Analysis and design of individual information systems to support health behavior change

As a wide-ranging socio-technical transformation, the digitalization has significantly influenced the world, bringing opportunities and challenges to our lives. Despite numerous benefits like the possibility to stay connected with people around the world, the increasing dispersion and use of digital technologies and media (DTM) pose risks to individuals’ well-being and health. Rising demands emerging from the digital world have been linked to digital stress, that is, stress directly or indirectly resulting from DTM (Ayyagari et al. 2011; Ragu-Nathan et al. 2008; Tarafdar et al. 2019; Weil and Rosen 1997), potentially intensifying individuals’ overall exposure to stress. Individuals experiencing this adverse consequence of digitalization are at elevated risk of developing severe mental health impairments (Alhassan et al. 2018; Haidt and Allen 2020; Scott et al. 2017), which is why various scholars emphasize that research should place a stronger focus on analyzing and shaping the role of the individual in a digital world, pursuing instrumental as well as humanistic objectives (Ameen et al. 2021; Baskerville 2011b). Information Systems (IS) research has long placed emphasis on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in organizations, viewing an information system as the socio-technical system that emerges from individuals’ interaction with DTM in organizations. However, socio-technical information systems, as the essence of the IS discipline (Lee 2004; Sarker et al. 2019), are also present in different social contexts from private life. Acknowledging the increasing private use of DTM, such as smartphones and social networks, IS scholars have recently intensified their efforts to understand the human factor of IS (Avison and Fitzgerald 1991; Turel et al. 2021). A framework recently proposed by Matt et al. (2019) suggests three research angles: analyzing individuals’ behavior associated with their DTM use, analyzing what consequences arise from their DTM use behavior, and designing new technologies that promote positive or mitigate negative effects of individuals’ DTM use. Various recent studies suggest that individuals’ behavior seems to be an important lever influencing the outcomes of their DTM use (Salo et al. 2017; Salo et al. 2020; Weinstein et al. 2016). Therefore, this dissertation aims to contribute to IS research targeting the facilitation of a healthy DTM use behavior. It explores the use behavior, consequences, and design of DTM for individuals' use with the objective to deliver humanistic value by increasing individuals' health through supporting a behavior change related to their DTM use. The dissertation combines behavioral science and design science perspectives and applies pluralistic methodological approaches from qualitative (e.g., interviews, prototyping) and quantitative research (e.g., survey research, field studies), including mixed-methods approaches mixing both. Following the framework from Matt et al. (2019), the dissertation takes three perspectives therein: analyzing individuals’ behavior, analyzing individuals’ responses to consequences of DTM use, and designing information systems assisting DTM users. First, the dissertation presents new descriptive knowledge on individuals’ behavior related to their use of DTM. Specifically, it investigates how individuals behave when interacting with DTM, why they behave the way they do, and how their behavior can be influenced. Today, a variety of digital workplace technologies offer employees different ways of pursuing their goals or performing their tasks (Köffer 2015). As a result, individuals exhibit different behaviors when interacting with these technologies. The dissertation analyzes what interactional roles DTM users can take at the digital workplace and what may influence their behavior. It uses a mixed-methods approach and combines a quantitative study building on trace data from a popular digital workplace suite and qualitative interviews with users of this digital workplace suite. The empirical analysis yields eight user roles that advance the understanding of users’ behavior at the digital workplace and first insights into what factors may influence this behavior. A second study adds another perspective and investigates how habitual behavior can be changed by means of DTM design elements. Real-time feedback has been discussed as a promising way to do so (Schibuola et al. 2016; Weinmann et al. 2016). In a field experiment, employees working at the digital workplace are provided with an external display that presents real-time feedback on their office’s indoor environmental quality. The experiment examines if and to what extent the feedback influences their ventilation behavior to understand the effect of feedback as a means of influencing individuals’ behavior. The results suggest that real-time feedback can effectively alter individuals’ behavior, yet the feedback’s effectiveness reduces over time, possibly as a result of habituation to the feedback. Second, the dissertation presents new descriptive and prescriptive knowledge on individuals’ ways to mitigate adverse consequences arising from the digitalization of individuals. A frequently discussed consequence that digitalization has on individuals is digital stress. Although research efforts strive to determine what measures individuals can take to effectively cope with digital stress (Salo et al. 2017; Salo et al. 2020; Weinert 2018), further understanding of individuals’ coping behavior is needed (Weinert 2018). A group at high risk of suffering from the adverse effects of digital stress is adolescents because they grow up using DTM daily and are still developing their identity, acquiring mental strength, and adopting essential social skills. To facilitate a healthy DTM use, the dissertation explores what strategies adolescents use to cope with the demands of their DTM use. Combining a qualitative and a quantitative study, it presents 30 coping responses used by adolescents, develops five factors underlying adolescents’ activation of coping responses, and identifies gender- and age-related differences in their coping behavior. Third, the dissertation presents new prescriptive knowledge on the design of individual information systems supporting individuals in understanding and mitigating their perceived stress. Facilitated by the sensing capabilities of modern mobile devices, it explores the design and development of mobile systems that assess stress and support individuals in coping with stress by initiating a change of stress-related behavior. Since there is currently limited understanding of how to develop such systems, this dissertation explores various facets of their design and development. As a first step, it presents the development of a prototype aiming for life-integrated stress assessment, that is, the mobile sensor-based assessment of an individual’s stress without interfering with their daily routines. Data collected with the prototype yields a stress model relating sensor data to individuals’ perception of stress. To deliver a more generalized perspective on mobile stress assessment, the dissertation further presents a literature- and experience-based design theory comprising a design blueprint, design requirements, design principles, design features, and a discussion of potentially required trade-offs. Mobile stress assessment may be used for the development of mobile coping assistants. Aiming to assist individuals in effectively coping with stress and preventing future stress, a mobile coping assistant should recommend adequate coping strategies to the stressed individual in real-time or execute targeted actions within a defined scope of action automatically. While the implementation of a mobile coping assistant is yet up to future research, the dissertation presents an abstract design and algorithm for selecting appropriate coping strategies. To sum up, this dissertation contributes new knowledge on the digitalization of individuals to the IS knowledge bases, expanding both descriptive and prescriptive knowledge. Through the combination of diverse methodological approaches, it delivers knowledge on individuals’ behavior when using DTM, on the mitigation of consequences that may arise from individuals’ use of DTM, and on the design of individual information systems with the goal of facilitating a behavior change, specifically, regarding individuals’ coping with stress. Overall, the research contained in this dissertation may promote the development of digital assistants that support individuals’ in adopting a healthy DTM use behavior and thereby contribute to shaping a socio-technical environment that creates more benefit than harm for all individuals

