Presence 2005: the eighth annual international workshop on presence, 21-23 September, 2005 University College London (Conference proceedings)

OVERVIEW (taken from the CALL FOR PAPERS) Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005. The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality. The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field. Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London

Explore the relations between personality and gamification

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Successful gamification motivates users to engage in systems using game-like experiences. However, a one-size-fits-all approach to gamification is often unsuccessful; prior studies suggest that personality serves as a key differentiator in the effectiveness of the approach. To advance the understanding of personality differences and their influence on users’ behavior and motivation in gamification, this dissertation is comprised of three studies that: 1) explore the relationships among individuals’ personality traits and preferences for different gamification features through an online survey; 2) investigate how people with different personality traits respond to the motivational affordances in a gamified application over a period of time through a diary study; and 3) reveal how individuals respond differentially to different kinds of leaderboard experiences based on their leaderboard rankings, the application domain, and the individuals’ personality traits through their responses to 9 dynamic leaderboards. The results from the first study show that extraversion and emotional stability are the two primary personality traits that differentiate users’ preferences for gamification. Among the 10 types of motivational affordances, extraverts are more likely to be motivated by Points, Levels, and Leaderboards. However, the results from the second (diary) study indicate that, after the first week, extraverts’ preferences for Points decreased. The motivation effects of Points and Leaderboards changed over the course of using the gamified application. The results from the third study confirm the findings from the first two studies about extraversion and revealed that ranking and domain differences are also effective factors in users’ experiences of Leaderboards in gamification. Design guidelines for gamification are presented based on the results of each of the three studies. Based on a synthesis of the results from these three studies, this dissertation proposes a conceptual model for gamification design. The model describes not only the impact of personality traits, domain differences, and users’ experience over time, but also illustrates the importance of considering individual differences, application context, and the potential significance of user persistence in gamification design. This research contributes to the HCI and gamification communities by uncovering factors that will affect the way that people respond to gamification systems, considered holistically

Aesthetic Pleasure from Visual Quotes and its Influence on Individuals' Motivation to Exercise

It is well-known that physical activity has many benefits for health and well-being. However, one in four adults worldwide does not engage in enough physical activity. On the other hand, nowadays, many people look for physical exercise motivation online on image-sharing social media platforms, where it is relatively common to find encouraging text messages embedded in visual presentations (as visual quotes). Considering that perceived beauty can influence our perception of an artifact, this research project explored whether and how aesthetic pleasure affects people's perception of motivational text messages and the textual content's motivating capability on people's exercise motivation. The influence of several aesthetic pleasure levels (ugly, neutral, and beautiful) was explored in textual content with different characteristics (e.g., positive-framed, self-liberating messages, low-perceived competence, high-perceived competence). Several experiments revealed that high levels of aesthetic pleasure does not necessarily lead individuals to perceive a textual message as more positive. Similarly, low levels of aesthetic pleasure did not affect textual content perception. Indeed, ultimately, the influence of aesthetic pleasure seemed dependent on the textual content's own characteristics. Some experiments focused on the immediate effect of aesthetic pleasure, while others focused on aesthetic pleasure in the mid-term (over four weeks). In none of the scenarios did aesthetic pleasure influence intrinsic motivation, which has been found to be linked to individuals’ enjoyment of and likelihood of engagement with exercise over the long-term, or influence the extrinsic motivation (the identified behavior regulation), related to the initial adoption of physical exercise. Nonetheless, it was found that visual presentations perceived as aesthetically appealing help to instill a positive feeling regarding the textual content. Possibilities for future research are suggested on the basis of Cognitive Evaluation Theory, a sub-theory of Self-Determination Theory).É de conhecimento geral que fazer exercício físico traz vários benefícios para a saúde e bem-estar. Contudo, um em quatro adultos em todo o mundo não faz exercício físico suficiente. Por outro lado, hoje em dia, muitas pessoas procuram motivação para fazer exercício físico na internet nas redes sociais, onde facilmente se podem encontrar mensagens de texto motivacionais embutidas em apresentações visuais (designadas visual quotes). Tendo em conta que a perceção de prazer estético pode influenciar a nossa perceção sobre um determinado artefacto ou pessoa. Este projeto de investigação explorou se e como o prazer estético pode afetar a perceção de mensagens motivacionais e a capacidade motivadora do conteúdo textual na motivação das pessoas para fazer exercício físico.Foram explorados a influência de diversos níveis de prazer estético (feio, neutro, belo) em conteúdo textual com diferentes características (por exemplo, positive-framed, self-liberating, perceção de baixa-competência, perceção de alta-competência). Vários estudos (experiments) revelaram que níveis de perceção de prazer estético altos não levam necessariamente a que as pessoas percecionem as mensagens de texto como mais positivas. De forma similar, níveis de perceção de prazer estético baixos não afetaram a perceção do conteúdo textual. Em último caso, a influência da perceção de prazer estético pareceu dependente das próprias características do conteúdo textual. Alguns dos estudos focaram-se no efeito imediato da perceção de prazer estético enquanto outros focarem-se no efeito a curto prazo (até quatro semanas). Em nenhum dos cenários, a perceção de prazer estético influenciou a motivação intrínseca para fazer exercício físico dos participantes, que está associada à prática de fazer exercício físico a longo-prazo; Ou influenciou a motivação extrínseca identified behavior regulation, que está associada à adoção inicial de hábitos de exercício físico. Não obstante, verificou-se que as apresentações visuais das visual quotes percecionadas como esteticamente apelativas ajudam a incutir um “sentimento” positivo relativo ao conteúdo textual. Por último, são sugeridas possibilidades para futura investigação tendo como base a teoria Cognitive Evalution (uma sub-teoria da teoria da Auto-determinação)

