Community mirrors for supporting corporate innovation and motivation

In this paper we are exploring the idea of applying community support concepts and ubiquitous user interfaces to supporting the motivation to innovate in corporate settings. Our special focus is on the early phase of the innovation process – the phase of idea generation and suggestion management. The key idea is to provide awareness for a company’s creative potential and appreciation for the idea creators in a corporate setting by displaying information from community platforms handling the suggestion management process on public shared displays (“Idea Mirrors”) in the office space

Identity Meanings and Online Interactions of Hybrid Transnational Communities of Immigants

This paper investigates identity in Hybrid Transnational Communities of Immigrants. As predicted by the integrated theory of identity, members enact different salient identities based on situational factors. Community members do enact their placebased identity. However, their role-based identities in the physically community are also brought over to the virtual community. The connection of the virtual community to a geographic location provides members with a tool to verify the identity of others. Members ask or disclose information that can only be known to locals providing a natural filter to screen insiders from outsiders. Members deny their support to any mechanisms to verify the identity of people participating. Even if such mechanisms were enforced, the identity verification is limited because virtual communities have no power, authority or means to verify the identity disclosed

Idea Mirrors – Unterstützung von Innovation in Unternehmen durch Community-Awareness

In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir die Idee, Konzepte aus den Bereichen der Community-Unterstützung und ubiquitären Benutzungsschnittstellen auf die Unterstützung von Innovation in Unternehmen anzuwenden. Unser Fokus liegt dabei auf der frühen Phase des Innovationsprozesses – der Ideengenerierung und des Vorschlagsmanagements. Kernidee unseres Ansatzes ist es dabei, Awareness über das kreative Potential des Unternehmens bereitzustellen und eingebrachte Ideen durch öffentliche Präsentation zu würdigen, indem sie auf großen Wandbildschirmen („Idea Mirrors“) im Bürobereich dargestellt werden

Exploring delegate engagement with an augmented conference

We describe a qualitative study of delegate engagement with technology in academic conferences through a large- scale deployment of prototype technologies. These deployments represent current themes in conference technologies, such as providing access to content and opportunities for socialising between delegates. We consider not just the use of individual technologies, but also the overall impact of an assemblage of interfaces, ranging from ambient to interactive and mobile to situated. Based on a two-week deployment followed by interviews and surveys of attendees, we discuss the ways in which delegates engaged with the prototypes and the implications this had for their experience of the conferences. From our findings, we draw three new themes to inform the development of future conference technologies

Linking information and people in a social system for academic conferences

This paper investigates the feasibility of maintaining a social information system to support attendees at an academic conference. The main challenge of this work was to create an infrastructure where users’ social activities, such as bookmarking, tagging, and social linking could be used to enhance user navigation and maximize the users’ ability to locate two important types of information in conference settings: presentations to attend and attendees to meet. We developed Conference Navigator 3, a social conference support system that integrates a conference schedule planner with a social linking service. We examined its potential and functions in the context of a medium-scale academic conference. In this paper, we present the design of the system’s socially enabled features and report the results of a conference-based study. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of social information systems for supporting academic conferences. Despite the low number of potential users and the short timeframe in which conferences took place, the usage of the system was high enough to provide sufficient data for social mechanisms. The study shows that most critical social features were highly appreciated and used, and provides direction for further research

Communities of practice: telemedicine and online medical communities

E-health and telemedicine have had limited success across the European Union (EU), but using online collaborative technologies to support a community of practice may enable a sustainable healthcare community. In this paper we introduce a virtual medical community that enables geographically-dispersed medical experts to collaborate and share their knowledge in order to improve health care provision. This research confirms that media richness is not required for sustainable communities of practice, that there is greater effectiveness in knowledge sharing when virtual medical communities develop into communities of practice, and that communities of practice are sustainable when shared knowledge enhances medical practice

Designing to distract: Can interactive technologies reduce visitor anxiety in a children's hospital setting?

Many public buildings are entered through reception areas, intended for visitors to sit and wait in to be met. A concern is how to make visitors feel welcome while in transit. Hospitals, medical centres and other healthcare organisations are a special case where the challenge is to enable patients and families feel less anxious when waiting. One approach has been to design for distraction - where displays, surfaces, and interactive installations are created to draw visitor's attention away from their immediate thoughts. However, little is known as to how people respond to such interventions. We present the findings of an ethnographic study that examined the social and psychological effects of using distraction as a design principle in a children's hospital reception area. We discuss the challenges of designing to distract, in relation to how it can be combined with other architectural and HCI ones, when developing new human-building interfaces

An online community helping left-handed right brained students succeed

The purpose of this project is to develop a website that helps left handed students, their parents, and teachers to help left-handers, whether they are left-or-right-brain dominant, succeed. This website will be a tool to get to know their children and students better. The project consists of a paper and a website to educate about left-handed people