My research focuses on aesthetic cognition and visual communication in digital environments, examining how visual design shapes attention, understanding, and performance. A central strand of this work investigates how the aesthetic properties of visual stimuli influence performance, particularly in time-critical tasks.
A second major line of research explores how people perceive and interpret icons, signs, and symbols. As these form an increasingly important global visual language, surprisingly little is known about how they are understood across different languages, cultures, ages, and user groups. My work aims to establish the cognitive principles that underpin effective visual communication, with the goal of informing the design of more accessible, inclusive, and cognitively efficient visual systems across digital and real-world environments.
This research has been supported by the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute (MASI) and the British Standards Institute (BSI), with previous funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Wales Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Leverhulme Trust.
And there is always time for a walk along the beaches and hills of the Gower!
