Duncan Brumby

My research is concerned with understanding how people interact with computing devices. I work within interdisciplinary teams, using methods and approaches from psychology, computer science, and design. There are two major themes in my research: multitasking and interactive search. A particular focus is demonstrating, through quantitative experiments, how the time costs of interaction influence our behaviour.

In collaboration with colleagues at UCL and beyond, I have published 50+ papers (see UCL Publications or Google Scholar). This work has received peer-awarded prizes (1 Best Note & 4 Honorable Mentions at the prestigious ACM CHI conference). Support has come from grants provided by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (see Grants on the Web).

My research has improved the design and usability of computing systems. For example, consider how current generation smartphones allow incoming call notifications to forcibly interrupt the user, even if they are busy using an app. Our CHI 2014 paper remedied this situation by redesigning the call handling interface to support multiplexing. Watch the video demonstrating how Google incorporated this idea into their Android L mobile operating system.