Not just the right for a wheelchair but the right wheelchair: a multi-site study of the wheelchair public service provision in Belo Horizonte city, Brazil

For decades the care of disabled population in Brazil has been neglected by the government and was provided largely by the charitable institutions. It was as only recently, as in the year 2011 that Brazilian government created the national plan for the rights of the disabled people. The plan articulates policies regarding social inclusion, access to education, accessibility and health care. The last section of the plan includes the provision of wheelchairs free of cost to the Brazilians citizens, who are in need of a wheelchair. It is common knowledge that a wrong wheelchair specification can lead to physical damage for the user and the carer; the abandonment of device, and wastage of time and resources involved in the wheelchair provision. The World Health Organization has propounded several good practices and training material with reference to wheelchair services towards enabling of right wheelchair fit to the user characteristics. Though, there is no evidence that the service provided in Brazil adheres to these guidelines or any other wheelchair service good practice. This research reviews the wheelchair service provision in Belo Horizonte city, Brazil with the aim to understand the functionality of these services in order to provide context-specific interventions and recommendations to improve the design of current services. Herein, three main studies were conducted using a mix of methods: A first exploratory study was conducted to assess the Belo Horizonte assistive technology services and identify a research focus. A second study was conducted to develop an in-depth insight on the understanding of the wheelchair service provided and to collect the necessary information towards creating a context-based and collaborative designed intervention. A third study was conducted to evaluate and improve the proposed interventions. A total of sixty-six interviews were conducted (n=66) with service stakeholders and two hundred and fifty user care observed (n=250) from which ninety-five (n=95) tested the proposed interventions

La estructura retórica del resumen (abstract) en las disciplinas arte y diseño : un estudio descriptivo

Maestría en Inglés con Orientación en Lingüística AplicadaAs an effective means of representing the research article, the abstract has increasingly become an essential part of this genre. For that reason, understanding the rhetorical conventions that govern abstract writing in their respective fields may help students and novice researchers acquire reading and writing skills in their fields of specialization. Recent research on the rhetorical features of abstracts has revealed broad patterns of regularity as well as disciplinary variation. Although several investigations have focused their analysis on a variety of disciplines, no study appears to have explored the rhetorical structure of abstracts in the fields of Art and Design. The present research, therefore, examines the rhetorical moves and main linguistic features of Art and Design abstracts, and proposes a schema for the abstract genre in each of these disciplinary domains. To conduct the study, a corpus of 30 abstracts from four high-impact journals was compiled, and subjected to a move analysis (Swales, 1981, 1990) using the analytical framework proposed by Pho (2008), and the methodology suggested by Dudley-Evans (1994) and Holmes (1997). The results reveal that although Art and Design abstracts bear some similarities, they also show some differences that result in distinct emerging patterns. Based on these findings, two models are proposed of the rhetorical elements that are constitutive of each discipline. The outcome of this research has pedagogical implications for students, novice researchers and teachers within ESP (English for Specific Purposes) contexts.Fil: Caturegli, Alicia. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Lenguas; Argentina

Evidence-based stragegies to inform urban design decision-making: the case of pedestrian movement behaviour.

