Interactive Narrative in Virtual Reality

Interactive fiction is a literary genre that is rapidly gaining popularity. In this genre, readers are able to explicitly take actions in order to guide the course of the story. With the recent popularity of narrative focused games, we propose to design and develop an interactive narrative tool for content creators. In this extended abstract, we show how we leverage this interactive medium to present a tool for interactive storytelling in virtual reality. Using a simple markup language, content creators and researchers are now able to create interactive narratives in a virtual reality environment. We further discuss the potential future directions for a virtual reality storytelling engine

Factors shaping the evolution of electronic documentation systems

The main goal is to prepare the space station technical and managerial structure for likely changes in the creation, capture, transfer, and utilization of knowledge. By anticipating advances, the design of Space Station Project (SSP) information systems can be tailored to facilitate a progression of increasingly sophisticated strategies as the space station evolves. Future generations of advanced information systems will use increases in power to deliver environmentally meaningful, contextually targeted, interconnected data (knowledge). The concept of a Knowledge Base Management System is emerging when the problem is focused on how information systems can perform such a conversion of raw data. Such a system would include traditional management functions for large space databases. Added artificial intelligence features might encompass co-existing knowledge representation schemes; effective control structures for deductive, plausible, and inductive reasoning; means for knowledge acquisition, refinement, and validation; explanation facilities; and dynamic human intervention. The major areas covered include: alternative knowledge representation approaches; advanced user interface capabilities; computer-supported cooperative work; the evolution of information system hardware; standardization, compatibility, and connectivity; and organizational impacts of information intensive environments

An analysis framework for CSCW systems

Software toolkits are under development to help construct applications that support group-working. Toolkit developers adopt different approaches to group-work support in order to tackle different issues and a toolkit is commonly characterised by the approach adopted. It is difficult to compare toolkits because of this lack of apparent commonality and it is difficult to decide which toolkits meet specific application requirements. [Continues.

Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture (SGOAA) reference model technical guide

This report presents a full description of the Space Generic Open Avionics Architecture (SGOAA). The SGOAA consists of a generic system architecture for the entities in spacecraft avionics, a generic processing architecture, and a six class model of interfaces in a hardware/software system. The purpose of the SGOAA is to provide an umbrella set of requirements for applying the generic architecture interface model to the design of specific avionics hardware/software systems. The SGOAA defines a generic set of system interface points to facilitate identification of critical interfaces and establishes the requirements for applying appropriate low level detailed implementation standards to those interface points. The generic core avionics system and processing architecture models provided herein are robustly tailorable to specific system applications and provide a platform upon which the interface model is to be applied

Designing a training tool for imaging mental models

The training process can be conceptualized as the student acquiring an evolutionary sequence of classification-problem solving mental models. For example a physician learns (1) classification systems for patient symptoms, diagnostic procedures, diseases, and therapeutic interventions and (2) interrelationships among these classifications (e.g., how to use diagnostic procedures to collect data about a patient's symptoms in order to identify the disease so that therapeutic measures can be taken. This project developed functional specifications for a computer-based tool, Mental Link, that allows the evaluative imaging of such mental models. The fundamental design approach underlying this representational medium is traversal of virtual cognition space. Typically intangible cognitive entities and links among them are visible as a three-dimensional web that represents a knowledge structure. The tool has a high degree of flexibility and customizability to allow extension to other types of uses, such a front-end to an intelligent tutoring system, knowledge base, hypermedia system, or semantic network

Socially-distributed cognition and cognitive architectures: towards an ACT-R-based cognitive social simulation capability

