A scientometric analysis of 15 years of CHINZ conferences

CHINZ is the annual conference of the New Zealand Chapter of the Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) of the ACM. In this paper we analyse the history of CHINZ through citations, authorship and online presence. CHINZ appears to compare well with the larger APCHI conference on citation-based measures. 42% of CHINZ papers were found as open access versions on the web

An observational study of children interacting with an augmented story book

We present findings of an observational study investigating how young children interact with augmented reality story books. Children aged between 6 and 7 read and interacted with one of two story books aimed at early literacy education. The books pages were augmented using animated virtual 3D characters, sound, and interactive tasks. Introducing novel media to young children requires system and story designers to consider not only technological issues but also questions arising from story design and the design of interactive sequences. We discuss findings of our study and implications regarding the implementation of augmented story books

Augmenting Autobiographical Memory: An Approach Based on Cognitive Psychology

This thesis investigates how an interactive software system can support a person in remembering their past experiences and information related to these experiences. It proposes design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems derived from Cognitive Psychology research into human memory – a perspective missing from prior work. Based on these recommendations, a conceptual design of an augmented autobiographical memory system is developed that aims to support users in retrieving cues and factual information related to experiences as well as in reconstructing those experiences. The retrieval aspects of this design are operationalised in an interactive software system called the Digital Parrot. Three important factors in the design and implementation are the context of an experience, semantic information about items in the system and associations between items. Two user studies evaluated the design and implementation of the Digital Parrot. The first study focused on the system's usability. It showed that the participants could use the Digital Parrot to accurately answer questions about an example memory data set and revealed a number of usability issues in the Digital Parrot's user interface. The second study embodied a novel approach to evaluating systems of this type and tested how an improved version of the Digital Parrot supported the participants in remembering experiences after an extended time period of two years. The study found that the Digital Parrot allowed the participants to answer questions about their own past experiences more completely and more correctly than unaided memory and that it allowed them to answer questions for which the participants' established strategies to counteract memory failures were likely to be unsuccessful. In the studies, associations between items were the most helpful factor for accessing memory-related information. The inclusion of semantic information was found to be promising especially in combination with textual search. Context was used to access information by the participants in both studies less often than expected, which suggests the need for further research. Identifying how to appropriately augment autobiographical memory is an important goal given the increasing volume of information to which users are exposed. This thesis contributes to achievement of this goal by stating the problem in Cognitive Psychology terms and by making design recommendations for augmented autobiographical memory systems. The recommendations are confirmed by the design and implementation of such a system and by empirical evaluations using an evaluation method appropriate for the field

Position Paper On Use Of Stereoscopy To Support Science Learning: Ten Years Of Research

Stereoscopys potential as a tool for science education has been largely eclipsed by its popularity as an entertainment platform and marketing gimmick. Dozens of empirical papers have been published in the last decade about the impact of stereoscopy on learning. As a result, a corpus of research now points to a coherent message about how, when, and where stereoscopy can be most effective in supporting science education. This position paper synthesizes that research with examples from three studies recently completed and published by the authors of this paper. Results of the synthesis point towards generally limited successful uses of stereoscopic media in science education with a pocket of potentially beneficial applications. Our position is that stereoscopy should be used only where its unique properties can accommodate specific requirements of understanding topics and tasks namely visualizations where the spatial sense of depth is germane to conveying core ideas and cognitive load is high. Stereoscopys impact on learning is also related to the spatial ability of the viewer. More research is needed on the effect of novelty, long-term learning and possible learning differences between the various methods of implementing stereoscopy

Digital news resources: An autoethnographic study of news encounters

We analyze a set of 35 autoethnographies of news encounters, created by students in New Zealand. These comprise rich descriptions of the news sources, modalities, topics of interest, and news ‘routines’ by which the students keep in touch with friends and maintain awareness of personal, local, national, and international events. We explore the implications for these insights into news behavior for further research to support digital news systems

What's news? Encounters with news in everyday life: A study of behaviours and attitudes

As the news landscape changes, for many users the nature of news itself is changing as well. Insights into the changing news behaviour of users can inform the design of access tools and news archives. We analysed a set of 35 autoethnographies of news encounters, created by students in New Zealand. These comprise rich descriptions of the news sources, modalities, topics of interest, and news ‘routines’ by which the students keep in touch with friends and maintain awareness of personal, local, national, and international events. We explore the implications of these insights into news behaviour for digital news systems

