The constituent technologies of the very broad Digital domain are termed “disruptive”, enabling paradigm shifts in what can be done and how it can be done. People throughout the world are increasingly connected while at work and at play and smart-cities and Living Labs are being created across the world, offering huge opportunities for the development of novel and exciting digital applications and services, while simultaneously raising important societal questions. Maximising the economic and societal benefits of digital technologies requires a very broad base of disciplines and seamless integration of expertise drawn from the arts and humanities, cultural and media studies, engineering, technology, healthcare and social sciences fields, which are distributed across the university.
The Institute for Digital Experience and Applications integrates the widely distributed Digital expertise from across the university and supports collaboration between researchers from all faculties, disciplines and Centres of Excellence by focusing on three key digital themes:
- Content and Creativity
- Technology and Interactivity
- Digital Development and Application
These horizontal themes provide a sense of belonging and common purpose for researchers involved with the enabling technologies; software application development, creation of content of many forms and the modes of consumption of 'digital stuff' by citizens. The themes will bring together researchers from different disciplines who may in the past have pursued their research within their own faculty or discipline base and interaction between researchers within the IDEAs.
Currently four of our six faculties are participating in IDEAs:
A number of our researchers are also on a panel of experts in their specialist fields including Arts and Music, Design, Linguistic, Public Policy and Management. The website interlinks experts in a wide range of disciplines and enables them to share their expertise through research, knowledge transfer and consultancy on the Discover Digital website. To find out more about our researchers, please visit the Media Expert's Directory on the Discover Digital website.
Capability and expertise in developing and applying digital technologies to a wide variety of end uses is distributed widely across the University’s constituent faculties and service departments because:
Digital is Hardware and Networks:
Digital can be approached from a technical perspective, where the digital devices and local and wide-area network infrastructures provide a focus for applied research and innovation in electronics, embedded software and networking.
Digital is Software:
Researchers with expertise in software can focus on the role of connected and increasingly mobile devices as platforms for connected world applications, for the consumption of digital services; interactive learning and teaching and co-creation of content.
Digital is Content:
Researchers in Art and Design, Media and Music are increasingly creating digital artefacts or developing tools to allow co-creation of or re-purposing of existing digital content.
Digital is Connecting People:
Researchers focusing on society and culture are able to engage with digital as a disruptive technology, capable of driving major shifts in the behaviour of individuals and societies and empowering and connecting individuals and communities.The Institute for Digital Experience and Applications (IDEAs) has been created to stimulate, support and integrate broad digital domain expertise from across the entire university. IDEAs acts as a cloche under which researchers from different faculties and Centres of Excellence can collaborate to develop new research ideas resulting from the creative abrasion between disciplines. IDEAs allows the university to create a critical mass of broadly based and multi-skilled digital capability which can be directed to major societal priorities and policy drivers which require a multi-disciplinary base.
For more information on research in the Centre, please contact: IDEAS-research@bcu.ac.uk