VIP: A UNIFYING FRAMEWORK FOR COMPUTATIONAL EYE-GAZE RESEARCH

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Interaction-driven User Interface Personalisation for Mobile News Systems

User interfaces of mobile apps offer personalised experience primarily through manual customisation rather than spontaneous adaptation. This thesis investigates methods for adaptive user interfaces in the context of future mobile news apps that are expected to systematically monitor users' news access patterns and adapt their interface and interaction in response. Although mobile news services are now able to recommend news that a user would be likely to read, there has not been equivalent progress in personalising the way that news content is accessed and read. This thesis addresses key issues for the development of adaptive user interfaces in the mobile environment and contributes to the existing literature of adaptive user interfaces, user modelling, and personalisation in the domain of news in four ways. First, using survey methods it explores differences in how people consume and read news content on mobile news apps and it defines a News Reader Typology that characterises the individual news consumer. Second, it develops a method for monitoring news reading patterns through a deployed news app, namely Habito News, and it proposes a framework for modelling users by analysing those patterns; machine learning algorithms are exploited selectively in the analysis. Third, it explores the design space of personalised user interfaces and interactions that would be tailored to the needs and preferences of individual news readers. Finally, it demonstrates the effectiveness of automatic adaptation through Habito News, the prototype mobile news app that was developed, which systematically monitors users' news reading interaction behaviour and automatically adjusts its interface in response to their news reading characteristics. The results indicate the feasibility of user interface personalisation and help shape the future of automatically changing user interfaces by systematic monitoring, profiling and adapting the interface and interaction

The appraisal of Facebook online community: An exposition of mobile commerce in social media reviews

Peer reviewe

Opportunity for success: Website evaluation and scanning by students with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are becoming more prevalent, both in the US and the world. As the Internet becomes necessary to fully participate in today\u27s society, it is critical for people with ASD to be able to access and use online content and services. While there is a plethora of anecdotal evidence to indicate successful outcomes, there is currently little scientific research that examines Internet usage of people with ASD. This pilot study compared students\u27 cognitive traits associated with ASD, as reported in a survey, to their performance in a lab study that asked them to scan and evaluate web content. By observing eye-tracking data and differences in responses between participants, this study aimed to quantify differences of website evaluation between individuals with or without autism. The findings suggest that people with High Functioning Autism or Asperger\u27s have equal opportunity to successfully evaluate websites as their neurotypical peers

Ranking to Learn and Learning to Rank: On the Role of Ranking in Pattern Recognition Applications

The last decade has seen a revolution in the theory and application of machine learning and pattern recognition. Through these advancements, variable ranking has emerged as an active and growing research area and it is now beginning to be applied to many new problems. The rationale behind this fact is that many pattern recognition problems are by nature ranking problems. The main objective of a ranking algorithm is to sort objects according to some criteria, so that, the most relevant items will appear early in the produced result list. Ranking methods can be analyzed from two different methodological perspectives: ranking to learn and learning to rank. The former aims at studying methods and techniques to sort objects for improving the accuracy of a machine learning model. Enhancing a model performance can be challenging at times. For example, in pattern classification tasks, different data representations can complicate and hide the different explanatory factors of variation behind the data. In particular, hand-crafted features contain many cues that are either redundant or irrelevant, which turn out to reduce the overall accuracy of the classifier. In such a case feature selection is used, that, by producing ranked lists of features, helps to filter out the unwanted information. Moreover, in real-time systems (e.g., visual trackers) ranking approaches are used as optimization procedures which improve the robustness of the system that deals with the high variability of the image streams that change over time. The other way around, learning to rank is necessary in the construction of ranking models for information retrieval, biometric authentication, re-identification, and recommender systems. In this context, the ranking model's purpose is to sort objects according to their degrees of relevance, importance, or preference as defined in the specific application.Comment: European PhD Thesis. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1601.06615, arXiv:1505.06821, arXiv:1704.02665 by other author