Simon's research focusses on studies of users to inform theory and design relating to sensemaking. He has a particular interest in sensemaking understood as a form of Distributed Cognition and also the design of visualisation to support sensemaking. He is also interested in Interaction Design methods and in particular approaches to user modelling. He has conducted in vivo studies of numerous user groups including journalists, lawyers, intelligence analysts and police crime analysts.
Simon has a BA (hons) in Philosophy with Cognitive Science, a MSc. in Experimental Psychology and a PhD in Human Computer Interaction.
Dr Attfield teaches modules on User Experience Design and Information Visualisation.
Bors, Christian and Wenskovitch, John and Dowling, Michelle and Attfield, Simon and Battle, Leilani and Endert, Alex and Kulyk, Olga and Laramee, Robert (2019) A provenance task abstraction framework. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications , 39 (6). pp. 46-60. ISSN 0272-1716
Attfield, Simon and Selvaraj, Nallini and Kodagoda, Neesha and Passmore, Peter J. and Duncker-Gassen, Elke (2019) Patterns of life visualisations for intelligence analysis: exploring animation with POLAR. In: 2019 International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology (ICCST), 1-3 Oct 2019, Chennai, India.
Attfield, Simon and Fields, Bob and Windridge, David and Xu, Kai (2019) An approach to human-machine teaming in legal investigations using anchored narrative visualisation and machine learning. In: First International Workshop on AI and Intelligent Assistance for Legal Professionals in the Digital Workplace (LegalAIIA 2019)., 17 Jun 2019, Montreal, Canada.
Bors, Christian and Attfield, Simon and Battle, Leilani and Dowling, Michelle and Endert, Alex and Koch, Steffen and Kulyk, Olga and Laramee, Robert and Troy, Melanie and Wenskovitch, John (2019) A novel approach to task abstraction to make better sense of provenance data. In: Provenance and Logging for Sense Making (Dagstuhl Seminar 18462), 11-16 Nov 2018, Dagstuhl, Germany.
Bashir, Engie and Attfield, Simon (2018) An international survey of practitioner's views on personas: benefits, resource demands and pitfalls. International Journal on Advances in Software , 11 (3&4). pp. 299-310. ISSN 1942-2628
Simon is currently leading teams at Middlesex on research projects funded by the Human Social Sience Research Capability (HSSRC) and the Serapis Framework.