Staging the Past: The Period Room in New Zealand

Before 1940, few of the nation’s museums actively collected or displayed artefacts associated with the history of European settlement in New Zealand. Over the following three decades, an interest in ‘colonial history’ blossomed and collections grew rapidly. Faced with the challenge of displaying material associated with the homes of early settlers, museums adopted the period room as a strategy of display. The period room subsequently remained popular with museum professionals until the 1980s, when the type of history that it had traditionally been used to represent was increasingly brought into question. Filling a gap in the literature that surrounds museums and their practices in New Zealand, this thesis attempts to chart the meteoric rise and fall of the period room in New Zealand. Taking the two period rooms that were created for the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in 1939 as its starting point, the thesis begins by considering the role that the centennials, jubilees and other milestones celebrated around New Zealand in the 1940s and 1950s played in the development of period rooms in this country, unpacking the factors that fuelled the popularity of this display mode among exhibition organisers and museum professionals. The thesis then charts the history of the period room in the context of three metropolitan museums – the Otago Early Settlers Museum, the Canterbury Museum, and the Dominion Museum – looking at the physical changes that were made to these displays over time, the attitudes that informed these changes, and the role that period rooms play in these institutions today

Enhanced device-based 3D object manipulation technique for handheld mobile augmented reality

3D object manipulation is one of the most important tasks for handheld mobile Augmented Reality (AR) towards its practical potential, especially for realworld assembly support. In this context, techniques used to manipulate 3D object is an important research area. Therefore, this study developed an improved device based interaction technique within handheld mobile AR interfaces to solve the large range 3D object rotation problem as well as issues related to 3D object position and orientation deviations in manipulating 3D object. The research firstly enhanced the existing device-based 3D object rotation technique with an innovative control structure that utilizes the handheld mobile device tilting and skewing amplitudes to determine the rotation axes and directions of the 3D object. Whenever the device is tilted or skewed exceeding the threshold values of the amplitudes, the 3D object rotation will start continuously with a pre-defined angular speed per second to prevent over-rotation of the handheld mobile device. This over-rotation is a common occurrence when using the existing technique to perform large-range 3D object rotations. The problem of over-rotation of the handheld mobile device needs to be solved since it causes a 3D object registration error and a 3D object display issue where the 3D object does not appear consistent within the user’s range of view. Secondly, restructuring the existing device-based 3D object manipulation technique was done by separating the degrees of freedom (DOF) of the 3D object translation and rotation to prevent the 3D object position and orientation deviations caused by the DOF integration that utilizes the same control structure for both tasks. Next, an improved device-based interaction technique, with better performance on task completion time for 3D object rotation unilaterally and 3D object manipulation comprehensively within handheld mobile AR interfaces was developed. A pilot test was carried out before other main tests to determine several pre-defined values designed in the control structure of the proposed 3D object rotation technique. A series of 3D object rotation and manipulation tasks was designed and developed as separate experimental tasks to benchmark both the proposed 3D object rotation and manipulation techniques with existing ones on task completion time (s). Two different groups of participants aged 19-24 years old were selected for both experiments, with each group consisting sixteen participants. Each participant had to complete twelve trials, which came to a total 192 trials per experiment for all the participants. Repeated measure analysis was used to analyze the data. The results obtained have statistically proven that the developed 3D object rotation technique markedly outpaced existing technique with significant shorter task completion times of 2.04s shorter on easy tasks and 3.09s shorter on hard tasks after comparing the mean times upon all successful trials. On the other hand, for the failed trials, the 3D object rotation technique was 4.99% more accurate on easy tasks and 1.78% more accurate on hard tasks in comparison to the existing technique. Similar results were also extended to 3D object manipulation tasks with an overall 9.529s significant shorter task completion time of the proposed manipulation technique as compared to the existing technique. Based on the findings, an improved device-based interaction technique has been successfully developed to address the insufficient functionalities of the current technique

Fighting fires and powering steam locomotives : Distribution of control and its role in social interaction at tangible interactive museum exhibits

We present a video-analysis study of museum visitors’ interactions at two tangible interactive exhibits in a transport museum. Our focus is on groups’ social and shared interactions, in particular how exhibit setup and structure influence collaboration patterns. Behaviors at the exhibits included individuals focusing beyond their personal activity towards companions’ interaction, adults participating via physical interaction, and visitors taking opportunities to interact when companions moved between sections of the exhibit or stepped back from interaction. We demonstrate how exhibits’ physical configuration and interactive control engendered behavioral patterns. Systematic analysis reveals how different configurations (concerning physical-spatial hardware and interactive software) distribute control differently amongst visitors. We present four mechanisms for how control can be distributed at an interactive installation: functional, temporal, physical and indirect verbal. In summary, our work explores how mechanisms that distribute control influence patterns of shared interaction with the exhibits and social interaction between museum visitor companion