Channelling Expertise from Napier’s HCI Group – Human-Centred Knowledge Transfer

 T.G. McEwan
 Napier University, Edinburgh

  

Professor David Benyon
Napier University, Edinburgh 

 

 Dr Susan Turner
Napier University, Edinburgh 

  

Abstract
The scope of the activities of Napier University’s HCI Group includes technology transfer, which led recently a national award. UCD is a typically mature set of ideas now ready for transfer, but as technology transfer gives way to knowledge transfer, the focus shifts to the individual rather than the organisation as the recipient. Having added value to individuals, there will be those who subsequently seek to maximise the return on investment of that added value. The UK government’s recently announced “Third Stream” of funding (after Teaching and Research) for universities therefore needs careful channelling This overview looks at the successes and challenges faced in transferring HCI knowledge, or more accurately expertise, to industrial partners. and suggests an agenda for those who seek.
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1.	Introduction
Human-Computer Interaction remains a lively research area but it has the potential to be more valuable. A familiar complaint of the HCI research community is why does no-one listen to us? A second complaint is that industry is only interested in more mundane aspects such as usability or accessibility. Discussion with industrially-based HCI researchers suggests this is not unique to academia.
The problems that HCI seeks to address exist in real-life and the current commercial vogue (at least in the mainstream) for basics like usability, should not mask the potential to transfer the fruits of HCI research into practice. Recent decisions by the UK government to prioritise knowledge transfer as a “third stream” of funding for universities, supply additional motivation. This paper presents an organisational overview of knowledge transfer activities within Napier University’s HCI Group –as we try to put into practice what we have preached with commercial partners
Napier’s HCI Group has been described adequately previous conferences [1]. Recent additional recruitment means Professor David Benyon now leads a group of three professors, six senior lecturers, nine lecturers and twelve researchers. In the last five years members of the group have been involved in four technology transfer programmes – taking HCI (mainly UCD) and trying to successfully embed it in industry. We report here on a recent award-winning collaboration, consider the barriers that we have met in other partnerships and suggest ways of making the most of existing mechanisms and propose an agenda for  public funding of knowledge transfer.
2.	Projects Undertaken

While the group has undertaken a variety of research projects for and with industry, this paper focuses on four TCS programmes funded by the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). These were once known as “Teaching Company Schemes” but this term was dropped several years ago. The current programmes are administered, as technology transfer initiatives, by TTI ltd [2], a division of Serco. 
TCS projects run for two years (but can be extended) and support a full-time position (The Associate), nominally employed by the university, working fulltime within the industrial partner, implementing the ideas of the knowledge base partner (normally, but not necessarily, a university). This must meet the criteria of using the expertise of the research partner to address issues of strategic importance to the company, while providing a substantial challenge to the associate. Successful applications receive approximately £55k of government funding and £35-40k of company funding, which funds a competitive salary for the associate, equipment and travel, and 10% of an academic’s time throughout, plus administrative overheads.
Historically TCS projects involved implementation of engineering and manufacturing technologies that had been developed by a university. In 1998 [3] more than half fell into this category, but by 2002 almost a third relate to information and computing technologies. This has been in conjunction with a shift from “hardware” technology transfer to “softer” areas such as process improvement. Government statements [4] tend to emphasize knowledge transfer rather than technology transfer. However HCI-related programmes remain few and a search of the 887 programmes listed on the TCS website [5] revealed only 5 remotely connected to HCI issues. 
Napier HCI Group’s first programme ran from January 1999 for two years, following a successful consultancy report in May 1998 for a local company who were seeking to diversify out of computer memory products. The objective was to “Develop the technology for a patentable design of a user friendly system to download music with full copy control”. The backdrop to this was the emergence of the MP3 file format as a potential carrier of music. By the time programme started, sites such as MP3.com and later Napster.com had raised billions of dollars in public flotations based upon giving copyright music away for free, while generating income from advertising and other services. The response of the music industry was predictable. For some time they had been considering the possibilities as well as the risks of the new technology (for example, Esprit Project 20676: Imprimatur, completed in 1998). While various lawsuits wound their way through legal systems, the music and computer industries and the consumer electronics industry joined together in the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) which attempted to define technical and business models (in fact this work has been subsumed into the current MPEG-21 standard effort. 
The academics helped the company develop products that could attract patents, that would be perceived as user-friendly and that would, by meeting the emerging requirements for SDMI-compliance, minimise the risk of legal action. The resulting products were so well received that the company sold off the technology before completion of the TCS programme for a reported $6m, and the university completed the project with the new owners. The actually products completed, and the draft patents filed, were spun off to other companies in sales of technology and IPR. The actual expertise in UCD remained with the original people involved
3.	People with added value
At first sight this would be an unusual sequence of events, but when similar commercial considerations affected another TCS programme with a software company, we realized that this could be a consequence of knowledge transfer activity. Since knowledge, or more correctly expertise, is transferred into individuals in the course of these projects, these individuals can be perceived to have added value. Once this exists, in the modern knowledge economy, someone will be seeking to display that value on a balance sheet, or even to realize that value by sale. The objective of TCS programmes has for many years been effectively to create a “change agent” (the associate) who creates good practice and disseminates throughout the organization. Training staff in new procedures is typically one of the final tasks in a TCS schedule but perhaps this is an optimistic view of the effectiveness of the process. If the change agents concerned, and a few working in close proximity are sold off before this stage, then there is little effective transfer. Cost-benefits are typically seen as the way to demonstrate an effective technology transfer programme, but knowledge transfer is harder to quantify (unless of course someone sells that part of the company!).
In applying good HCI practice and seeking to work with the various stakeholders – recognizing for example that musicians and composers are users of the music distribution system too – we were consciously pursuing the “slow buck” – the sustainable, viable business model, rather than the fast buck approaches that epitomized the dotcom era. However investors may not have this level of patience (just as product developers may not have the patience to wait for an analysis of the user’s needs before implementation). Yet the people concerned – the change agents and those who directly work with them, continue to have successful careers. Equipped with knowledge of and expertise in areas such as user-centred design they make steady progress, while more speculative ventures go under (though others make substantial one-off profits.
4.	Conclusions
Thus we are drawn to the conclusion that knowledge transfer is a human-centred process and this is one for which we can find useful references. Firstly it’s not only the makers of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products who realize that modern business is build upon individual purchasing decisions rooted in personal context. Griliches [6] observed the slow diffusion of technology in 1957, and this led to the Geoffrey Moore’s [7] Crossing the Chasm model, which identifies categories of consumers from innovators through early adopters and mainstream users to laggards. This chimes with Gaines’ and Shaw’s BRETAM model [8].
Ackerman et al [9] observe that knowledge transfer approaches are split between knowledge repository approaches, and expertise sharing. It is plain to see that   that we cannot simply drop a lump of HCI into an industrial solution and admire the precipitate. Knowledge transfer in HCI is expertise-sharing, and it is a very human activity. Knowledge transfer mechanisms need to reflect that and protect the individuals involved. 
5.	References
[1]	HCI2002 Proceedings Volume 2.
[2]	www.tti-ltd.co.uk/
[3]	TCS Annual Report 2001/2002 (2002) Department of Trade & Industry
[4]	Lord Sainsbury (2002) speech at TCS Wards 2002, transcript at http://www.tcsonline.org.uk/awards2002/speech.html
[5]	http://www.tcd-db.npl.co.uk/web_user/pkg_npl.p_extended_search

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