Walking is an essential mode of transportation, and pedestrian movement is a major influencing parameter in city design. Due to the complexity of pedestrian behaviour, new insights concerning the significance of factors affecting walking are challenging to obtain without the use of technology. Furthermore, despite the impact of decision-making in the design of buildings and places, there is currently a limited understanding concerning how urban design decisions are best made. This research aims to “assess the adoption of, and opportunities deriving from, data-driven innovation techniques in the design of urban spaces, by the analysis of pedestrian movement patterns in urban environments, and to evaluate how the integration of evidence-based strategies can be established in supporting decision-making in relation to future urban designs”. The research focuses on two groups of stakeholders: Decision-makers in designing buildings and places and End-users undertaking walking activities within urban space. In addressing the aim, a range of research methodologies has been developed and trialled. The work centres on an extended case study concerning a retail high-street locale in London, UK. This study makes several contributions to the immediate field of urban design research. Firstly, the findings advance the research methods applied to study pedestrian movement in urban environments. Secondly, the results offer real impact in practice by demonstrating the value and importance of adopting data-driven innovation techniques in decision-making processes in urban design via the adoption of a quantitative data- driven, evidence-based methodological framework. Thirdly, the findings support decision-making by presenting a novel methodological framework to assess pedestrian routing in urban environments utilising the classification of pedestrian behaviours and spatial visibility interactions. Finally, this study raises awareness of the critical challenges and opportunities, priorities, and potential development areas for applying evidence- based strategies in informing building and urban design decisions. The research presents a series of recommendations for enhancing data-driven innovation techniques in urban design decision-making processes.Natural Environmental Research (NERC)PhD in Environment and Agrifoo

Recipes for low carbon, adaptable design

The thesis contributes a more lucid understanding of the potential for interaction amongst different facets of sustainability in the context of building design, providing evidence that the assimilation of diverse and often seemingly unconnected aspects of sustainability is not the unassuming process implicit in the current sustainability discourse. Working inductively and with a focus on two sustainable principles (the current UK government sponsored sustainability agenda, low carbon design, and an alternative interpretation, adaptable design, whose literature is framed in a sometimes complementary, at others antagonistic fashion to the former), this thesis develops an understanding of interaction in building design processes, using publically available documentary evidence and a comparative case-study approach. The thesis describes and categorises instances of interaction arising in the twenty-three case study building design processes, demonstrating both the empirical existence of interaction and improving the theoretical conceptualisation beyond basic ideas of synergy and conflict. Interaction is noted as arising from both technical incompatibilities and project actors interpretation of the agendas themselves: a socio-technical issue. The thesis distinguishes multiple approaches adopted by design teams to managing the entanglement encountered. Interpreting these interaction strategies in their case context, factors driving the selection of a particular approach are inductively derived and combined to form a tentative conceptual framework. This framework aides a systematic comparison across project cases, facilitated by the crisp set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) technique. Projects are described as configurations of the identified conditions and, by operationalizing interaction in a manner consistent with case study observation and the existing literatures of adaptable and low carbon design, assessed for successfulness in reconciling the agendas. The technique identifies three causal pathways to successful reconciliations of adaptable and low carbon design. Finally, the thesis makes a methodological contribution, through an evaluation of the application of QCA to a novel problem space (socio-technical, project-orientated problems of the built environment). Through the richness of documentary data obtained for study, it also demonstrates the potential effectiveness of documents as primary sources in the field of building design, where they are often relegated to a supporting role

A holistic model of emergency evacuations in large, complex, public occupancy buildings

Evacuations are crucial for ensuring the safety of building occupants in the event of an emergency. In large, complex, public occupancy buildings (LCPOBs) these procedures are significantly more complex than the simple withdrawal of people from a building. This thesis has developed a novel, holistic, theoretical model of emergency evacuations in LCPOBs inspired by systems safety theory. LCPOBs are integral components of complex socio-technical systems, and therefore the model describes emergency evacuations as control actions initiated in order to return the building from an unsafe state to a safe state where occupants are not at risk of harm. The emergency evacuation process itself is comprised of four aspects - the movement (of building occupants), planning and management, environmental features, and evacuee behaviour. To demonstrate its utility and applicability, the model has been employed to examine various aspects of evacuation procedures in two example LCPOBs - airport terminals, and sports stadiums. The types of emergency events initiating evacuations in these buildings were identified through a novel hazard analysis procedure, which utilised online news articles to create events databases of previous evacuations. Security and terrorism events, false alarms, and fires were found to be the most common cause of evacuations in these buildings. The management of evacuations was explored through model-based systems engineering techniques, which identified the communication methods and responsibilities of staff members managing these events. Social media posts for an active shooting event were analysed using qualitative and machine learning methods to determine their utility for situational awareness. This data source is likely not informative for this purpose, as few posts detail occupant behaviours. Finally, an experimental study on pedestrian dynamics with movement devices was conducted, which determined that walking speeds during evacuations were unaffected by evacuees dragging luggage, but those pushing pushchairs and wheelchairs will walk significantly slower.Open Acces

University catalog, 2015-2016

The catalog is a comprehensive reference for your academic studies. It includes a list of all degree programs offered at MU, including bachelors, masters, specialists, doctorates, minors, certificates, and emphasis areas. It details the university wide requirements, the curricular requirements for each program, and in some cases provides a sample plan of study. The catalog includes a complete listing and description of approved courses. It also provides information on academic policies, contact information for supporting offices, and a complete listing of faculty members. -- Page 4