Dr Sam Waller

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Dr Sam Waller

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Research group: Inclusive Design
 

Biography

  • MEng (Hons), Mechanical Engineering, UMIST (now University of Manchester), 2002;
  • PhD, Structural Engineering, Cambridge University, 2006;

Sam Waller is a researcher within the Inclusive Design Group at the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre. Sam championed the Inclusive Design Toolkit website, together with a website for e-commerce image recommendations, Vision and Hearing Impairment Simulator software , Cambridge Simulation Gloves and Cambridge Simulation Glasses.

Sam has developed web applications for calculating the number of people who would be unable to use a product or service. The Exclusion calculator  assesses tasks against a broad range of user capabilities, and SEE-IT is developed specifically for assessing the visual clarity of text or graphics that are handheld.

Sam's research interests include:

Analysing population statistics and creating design tools that enable practising designers to make products that offer a better user experience across a wider range of users.
Understanding the extent to which the results from a small set of user trials capture the true diversity of capability evident within a national population.
Using variable levels of impairment simulation to measure the demands that particular tasks place on user abilities, which enables a prediction of the corresponding exclusion.

Selected publications

Waller, S.D., Bradley, M.D., Hosking I.M. & Clarkson, P.J. Making the case for inclusive design. Applied Ergonomics 46:297-303 (2015)

Waller, S. D., Bradley, M. D., Langdon, P. M., & Clarkson, P. J. Visualising the number of people who cannot perform tasks related to product interactions. Universal Access in the Information Society 12:263-278 (2013).

Waller, S.D., Langdon, P.M., Clarkson P.J. Using disability data to estimate design exclusion. Int. J. Universal Access Information Society 195–207. DOI 10.1007/s10209-009-0168-x (2009).

Clarkson, P.J., Coleman, R., Hosking, I. and Waller, S.D. Inclusive design toolkit, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, UK. ISBN 9780954524326 Available at www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com (2007).

Mechanics of Novel Compression structures, Phd thesis, Department of Engineering, Cambridge University. Online pdf (2006).