Sara Jones

I am currently a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Management at Cass Business School. I am a founding member of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice, and Course Director for the interdisciplinary Masters in Innovation Creativity and Leadership. From 2011 – 2015 I was a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design at City University, and from 2006 - 2011, I held an RCUK Research Fellowship in creativity applied to design and engineering, with a particular focus on the design of interactive systems.

My current interests include the use of new and emerging technologies to support creative processes, as well as the application of creative requirements and design techniques in both small and large-scale software and service development projects. I have been a principal/co-investigator on 10 AHRC-, JISC- EU- and bilaterally funded research projects worth nearly £10million, nearly £1million of which has come to City. I have published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals and conference proceedings, supervised 9 PhD students, taught a wide range of different courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and consulted for a number of major organisations.

Qualifications

• PhD Computer Science, City, University of London, United Kingdom, 1993
• MSc Information Processing, University of York, United Kingdom, 1986
• BA Hons Psychology and Philosophy, Oxford University, United Kingdom, 1985

Employment

• Senior Lecturer, City, University of London, 2015 – present
• Senior Lecturer, City, University of London, 2011 – 2015

Memberships of Professional Organisations

Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2013 – present

Research

Funded Business and Applied Research Contracts

• OnSola: Principal investigator, funded by InnovateUK to work with Stickyworld on delivering online support for the soft landings process, assisting the construction industry and its clients deliver better buildings; total funding £146,275, value to City University London £10,000, 2015.
• DSTLR: Principal investigator, funded by InnovateUK to work with the Meme Partnership on facilitating creative search; value to City University London £4,165, 2015.
• Neighbourhood Stickers: Principal investigator, funded by the Nominet Trust to work with Stickyworld on exploring digital ways to engage young people in planning; value to City University London £9,000, 2014.
• Digital Shoreditch Deep Insight – understanding for growth: Principal investigator, funded by AHRC, via Creativeworks London to work with Digital Shoreditch on developing links between the Digital Shoreditch Festival and the local Tech City community, total funding £14,991, value to City University London £9,991, 2013.
• Arcola Local: Co-investigator, funded by AHRC, via Creativeworks London to work with Arcola Theatre on developing digital approaches to engagement with the local community, total funding £15,000, value to City University London £10,000, 2013.
• Converging Conversations: Principal investigator, funded by InnovateUK to work with Stickyworld on developing a communications tool to support concept development at the earliest stages of creative projects; total funding £53,352, value to City University London £9,500, 2013.

Recent Projects

• Visualising the Smart Home - Creative Engagement with Customer Data: Co-investigator, with Dr Veselin Rakocevic, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, City University London, and Dr Milan Prodanivic, IMDEA Energy Institute, funded by the e.on international research initiative, value to City University London £187,325, 2012
• MIRROR - Reflective Learning at Work: Co-investigator, with Prof Neil Maiden, Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, City University London, EU Framework VII Integrated Project, total funding € 6,450,000, value to City University London €529,932, 2010 – 2014
• Information Spaces for Collaborative Creativity: Principal investigator, JISC-funded project with Middlesex University Interaction Design Centre and Product Design Department, total funding £199,983, value to City University London £64,600, 2008 - 2010
• Information Technology and its Use in the Context of Museums and Art Galleries: Co-investigator, with Dr Juliet Steyn, Department of Cultural Policy and Management, LCACE-funded workshop, City University London, £5,000, 2009
• Networking Devices to Support a Process of Collaborative Creativity: Co-investigator, with Dr Veselin Rakocevic, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, City University London internal pump-priming fund, City University London, £5,000, 2009

Current Research

My current research focuses on the development, use and evaluation of computational tools and technologies that can support and augment human creative and innovation processes in a range of different contexts. Areas of particular interest include the two way relationship between information visualisations and the creative process (both using deliberate creativity techniques in the design of information visualisations, and using information visualisations to support the generation of creative ideas for innovative new products); the development and use of search engines for and by creative professionals; the opportunities offered by mobile co-design for smart city innovation; and the use of embodied interaction to leverage affect in creative processes such as idea generation.

Following the remit of my RCUK fellowship (2006 – 2011), and, building on that, the establishment of the interdisciplinary Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at City (2008), my research has frequently incorporated work with colleagues from other disciplines including product design, electrical and electronic engineering, and psychology.

