The Hunt Museum is looking into introducing a new interactive support for their visitors via mobile phones and QR (quick response) codes. This project will focus in developing two pilot trails in close collaboration with the museum staff. The student will gather requirements from the museum staff and visitors, design two themed trails, implement them on at least one mobile phone platform and evaluate them while used by the museum visitors. The Hunt Museum will provide the necessary information and assistance for the development of the content of the application. This project will involve close collaboration with the museum and will allow the student to solve a real-world interaction design problem.

The design, development and evaluation of a mobile student guide to the UL Campus that, based on location, allows students to add comments and information for other students to access. Current location-based social media such as Foursquare and Gowalla have shown the usefulness of crowdsourcing in collecting relevant information, hints and tips regarding a particular location that users can access, share and further contribute to. This project focuses on the design of a similar guide for the UL Campus from the perspective of students. The project will involve following the Interaction Design process to gather requirements and develop design ideas and the realisation of a working prototype to be tested on site.

Dressing nicely involves getting colour combinations right, something that is challenging for many blind and partially sighted people. A colour identifier that works through the camera of a mobile phone would be useful. At its simplest, it could tell light from dark or the blue end of the spectrum from the red. Being able to distinguish blues and greens in different lighting would be more challenging. This project is in collaboration with the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology (CFIT), which would be able to assist students with requirements gathering, design, user testing and technical accessibility.

Social networking utilities are useful in creating links between people, and in providing users with a sense of "closeness" to others. But what do "closeness" and "distance" mean in the world of social networking? Is "closeness" perceived socially, emotionally or professionally? Is "distance" on a social network coinciding with physical distance or are the two completely separate? This project investigates how users of social networking tools perceive these notions, and includes the design of an installation/app to support digital closeness based on the information collected from users.

Tangible interaction is increasingly finding application outlets in museums and galleries in order to facilitate formal and informal learning. This project will consist of a detailed benchmarking of existing tangible installations for learning in museums, a study of educational activities in a Irish museum chosen by the student and design of a tangible installation to support learning in that context. The student will benefit from the support of the Irish Museums Association network to identify a suitable museum.