Charles Njoku
Before pivoting to aviation, I spent eight years as a product designer and technology entrepreneur designing and building digital products across healthcare, fintech, education, drone technology and sector-agnostic applications.
That practitioner background inspired my move to HCI research and continues to shape my interests and how I approach research questions. I am interested in studying the complex interaction between humans and sociotechnical systems and the design of the interfaces that mediate this interaction.
My current MSc research examines how different interaction modalities and cognitive resource channels influence cognitive workload, situation awareness, and control performance under realistic dual-task conditions. My work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, aviation safety, and cognitive engineering.
- Touchscreen & Augmented Reality Interfaces
- Multimodal Interaction in Complex Sociotechnical Systems
- Situational awareness & Cognitive workload in Human–AI Interaction
- Adaptive Interface Design in Complex Systems
A web-based simulator for studying interaction styles in flight deck environments. Presents a Primary Flight Display with a continuous tracking task (pitch & roll correction via gamepad) and a concurrent data-entry secondary task, enabling controlled comparison of six interaction modalities under simulated dual-task workload.
Supported styles: multi-axis slider, single-axis slider, discrete keypad, button-activated speech, hands-free wake-word speech, and direct PFD touch manipulation. Performance is measured via RMSE, NRMSE, and an Effective Control Score (ECS). Post-task assessments (NASA-TLX, SUS) are served on session completion. All session data logged locally to SQLite via Flask.
While RMSE captures how well an operator tracked and control effort captures how much they inputted, neither answers the question that matters most: how efficiently did the operator inputs make useful deviation correction?
ECS is defined as the ratio of total deviation corrected to total control input applied across a trial. It draws on Zijlstra’s effort-efficiency construct, McRuer & Jex’s disturbance rejection theory, and joint input-error analysis from closed-loop pilot modelling. The metric requires only two time-aligned data streams and generates testable predictions against RMSE, control effort, and NASA-TLX workload subscales.
Research focus: interaction modalities in flight deck interface design, cognitive workload, and human–automation teaming in future flight systems.
Democratized UX research for startups: participant recruitment, contextual feedback collection, and rapid analysis tooling used by solo founders and small product teams.
Led product design across healthcare, fintech, and civic technology. Highlights: an Open Banking access framework for 13M+ digitally-excluded users; 3D-printed drone prototypes for emergency medical supply delivery in rural Nigeria; open-source tools with 25,000+ users.
Professional memberships
I took up running mid 2025 for fitness and quickly found it an effective reset alongside research. I am currently training for three half-marathons (1 down, 2 more to go), using each one to raise money for causes I care about.
I am running to raise money for three causes: heart research in memory of mothers, HIV care and support through Sussex Beacon, and ending child abuse through the NSPCC. Any contribution means a great deal.
I have been part of several community initiatives throughout my career, from design communities in Lagos to open-source contributors’ groups in London. I continue to mentor early-career designers and founders where I can.