UCL Interaction Centre Researcher wins British Library Competition

Sarah Wiseman was awarded 1st place in the #ShareMyThesis competition 2015.

The #ShareMyThesis competition challenged PhD students past and present to summarise why their PhD research is important  - in 140 characters or less. The competition was open worldwide.

Sarah's research was on "The Importance of Understanding Number Entry". As motivation for her research she notes "... many people have lost a lot of money by sending it to the wrong person. But that’s only money. Sometimes the consequences of number entry error can be even more severe: when a doctor or nurse types a number incorrectly into a medical device the patient can receive a serious overdose. This, unfortunately, is not a rare occurrence, and there are regularly cases reported in the news of a number entry error resulting in the harm or even death of a patient."

Sarah's winning tweet was; "Typing numbers wrongly in hospitals can kill people. Understanding why it happens can help design better systems and stop it!"

Sarah completed her PhD with Anna Cox at UCL’s Interaction Centre. Her work was funded by UCL Psychology and Languages Department with additional funding from EPSRC through the CHI+MED project. Her thesis is available here. Sarah is now working as a post doctoral researcher based at both University College London and the Open University. At the OU she is working on a project that aims to explore how technology can improve accessibility to the arts for people with visual impairments. At UCL she is continuing her PhD topic by researching number entry error and the possible causes.