Featured Publication

• De Rooij, A. and Jones, S. (2015). (E)motion and creativity: Hacking the function of motor expressions in emotion regulation to augment creativity. .
• De Rooij, A., Corr, P.J. and Jones, S. (2015). Emotion and creativity: Hacking into cognitive appraisal processes to augment creative ideation. .
• Dove, G. and Jones, S. (2014). Using Information Visualization to Support Creativity in Service Design Workshops. ServDes. 2014 9-11 April, Lancaster, UK.
• Dove, G. and Jones, S. (2014). Using data to stimulate creative thinking in the design of new products and services. .
• Sustar, H., Jones, S. and Dearden, A. (2013). Older people as equal partners in creative design. .
• Goodwin, S., Dykes, J.A., Jones, S., Dillingham, I., Dove, G., Duffy, A., Kachkaev, A., Slingsby, A. and Wood, J. (2013). Creative User-Centered Visualization Design for Energy Analysts and Modelers. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), pp. 2516–2525. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2013.145. publisher’s website]
• Jones, S., Wilikens, M., Morris, P. and Masera, M. (2000). Trust requirements in e-business. Commun. ACM, 43, pp. 81–87. doi:10.1145/355112.355128.
• Britton, C. and Jones, S.V. (1999). The untrained eye: how languages for software specification support understanding in untrained users. Human Computer Interaction, 14(1&2) .

Chapters (5)

• Bermudez, P. and Jones, S. (2016). Early stage creative design collaboration: A survey of current practice. Collaboration in Creative Design: Methods and Tools (pp. 297–318). ISBN 978-3-319-29155-0.
• Maiden, N., Jones, S.V., Ncube, C. and Lockerbie, J. (2011). Using i in Requirements Projects: Some Experiences and Lessons. In Yu, E., Giorgini, P. and Maiden, N. (Eds.), Social Modeling for Requirements Engineering MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-24055-0.
• Jones, S.V. and Maiden, N. (2005). RESCUE: An Integrated Method for Specifying Requirements for Complex Socio-Technical Systems. In Maté, J.L. and Silva, A. (Eds.), Requirements Engineering For Sociotechnical Systems Idea Group Inc. ISBN 978-1-59140-506-1.
• Bolton, D., Green, S., Jones, S.V. and Till, D. (1995). Techniques and tools for knowledge-based requirements engineering. In Hurley, W.D. (Ed.), Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering World Scientific Publishing Company. ISBN 978-981-02-1911-6.
• Bolton, D., Jones, S.V., Till, D., Furber, D. and Green, S. (1994). Using domain knowledge in requirements capture and formal specification construction. In Jirotka, M. and Goguen, J. (Eds.), Requirements engineering Academic Press.

Journal Articles (20)

