Diamonds in Dystopia

Diamonds in Dystopia is a body of work and web framework for creatively datamining large sources of text for mobile interaction. So far we have used it for live-streaming poetry performances at various locations such as SXSW Interactive and TEDx in addition to fine arts installations. As a perfor- mance it is a web driven app for incorporating improvisation into experiential storytelling. The audience acts as collaborator by sending word selections by tapping language on their mobiles to trigger reactions to send a distilled, improvisational stanza culled from a massive corpus of text to the poet on stage. The individual taps coming from the audience also trigger synthesized audio effects at varying pitches to create a musical experience as well as contributing to a vi- sual projection of the poem and audience interactivity. Cre- ated by Vincent A. Cellucci (poet), Jesse Allison (Professor of Experimental Music), and Derick Ostrenko (Professor of Digital Art), the applications use natural language processing on text to generate an innovative media stage project. The app creators are interested in creative data mining and incorporating interactive media into performances that challenge people’s perceptions and expectations for the mediums of music, digital art and design, and poetry

Web-based public health geographic information systems for resources-constrained environment using scalable vector graphics technology: a proof of concept applied to the expanded program on immunization data

BACKGROUND: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are powerful communication tools for public health. However, using GIS requires considerable skill and, for this reason, is sometimes limited to experts. Web-based GIS has emerged as a solution to allow a wider audience to have access to geospatial information. Unfortunately the cost of implementing proprietary solutions may be a limiting factor in the adoption of a public health GIS in a resource-constrained environment. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is used to define vector-based graphics for the internet using XML (eXtensible Markup Language); it is an open, platform-independent standard maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 2003. In this paper, we summarize our methodology and demonstrate the potential of this free and open standard to contribute to the dissemination of Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) information by providing interactive maps to a wider audience through the Internet. RESULTS: We used SVG to develop a database driven web-based GIS applied to EPI data from three countries of WHO AFRO (World Health Organization – African Region). The system generates interactive district-level country immunization coverage maps and graphs. The approach we describe can be expanded to cover other public health GIS demanding activities, including the design of disease atlases in a resources-constrained environment. CONCLUSION: Our system contributes to accumulating evidence demonstrating the potential of SVG technology to develop web-based public health GIS in resources-constrained settings

Pathways to Fragmentation:User Flows and Web Distribution Infrastructures

This study analyzes how web audiences flow across online digital features. We construct a directed network of user flows based on sequential user clickstreams for all popular websites (n=1761), using traffic data obtained from a panel of a million web users in the United States. We analyze these data to identify constellations of websites that are frequently browsed together in temporal sequences, both by similar user groups in different browsing sessions as well as by disparate users. Our analyses thus render visible previously hidden online collectives and generate insight into the varied roles that curatorial infrastructures may play in shaping audience fragmentation on the web

The Cognitive Atlas: Employing Interaction Design Processes to Facilitate Collaborative Ontology Creation

The Cognitive Atlas is a collaborative knowledge-building project that aims to develop an ontology that characterizes the current conceptual framework among researchers in cognitive science and neuroscience. The project objectives from the beginning focused on usability, simplicity, and utility for end users. Support for Semantic Web technologies was also a priority in order to support interoperability with other neuroscience projects and knowledge bases. Current off-the-shelf semantic web or semantic wiki technologies, however, do not often lend themselves to simple user interaction designs for non-technical researchers and practitioners; the abstract nature and complexity of these systems acts as point of friction for user interaction, inhibiting usability and utility. Instead, we take an alternate interaction design approach driven by user centered design processes rather than a base set of semantic technologies. This paper reviews the initial two rounds of design and development of the Cognitive Atlas system, including interactive design decisions and their implementation as guided by current industry practices for the development of complex interactive systems

E-Learning for Teachers and Trainers : Innovative Practices, Skills and Competences

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.Final Published versio

Interactive infographics and news values

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Digital Journalism [PUBLICATION DETAILS], copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21670811.2013.841368.This study is concerned with the news values and working practices that inform the creation of interactive infographics in UK online news. The author draws upon organisational theory in journalism studies, and considers how conventional journalistic news values compare with best practice as espoused in different literatures within this field. A series of open-ended, depth interviews with visual news journalists from the UK national media were undertaken, along with a short-term observation case study at a national online news publisher. Journalistic and organisational norms are found to shape the selection, production, and treatment of interactive graphics, and a degree of variation is found to exist amongst practitioners as to definitions of quality in this field. Some news stories are considered to be better suited to rendering in interactive form than others. The availability of “big data” does not drive decision-making in itself, but some numbers are considered more newsworthy than others. Budgetary constraint drives practice and limits potential in this field. Risk aversion, embodied in various forms; from the use of templates, to a perceived need to avoid audience complaint, is found to dampen experimentation. Detailed audience research was found to inform the choice of methods used in data visualisation at one national news producer. This warrants further investigation as to how audiences engage with news interactives, and what the framing of news in certain (preferred) data visualisation formats means in terms of how news is understood

CacophonyViz: Visualisation of Birdsong Derived Ecological Health Indicators

The purpose of this work was to create an easy to interpret visualisation of a simple index that represents the quantity and quality of bird life in New Zealand. The index was calculated from an algorithm that assigned various weights to each species of bird. This work is important as it forms a part of the ongoing work by the Cacophony Project which aims to eradicate pests that currently destroy New Zealand native birds and their habitat. The map will be used to promote the Cacophony project to a wide public audience and encourage their participation by giving relevant feedback on the effects of intervention such as planting and trapping in their communities. The Design Science methodology guided this work through the creation of a series of prototypes that through their evaluation built on lessons learnt at each stage resulting in a final artifact that successfully displayed the index at various locations across a map of New Zealand. It is concluded that the artifact is ready and suitable for deployment once the availability of real data from the automatic analysis of audio recordings from multiple locations becomes available

Accessible user interface support for multi-device ubiquitous applications: architectural modifiability considerations

The market for personal computing devices is rapidly expanding from PC, to mobile, home entertainment systems, and even the automotive industry. When developing software targeting such ubiquitous devices, the balance between development costs and market coverage has turned out to be a challenging issue. With the rise of Web technology and the Internet of things, ubiquitous applications have become a reality. Nonetheless, the diversity of presentation and interaction modalities still drastically limit the number of targetable devices and the accessibility toward end users. This paper presents webinos, a multi-device application middleware platform founded on the Future Internet infrastructure. Hereto, the platform's architectural modifiability considerations are described and evaluated as a generic enabler for supporting applications, which are executed in ubiquitous computing environments