ACT-R is one of the most widely used cognitive architectures, and it has been used to model hundreds of phenomena described in the cognitive psychology literature. In spite of this, there are relatively few studies that have attempted to apply ACT-R to situations involving social interaction. This is an important omission since the social aspects of cognition have been a growing area of interest in the cognitive science community, and an understanding of the dynamics of collective cognition is of particular importance in many organizational settings. In order to support the computational modeling and simulation of socially-distributed cognitive processes, a simulation capability based on the ACT-R architecture is described. This capability features a number of extensions to the core ACT-R architecture that are intended to support social interaction and collaborative problem solving. The core features of a number of supporting applications and services are also described. These applications/services support the execution, monitoring and analysis of simulation experiments. Finally, a system designed to record human behavioral data in a collective problem-solving task is described. This system is being used to undertake a range of experiments with teams of human subjects, and it will ultimately support the development of high fidelity ACT-R cognitive models. Such models can be used in conjunction with the ACT-R simulation capability to test hypotheses concerning the interaction between cognitive, social and technological factors in tasks involving socially-distributed information processing

How the presentation of patient information and decision-support advisories influences opioid prescribing behavior: A simulation study

ObjectiveThe United States faces an opioid crisis. Integrating prescription drug monitoring programs into electronic health records offers promise to improve opioid prescribing practices. This study aimed to evaluate 2 different user interface designs for prescription drug monitoring program and electronic health record integration.Materials and MethodsTwenty-four resident physicians participated in a randomized controlled experiment using 4 simulated patient cases. In the conventional condition, prescription opioid histories were presented in tabular format, and computerized clinical decision support (CDS) was provided via interruptive modal dialogs (ie, pop-ups). The alternative condition featured a graphical opioid history, a cue to visit that history, and noninterruptive CDS. Two attending pain specialists judged prescription appropriateness.ResultsParticipants in the alternative condition wrote more appropriate prescriptions. When asked after the experiment, most participants stated that they preferred the alternative design to the conventional design.ConclusionsHow patient information and CDS are presented appears to have a significant influence on opioid prescribing behavior

Numerical propulsion system simulation: An interdisciplinary approach

The tremendous progress being made in computational engineering and the rapid growth in computing power that is resulting from parallel processing now make it feasible to consider the use of computer simulations to gain insights into the complex interactions in aerospace propulsion systems and to evaluate new concepts early in the design process before a commitment to hardware is made. Described here is a NASA initiative to develop a Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) capability

A survey of pervasive displays for information presentation

Weiser’s seminal vision of ubiquitous computing had calm information presentation at its heart and identified an important challenge in providing pervasive yet unobtrusive information display while avoiding problems of information overload. Since this vision was first articulated, a range of approaches have emerged for presenting information on pervasive displays and digital screens of varying sizes are now an everyday feature of our environments. Such displays provide significant opportunities for presenting information in-situ to support users in a range of activities, and the growing expectation is that there is constant peripheral access to digital information. In this article we review three different pervasive display technologies used for information presentation: traditional 2D display media, urban media facades, and novel display hardware. Our survey identifies five emerging trends that cross all three technologies: an increasing focus on situatedness, a movement towards non-expert users, growing demand for accessible interaction, a potential for new applications of data, and a difficulty in balancing ‘calm’ computing against presentation of data at an appropriate granularity and complexity

Scrum for product innovation : a longitudinal embedded case study

This article describes the innovation processes used in a partnership between Add Latent Ltd., an asset integrity and maintenance management consulting services provider in the energy sector and University of Salford. The challenge faced by the company is to make their in-house expertise more readily available to a worldwide audience. A longitudinal embedded case study has been used to investigate how installable desktop software applications have been redesigned to create a new set of cloud hosted software services. The innovation team adapted an agile scrum process to include exploratory prototyping and manage the geographical distribution of the team members. A minimum viable product was developed that integrated functional elements of previous software tools into an end-to-end data collection, analysis and visualisation product called AimHi which uses a cloud-hosted web services approach. Field trials were conducted using the software at the Uniper, Isle of Grain power station in Kent, UK. Enhancements were made to the AimHi product which was adopted for use at the Uniper site. The product emerged from a Knwledge Transfer Partnership whci was evaluated on cmplettion by InnovateUK and awarded the highest possible “outstanding” grade. The article illustrates how the scrum software development method was tailored for a product innovation context. Extended periods of evaluation and reflection, prototyping and requirement refinement were combined with periods of incremental feature development using sprints. The AimHi product emerged from a technology transfer and innovation project that has successfully reconciled conflicting demands from customers, universities, partner companies and project staff members