DESIGNING NON-STRESSED PSYCHOLOGICAL PUBLIC SPACES

Stress is considered the most nervous impact that affects human life due to pressure from many reasons, one of the external factors is the Built environment. The public space as a surrounding context plays a main effective role in human psychological mood whether negative or positive. The paper aims to evaluate urban public spaces, especially from the users’ activities in relation to stress factors, these applied through public spaces in Tripoli city, Lebanon. The methodology will be through an analytical study using observation and a questionnaire to measure the types of users’ activities in public spaces and their sense of pressure and stress. The results of this study are important to develop a methodology to design non-stressed psychological public spaces

Customer perception of switch-feel in luxury sports utility vehicles

Successful new product introduction requires that product characteristics relate to the customer on functional, emotional, aesthetic and cultural levels. As a part of research into automotive human machine interfaces (HMI), this paper describes holistic customer research carried out to investigate how the haptics of switches in luxury sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are perceived by customers. The application of these techniques, including an initial proposal for objective specifications, is addressed within the broader new product introduction context, and benefits described. One-hundred and one customers of SUVs assessed the feel of automotive push switches, completing the tasks both in, and out of vehicles to investigate the effect of context. Using the semantic differential technique, hedonic testing, and content analysis of customers’ verbatim comments, a holistic picture has been built up of what influences the haptic experience. It was found that customers were able to partially discriminate differences in switch-feel, alongside considerations of visual appearance, image, and usability. Three factors named ‘Affective’, ‘Robustness and Precision’, and ‘Silkiness’ explained 61% of the variance in a principle components analysis. Correlations of the factors with acceptance scores were 0.505, 0.371, and 0.168, respectively

The scent of emotions: A systematic review of human intra- and interspecific chemical communication of emotions.

The sense of olfaction has been considered of minor importance in human communication. In recent years, evidence has emerged that humans might be influenced by unconscious messages sent through chemosignals in body odors. Data concerning the ability of humans to recognize fear, maybe related to the evolutionary role of these emotions in the fight-or-flight reactions, are well known. To further understand the role of emotional chemosignals in mediating communication in humans and its influence on animal behaviors, we conducted a systematic literature review. Chemosignals derived from axillary odors collected under a variety of emotional stimuli and sad tears in humans affect receivers' social interactions, danger detection and risk-taking behavior, social aspects of eating, and performance under stressing conditions. In addition, beyond the fight-or-flight response, even the body odors of happiness can be perceived by others. Furthermore, human chemosignals can influence behaviors and stressful responses in animals, particularly dogs and horses, which may partially explain their special relationship with humans. Our review highlights the importance of chemosignaling in human intra- and interspecific interactions and suggests the need for further investigations, both in physiological conditions and in patients with psychiatric or neurodegenerative disorders

The significance of information visualisation based on the symbolic semantics of Peking Opera Painted Faces (POPF)

Peking Opera as a branch of Chinese traditional cultures and arts has a very distinct colourful facial make-up for all actors in the stage performance. Such make-up is stylised in typical cultural elements which all combined together to form the painted faces to describe and symbolise the background and characteristic of specific roles. The Peking Opera Painted Faces (POPF) was taken as an example to study the information visualisation and transmission, to see how information and meanings can be effectively expressed through the colourful visual elements. In order to identify the state-of-the-art in the related Culture Inspired Design as one of the design principles, the literature resources including illustrations of POPF were investigated, and also the semantic features and elements of other similar forms of modern design which has close connection with multiple aspects of social life. The study has proved that the visual elements of POPF played the most effective role in the information transmittion. Future application of this culture resource may include product design, interaction design, system design and service design around the world

Feeling Her Way: Audre Lorde and the Power of Touch

This article analyzes the connections between Lorde's representations of blindness in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and its connection to lesbian sexuality

A multisensory approach to measure public space quality in the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

The measurement of the quality of public space is important in spatial planning as a first step towards improved urban quality. It would seem as if city builders sometimes use their sub-jective judgements of place quality through incomprehensive sensory tools and not the users’ sensory experience and aspirations. Based on the multisensory experiences and aspirations of users as they interact with the streetscapes and public parks in Bulawayo, the purpose of this article was to develop and test the utility of a new public space quality mea-suring tool. A public space quality assess-ment was undertaken that employed a quantitative design where 400 participants were recruited through systematic sampling and data collected by means of a multisensory public space quality measurement tool. The tool and the ‘Sensory Public Space Quality Framework’ were developed to guide city planners in providing for people-centred public spaces clothed with good sensory qualities.

