School of Art, Design and Media (ADM)

I joined Portsmouth in 2002 as a PhD student and have lectured in History and Theory of Visual Culture since 2005, and am now Course Leader for the MA Design for Digital Media. I am a communication designer with an emphasis on interactive media design, and combine my research and teaching with commercial engagements, which have included online-media producer for Der Spiegel, several years as a graphic designer for local printer reseller Printware, and freelance web design. My research has moved towards themes of critically engaging with the screen and computer interfaces, which then led to a research position developing tactile interfaces for a multi-sensory environment for children with autism (MEDIATE).

I am interested in issues related to interaction design, with a special focus on sensory and embodied interaction, and more generally in the use and affordances of digital media, such as non-linear narratives, global connectivity and community building, visualizations of cyberspace, social networking and cyber cultures.

Current Research^{[Back to top]}

Gumtau, S. (In preparation). Nested Narratives – a multimodal interface to support personal reflection (developing interface, seeking funding to test technology use on wider scale, testing storytelling method in different contexts).

The multimodal interface will enable real-time audio recording about learning and how students make sense of learning. The participants are then able to re-visit their story in form of networked audio nodes, and add associations in form of images, text, video or additional audio to the story. The various sensory modes allow the participant to make sense of, discover new links to, reflect on and represent their story. The interface is designed to encourage engagement with rich media and embraces non-textual forms of expression.

A framework will be sought, where several departments with different learning needs and modes of delivery can test this methodology and the interface with their students.

This is a collaborative project with Roy Williams, Flexible Learning Studio (Faculty of Technology) and Regina Karousou (Foundation Direct). My research interest lies particularly in the use of metaphors and the affordances of digital media in various sensory modes. Joint and individual articles are planned.

Publications

Journal Articles^{[Back to top]}

Gumtau, S. (2006). Freshly Squeezed Touch into Bits: Towards the Development of a Haptic Design Palette. Virtual Reality, 9(4), 250-259.

Conference Papers^{[Back to top]}

Gumtau, S., Newland, P., Creed, C. & Kunath, S. (2005). MEDIATE: A Responsive Environment Designed for Children with Autism. In Accessible design in the digital world: proceedings of the conference held at Dundee.

Gumtau, S. (2005b). Tactile Semiotics: the Meanings of Touch explored with Low-Tech Prototypes. In Proceedings of First Joint Eurohaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems (World Haptics Conference ‘05) (pp. 651-652). Pisa: IEEE Computer Society Press.

Gumtau, S. (2005a). Communication and Interaction using Touch: Examine the User before you Reproduce his Hand! In E. Martinez-Miron & D. Brewster (Eds.), Proceedings of 8th Human Centred Technology Postgraduate Workshop, UK , (pp. 18-21). Brighton: University of Sussex Department of Informatics.