This fellowship will investigate and bridge the gaps between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) theory and the practical realities of designing and building interactive technologies. It will produce new ways to weave HCI theory into practice, feed experiences from practice back to theory, and enhance methods of working together across disciplines and sectors. Innovating, designing and studying interactions with digital technologies across a diverse and ever-widening range of activities and settings is a signature challenge of the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Much HCI seeks to address how best to design interactivity for a range of purposes and technologies, from improving usability, productivity and efficiency in user interface components, to developing collaborative systems for workplaces, to creating new art, cultural and leisure experiences with mobile devices, interactive displays and novel tangible user interfaces. However, HCI has an uneasy relationship between this strong practical focus on the applied aspects of designing and building interactive technologies, and its theoretical innovations. Ill-defined, the wealth of HCI 'theory' that has developed since HCI's inception assumes a wide range of different forms: from 'big-T' theories such as Activity Theory, and models such as Fitt's Law, to frameworks and taxonomies, to broad 'sensitising concepts', recommendations, guidelines, principles, heuristics and rules-of-thumb. And yet, in spite of this proliferation of theoretical work, little is known about how such theoretical knowledge is practically manifest 'in the wild'; i.e., how it is actually applied in practice both within HCI research (beyond limited terms such as citation), as well as across industries developing interactive digital technologies which encounter HCI-related issues. Of this theoretical HCI knowledge, it is frameworks-a way of packaging up HCI theory into disseminable and reusable parcels in order to inform subsequent design and application-which have arguably been most successful, at least within the HCI research community. However, like the wider problem affecting theory and its relation to practice, little is known about how these frameworks are actually applied in practice even within research communities. This fellowship will develop ways to bring this wealth of knowledge into practice and application more readily, easily, and accessibly for those working within HCI research, and in areas outside research that are impacted by HCI issues. Through exploring HCI frameworks in this way, the fellowship will address the wider issue of theory-practice connection. This fellowship seeks to perform three key duties: 1. Deliver, via ethnographic work, detailed empirical understandings of the current role that HCI frameworks play in the design, development and evaluation of interactive experiences within research and industry. As part of this it will cross a range of domains in which interactive technology design work takes place, including digital technologies in culture and media (e.g., digital arts); the home (e.g., smart homes, energy monitoring); and workplaces (e.g., interaction / user experience design consultancy work). 2. Develop tools and techniques to support the practical application of HCI's theoretical products such that they can be operationalised for research and industry domains which increasingly encounter HCI-related issues, as well as within HCI research itself. 3. Support and strengthen a nascent interdisciplinary community concerned with the broader issue of bridging theory and practice. This will deliver long-term impact maintaining future research to study and refine the tools and techniques for applying HCI frameworks to a range of practices.

The emergence of a global ubiquitous computing environment in which each of us routinely interacts with many thousands of interconnected computers embedded into the everyday world around us will transform the ways in which we work, travel, learn, entertain ourselves and socialise. Ubiquitous computing will be the engine that drives our future digital economy, stimulating new forms of digital business and transforming existing ones.However, ubiquitous computing also carries considerable risks in terms of societal acceptance and a lack of established models of innovation and wealth creation, so that unlocking its potential is far from straightforward. In order to ensure that the UK reaps the benefits of ubiquitous computing while avoiding its risks, we must address three fundamental challenges. First, we need to pursue a new technical research agenda for the widespread adoption of ubiquitous computing. Second, we must understand and design for an increasingly diverse population of users. Third, we need to establish new paths to innovation in digital business. Meeting these challenges requires a new generation of researchers with interdisciplinary skills in the technical and human centred aspects of ubiquitous computing and transferable skills in research, innovation and societal impact.Our doctoral training centre for Ubiquitous Computing in the Digital Economy will develop a cohort of interdisciplinary researchers who have been exposed to new research methods and paradigms within a creative and adventurous culture so as to provide the future leadership in research and knowledge transfer that is necessary to secure the transformative potential of ubiquitous computing for the UK digital economy. To achieve this we will work across traditional research boundaries; encourage students to adopt an end-to-end perspective on innovation; promote creativity and adventure in research; and place engagement with society, industry and key stakeholders at the core of our programme.Our proposal brings together a unique pool of researchers with extensive expertise in the technologies of ubiquitous and location based computing, user-centred design, societal understanding, and research and training in innovation and leadership. It also involves a wide spectrum of industry partners from across the value chain for ubiquitous computing, spanning positioning, communications, devices, middleware, databases, design, and our two driving market sectors of the creative industries and transportation.Our training programme is based on the approach of personalised pathways that develop individual students' interdisciplinary and transferable skills, and that produce a personal portfolio to showcase the skills and experience gained alongside the more traditional PhD thesis. It includes a flexible taught programme that emphasises student-led seminars, short-fat modules, training projects and e-learning as delivery mechanisms that are suited to PhD training; an industrial internship scheme under which students spend three months working at an industrial partner; and a PhD research project that builds on a proposal developed during the first year of training and that is supported by multiple supervisors from different disciplines with industry involvement. Our DTC will foster a community of researchers through a dedicated shared space, a programme of community building events, training for supervisors and well as students, funding for a student society, and an alumni programme.