Perception Creates Reality - Factors influencing the driver’s perception and consequent understanding of Driving Automation Systems

The automotive industry is rapidly developing driving automation systems (DAS) with the aim of supporting drivers through automation of longitudinal and lateral vehicle control. As vehicle complexity increases, drivers’ understanding of their responsibility and their vehicles’ capabilities and limitations becomes significantly more important. In order to motivate manufacturers to adopt a human-centric perspective for the development of driving automation systems, the factors influencing the driver’s perception during usage of such systems have to be understood. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of factors influencing user perception and understanding of driving automation systems in order to guide future design decisions from a human-centric perspective.The research for this thesis is organised into three empirical studies, embedding a mixed-methods research design. Study 1 aimed at investigating usage of DAS during different driving situations by facilitating an online survey. Studies 2 and 3 aimed to explore how drivers motivate their usage of driving automation systems, and which factors affect their understanding. Study 2 adopted an Explanatory Sequential Mixed Methods approach, consisting of a Naturalistic Driving Study and in-depth interviews to elicit knowledge about how users understand the DAS, and which factors influence usage. In Study 3 observations and interviews during an on-road driving session with a Wizard-of-Oz vehicle were conducted to gain insights into how users build an understanding of a vehicle with multiple levels of automation.The results show that the users of such systems, independent of the level of automation, talked about the systems by referring to different elements: the Context, the Vehicle, and the Driver. In addition, eleven recurring aspects describing the drivers’ understanding of an automated system were discerned. Furthermore, six factors were identified that influence how drivers perceive driving automation during usage. The six factors are Preconceptions, Perceived Usefulness, Previous Experiences, Trust, System Performance, and Driving Behaviour of the Vehicle. Collectively, the identified aspects and factors constitute the building blocks of a process describing how drivers perceive driving automation systems and how this shapes their consequent understanding. The process is presented as a descriptive unified model.The main contribution of this thesis is twofold: unification of aspects found to shape a driver’s understanding of a driving automation system, and the presentation of a unified descriptive model of the process showing how this understanding is shaped through what the driver perceives at the moment of use

Evaluation of Multi-sensory Feedback in Virtual and Real Remote Environments in a USAR Robot Teleoperation Scenario

The area of Human-Robot Interaction deals with problems not only related to robots interacting with humans, but also with problems related to humans interacting and controlling robots. This dissertation focuses on the latter and evaluates multi-sensory (vision, hearing, touch, smell) feedback interfaces as a means to improve robot-operator cognition and performance. A set of four empirical studies using both simulated and real robotic systems evaluated a set of multi-sensory feedback interfaces with various levels of complexity. The task scenario for the robot in these studies involved the search for victims in a debris-filled environment after a fictitious catastrophic event (e.g., earthquake) took place. The results show that, if well-designed, multi-sensory feedback interfaces can indeed improve the robot operator data perception and performance. Improvements in operator performance were detected for navigation and search tasks despite minor increases in workload. In fact, some of the multi-sensory interfaces evaluated even led to a reduction in workload. The results also point out that redundant feedback is not always beneficial to the operator. While introducing the concept of operator omni-directional perception, that is, the operator’s capability of perceiving data or events coming from all senses and in all directions, this work explains that feedback redundancy is only beneficial when it enhances the operator omni-directional perception of data relevant to the task at hand. Last, the comprehensive methodology employed and refined over the course of the four studies is suggested as a starting point for the design of future HRI user studies. In summary, this work sheds some light on the benefits and challenges multi-sensory feedback interfaces bring, specifically on teleoperated robotics. It adds to our current understanding of these kinds of interfaces and provides a few insights to assist the continuation of research in the area