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Legal & Forensic
User Perspective has worked on high profile incidents where findings were used during legal proceedings.
Eyewitness Training
Project Overview
Eyewitness Testimony is a complex domain with multiple influences. Officers presenting evidence in court frequently find solid forensic evidence ignored in favour of eyewitness testimony. These presentations sought to inform the Investigating Officers of the science behind this particularly thorny issue and to advise how improvements could be made to the collection of testimony. It was suggested that different recording methods could improve the quality of the testimony collected. Witness statement collection forms were considered relevant to our knowledge of human limitations in this domain and suggestions for improvements to the collection forms were also considered.
Improving Pedestrian Conspicuity
Project Overview
Following the death of a local police officer we investigated how well high visibility clothing works at night and found that overall it works very poorly. We conducted field trails and simulations to innovate a new uniform that improved conspicuity considerably. The new uniform design has been tested throughout the world and hopefully will be accepted as a better design by the relevant regulators.
Operation Paget
Operation Paget - Client MPS
Project Overview
Examination of the eyewitness testimony (EWT) raised an anomaly that helped fuel many a conspiracy theory. Forensic evidence identified the colour of the car that struck the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales and Mr Fayed as being white, and yet eyewitnesses overwhelmingly identified the car as black, or dark, in colour. After a review of the physical environment revealed no attributes that could affect colour misperception, attention was turned to scientific explanations regarding the limitations of eyewitness testimony. Examination of previous research in the area of EWT and colour perception was surprisingly lacking. Based on the science of attention and perception, our researcher devised an experimental scenario that would account for the misperception in colour. Trials of this experiment found that the effect of the transfer of the dominant stimulus colour (black car) to the peripheral stimulus (white car) was replicated. This illustrated that under conditions of high arousal as a witness to a serious accident a white car can actually become black.
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