveillance landscape. More recently, he has developed tools and methodologies for uncovering and understanding employees’ mental models of security threats with the aim of improving training programmes and/or organisational policies, as well as practical means for improving users’ protection against these security threats (e.g. phishing). James obtained his BSc (Information Systems) from Newcastle University in 2008, and his MRes Psychology from Northumbria University in 2009. James’ PhD work – completed in 2012 – explored user authentication in the context of older adults under the supervision of Professor Lynne Coventry and Professor Pam Briggs.