Dr Oli Mival
Senior Research Fellow & Director Future Interaction Network
Centre for Interaction Design
Edinburgh Napier University
Telephone:+44(0)131 455 2761
Email: o.mival@napier.ac.uk
When asked what I do I'll usually say "A psychologist by training, designer by practice". What that means in reality was the occasional visit to Edinburgh Uni’s psychology department over 4 years and the occasional earnest asking of “how does that make you feel?”. I did get to do some fun stuff like a 3 month lit review on the origins and causal factors of obsessive compulsive homicidal behaviour…(that’ll be my teenage whim to be an FBI agent then, Twin Peaks has a lot to answer for)…and a final year thesis on lie detection..."In search of Pinocchio’s Nose", always did like that title. That was followed up with a brief stint teaching at Edinburgh Uni's psychology department before heading across town to Edinburgh Napier University and a PhD in Human Computer Interaction. 6 long years later and my thesis, “In Search of the Cybermuse: Exploring Information Communication Technology Support for the Creative Process”, was messily born into the world.
All this academia took its toll and it was time for a change. A long time interest in watching and making films somehow manifested itself into the creation of a film and media production company, Those Media Guys. 2 years, a little less hair and immense debt later and the words of Dan Aykroyd in Ghostbusters began to ring very true…
”Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been in the private sector. They expect *results*.”
And so back to academia I went in the form of a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Interaction Design at Edinburgh Napier focusing on developing, designing and implementing new forms of interface and interaction experience. In parallel with this has been the development of the ICE and the Future Interactions Network.
New to the “career” is the writing of various articles based on my technology ramblings for various publications and the occasional piece to tv on why this technology m'larky is so darn important. Plus, if you ask me, I'll babble on for hours about poker, film soundtracks and Spurs (the football team, not the ankle paraphernalia).