• Pitts, K., Pudney, K., Zachos, K., Maiden, N., Krogstie, B., Jones, S., Rose, M., MacManus, J. and Turner, I. (2015). Using mobile devices and apps to support reflective learning about older people with dementia. Behaviour and Information Technology, 34(6), pp. 613–631. doi:10.1080/0144929X.2015.1015165.
• Maiden, N., D'Souza, S., Jones, S., Müller, L., Pannese, L., Pitts, K., Prilla, M., Pudney, K., Rose, M., Turner, I. and Zachos, K. (2013). Computing technologies for reflective, creative care of people with dementia. Communications of the ACM, 56(11), pp. 60–67. doi:10.1145/2500495.
• Goodwin, S., Dykes, J.A., Jones, S., Dillingham, I., Dove, G., Duffy, A., Kachkaev, A., Slingsby, A. and Wood, J. (2013). Creative User-Centered Visualization Design for Energy Analysts and Modelers. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), pp. 2516–2525. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2013.145. [publisher’s website]
• Zachos, K., Maiden, N., Pitts, K., Jones, S., Turner, I., Rose, M., Pudney, K. and MacManus, J. (2013). Digital creativity in dementia care support. International Journal of Creative Computing, 1(1), pp. 35–35. doi:10.1504/IJCRC.2013.056924.
• Maiden, N. and Jones, S. (2010). Agile Requirements Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It Too? IEEE Software, 27(3), pp. 87–88. doi:10.1109/MS.2010.67.
• Maiden, N. and Jones, S. (2010). Requirements Agile Requirements-Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It Too? IEEE SOFTWARE, 27(3), pp. 87–88.
• Jones, S., Maiden, N.A.M., Manning, S. and Greenwood, J. (2007). Informing the specification of a large-scale socio-technical system with models of human activity. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 4542 LNCS, pp. 175–189.
• Norden, B. and Jones, S.V. (2007). Screenwriting for Requirements Engineers. IEEE Software, 24(4) .
• Maiden, N., Manning, S., Jones, S. and Greenwood, J. (2005). Generating Requirements from Systems Models using Patterns: A Case Study. Requirements Engineering Journal, 10(4), pp. 276–288.
• Barker, T., Jones, S., Britton, C. and Messer, D. (2002). The Use of a Co-operative Student Model of Learner Characteristics to Configure a Multimedia Application. User Model. User-Adapt. Interact., 12, pp. 207–241. doi:10.1023/A:1015002325839.
• Jones, S., Wilikens, M., Morris, P. and Masera, M. (2000). Trust requirements in e-business. Commun. ACM, 43, pp. 81–87. doi:10.1145/355112.355128.
• Britton, C. and Jones, S.V. (1999). The untrained eye: how languages for software specification support understanding in untrained users. Human Computer Interaction, 14(1&2) .
• Jones, S., Till, D. and Wrightson, A.M. (1998). Formal methods and requirements engineering: Challenges and synergies. Journal of Systems and Software, 40, pp. 263–273. doi:10.1016/S0164-1212(97)00171-4.
• Jones, S.V. and Hewitt, J. (1998). Heuristic evaluation of web site usability: Experiences from two case studies. HCI Letters, 1(1) .
• Britton, C., Jones, S., Myers, M. and Sharif, M. (1997). A survey of current practice in the development of multimedia systems. Information & Software Technology, 39, pp. 695–705. doi:10.1016/S0950-5849(97)00031-1.
• Beanie, M., Jones, S., Hewitt, J. and Sapsford-Francis, J. (1996). Providing public access to information in complex and weakly structured domains: A 3-layered model for hypermedia information systems. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 2(1), pp. 69–87. doi:10.1080/13614569608914675.
• Jones, S.V. and Johnson, C. (1996). Human computer interaction and requirements engineering - papers from an interdisciplinary workshop, 15th January, 1996. SIGCHI Bulletin, 29(1) .
• McCluskey, T.L., Naik, Y., Porteous, J.M., Taylor, C.N. and Jones, S.V. (1995). A requirements capture method and its use in an air traffic control application. Software Practice and Experience, 25(1) .
• Bolton, D., Jones, S.V., Till, D., Furber, D. and Green, S. (1992). Knowledge-based support for requirements engineering. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, 2(2), pp. 293–319.
• Jones, S.V. (1988). Graphical interfaces for knowledge engineering: An overview of relevant literature. Knowledge Engineering Review, 3(3) .

Overview

Since its inception in autumn 2010, I have been course director for the unique, interdisciplinary Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (MICL). This course was run from 2010 – 2015 through the Interdisciplinary Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at City University, and moved in the year 2015-16 to the Cass Business School, to become a full part of the Cass Masters programme by September 2016.

Since 2008, I have been developing innovative methods for teaching in relation to creativity and the design of interactive systems. From 2008-10, I received a grant of £64K from JISC to investigate the use of blended physical and digital spaces in the teaching of creative design, and in 2010, a further £3K from City University to develop and disseminate the findings from this project across the University.

Prior to that, I have lead and taught for modules on Requirements Engineering, User Interface Design, Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, Knowledge Engineering, Formal Notations and Models, and System Design and Development.

I have also supervised numerous projects at both Masters and undergraduate levels on themes relating to innovation, creativity and leadership as well as human-centred systems, business systems analysis and design, information systems, software engineering, computer science, cognitive science, software systems for the arts and media and combined studies degrees.

Academic Leadership

Course director for the unique, interdisciplinary Masters in Innovation Creativity and Leadership

Current Teaching

• INM403 Technologies for Creativity and Innovation, for the Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (2011 - present)
• INM391 Creativity in Design, for the Masters in Human-Centred Systems (2009 - present)
• INM411 Research Methods and Individual Project, for the Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership (2012 - present)

Editorial Activities (8)

• ACM Creativity and Cognition 2015.
• PeerJ Computer Science.
• ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Systems (EICS) 2013.
• International Journal of Creative Computing.
• DESIRE’11 - 2nd International Conference on Creativity and Innovation in Design.
• Information Spaces for Creative Conversations, 2009.
• Information Technology in Creative Environments, conference track at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) 2010.
• Associate chair ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2016.