David Cox

David has worked at Southampton Solent University since 1989 following a five year period working for a university in the Middle East. During his time abroad, he visited various Gulf states and enjoyed the exhilarating sport of sand skiing down a variety of very large sand dunes!

Prior to this, David worked for a combination of industry and educational institutions in Britain including Westminster libraries in London. He has two Masters degrees - one in Applied Linguistics and one in Information Systems - and has found the combination of these two disciplines useful within the field of computing.

David is currently Progression Tutor for the two final levels of the BIT Computing Programme which includes five undergraduate degrees ranging from Business Information Technology to Software Engineering.

David's interests include music - both digital and on vinyl. He has a recently restored 1950s juke box, and is always looking for old and new vinyl singles. In addition to travelling and swimming not too badly, he enjoys the despair and delights of football and visiting the Oval to watch test cricket. 

As well as general programming, David's subject specialisms are databases and human-computer interaction and design. He is interested in object usability within interfaces and the extent to which the perception of icons, text and images both inform interface design and impact on users' successful interaction with computer systems. He has recently delivered papers in this area at conferences in the United States, Turkey and China.  

• ‘Usability, Engagement & Development of a Digital Usability Laboratory in a Higher Education Environment.’ In: ITiCSE 2010, 15th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey, 25-30 June 2010, Proceedings. New York: ACM Press, pp 269-273.
• Working member of National Disciplinary Commons Portfolio project in HCI, Sept 07 – June 08. Proposed output/aims: document and share knowledge between UK universities re. teaching / student learning on UK HCI courses. Establishment of practices for the scholarship of teaching. Creation of refereed teaching-appropriate document of practice (a portfolio) equivalent to research-appropriate journal paper.
• ‘Usability Evaluation, Quality and Engagement in Education’. In Proceedings of Software Quality Management XV1 & the 13th Annual INSPIRE International Conference for Process Improvement, Research and Education, 18-19 March 2008, University of Ulster, British Computer Society, pp 269-281
• ‘Task Analysis, Usability and Engagement’. In Jacko, J (Ed): Human-Computer Interaction, Part I, HCII 2007 (Proceedings of 12th International Conference HCI International 2007, Beijing China July 2007), LNCS 4550, pp 1072-1081, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
• ‘Can More Integrative Activity Improve the Learning Experience?’ (with Monger, A., Baron, S. & Adam, T). In proceedings of Inspire 2006, the 11th Annual INSPIRE International Conference for Process Improvement, Research and Education, 10-12 April 2006, Southampton, UK pp121-135, British Computer Society.
• ‘Human Factors in the HCI Learning Process: A Survey’. HCI International 2005. In proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 6, Human Factors Issues in Human-Computer Interaction. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. July 2005. St. Louis: Mira Digital Publishing.
• ‘A Pragmatic HCI Approach: Engagement by Reinforcing Perception with Functional Design and Programming’. ITiCSE 05, Proceedings of the 10th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Monte de Caparica, Lisbon, Portugal.