Lectures and course materials for my two advanced modules that have been offered at the University of Essex are here. Check the dates of lectures and handouts. If they are from the previous academic year then they are due for refreshing.
A unique course that drills down deep on one topic and offers a genuinely multidisciplinary perspective. Our exploration of transit maps encounters art, design, architecture, politics, economics, psychology, computer science and usability testing. Learn about
the history and context of transit maps, their effectiveness from the point of view of a psychologist, and how to evaluate their success.
Here we explore human, machine and animal intelligence, looking at key issues across domains. Not necessarily map related, nonetheless
it is possible to draw intricate attractive state-space maps for some puzzles. The age-old questions of whether the human mind and a digital computer might be equivalent in any way, and also how and why human and animal minds differ, are endlessly fascinating.
Lectures for my teaching on other University of Essex modules are below, complete with references to maps whenever I can. Check the dates on the lectures: as before, any of these dated for the previous academic year will be refreshed before being re-presented.
I used to teach two lectures on the Year I Applied Psychology module. The
first gives an overview of ergonomics/human-machine interaction
and information design. The second looks at transit maps as an example of how psychology theories and methods can improve
design, and also highlight potential pitfalls in usability testing.
I teach three topics on the Year II Personality & Individual Differences module. These give an overview of the basics of psychometric testing, research into the structure of intelligence, the utility of intelligence test scores as predictors of educational and occupational outcomes, and a searching dissection of arguments that the construct of intelligence is suspect and that the validity of intelligence tests is questionable. The attempts to identify the structure of human intelligence and ability can very much be thought of as mapping the mind.
On the surface, an introduction to Analysis of Variance might not be obviously related to maps. However, design principles should always be evidence-based and this entails usability testing of different maps. Statistical analysis is an essential component of this.