Promising Beginning? Evaluating Museum Mobile Phone Apps

Since 2009 museums have started introducing mobile apps in their range of interpretative media and visitor services. As mobile technology continues to develop and permeate all aspects of our life, and the capabilities of smart phones increase while they become more accessible and popular, new possibilities arise for cultural institutions to exploit these tools for communicating in new ways and promoting their exhibitions and programmes. The use of mobile apps opens up new channels of communication between the cultural institution and the user, which extent to his or her personal space and go beyond the boundaries of the museum’s walls. The paper presents a survey carried out of mobile apps designed by art or cultural historical museums and analyses the wider issues which are raised by the findings. It discusses, among others, the kind of use these apps were designed to fulfil (e.g. the majority are guided tours to the permanent collections or to temporary exhibitions), the layering of content,and the type of user interaction and involvement they support

Products as Affective Modifiers of Identities

© The Author(s) 2015. Are salesclerks seen as better, more powerful, or more active when they drive Mustangs? What about entrepreneurs? What about driving a mid-sized car? Intuitively, we have ideas about these, but much of the research on the affective nature of products is on purchasing, desires, and self-fulfillment. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, we argue that people's association with products has some basis in the impression management of their identity. For this to occur, there must be some cultural consensus about the way that products modify identities. Drawing on affect control theory's (ACT) methodology and equations, we measure the goodness, powerfulness, and activeness of several products, identities, and the associated product-modified identities to explore how products function as affective modifiers of identities. We find consistent effects across several types of technology products, whereby products pull the modified identity in the direction of the products' affective qualities. Support is established for the ACT equations that predict how traits modify identities as also having utility for predicting how products modify identities. This suggests that the opening questions can be answered empirically by measuring cultural-specific sentiments of the identity and the product and by developing equations to predict the identity modification process

Why Do People Adopt, or Reject, Smartphone Password Managers?

People use weak passwords for a variety of reasons, the most prescient of these being memory load and inconvenience. The motivation to choose weak passwords is even more compelling on Smartphones because entering complex passwords is particularly time consuming and arduous on small devices. Many of the memory- and inconvenience-related issues can be ameliorated by using a password manager app. Such an app can generate, remember and automatically supply passwords to websites and other apps on the phone. Given this potential, it is unfortunate that these applications have not enjoyed widespread adoption. We carried out a study to find out why this was so, to investigate factors that impeded or encouraged password manager adoption. We found that a number of factors mediated during all three phases of adoption: searching, deciding and trialling. The study’s findings will help us to market these tools more effectively in order to encourage future adoption of password managers

Design and Digital–material Possession: Sartre’s potential for mobile UI design

Jean-Paul Sartre’s conceptualisation of material possession contains rich insights for this study located at the intersection of visual communication, mobile UI design, human–computer interaction and design philosophy. Possession is a relational concept concerning more than just the ownership of things. It contributes to an understanding of self-identity via an individual’s relationship with the objects they see, use, use up and create. Initial ideas for a contemporary conceptualisation of digital-material possession presented in this study expands on Sartre’s philosophy enabling technologies such as the iPhone, including its hardware and software components, to be positioned as an entanglement of possessions. Likewise, the unique relationships between humans and their non-human technological and appearance-dominant things can be included among the many human–possession relationships that constitute an individual’s self-identity. This thesis uses the set of iOS7 app icon graphics and their redesign, conducted as part of this study, in the critique, expansion and application of Sartre’s material possession to the contemporary context. Reflection on the redesigned iOS prototypes shifted the original practice-based design research approach, to instead underpin a Research through Design investigation of the nature and agency of iOS graphics as exemplars of appearance-dominant digital-material possessions. Reflection on the prototypes through the lens of possession created a feedback loop between the speculative prototypes, Sartre’s philosophy of material possession and its expansion for the contemporary digital-material context. Possession and digital-material possession have interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary relevance. In the design context, together they enable increased understanding of the role of the designer, their design activities and design outcomes, and the role of individual users of designed things, their co-creation activities and outcomes. Beyond design, digital-material possession highlights Sartre’s contribution to the philosophy of technology

Weather and Climate Information for Tourism

The tourism sector is one of the largest and fastest growing global industries and is a significant contributor to national and local economies around the world. The interface between climate and tourism is multifaceted and complex, as climate represents both a vital resource to be exploited and an important limiting factor that poses risks to be managed by the tourism industry and tourists alike. All tourism destinations and operators are climate-sensitive to a degree and climate is a key influence on travel planning and the travel experience. This chapter provides a synopsis of the capacities and needs for climate services in the tourism sector, including current and emerging applications of climate services by diverse tourism end-users, and a discussion of key knowledge gaps, research and capacity-building needs and partnerships that are required to accelerate the application of climate information to manage risks to climate variability and facilitate successful adaptation to climate change

Weather and Climate Information for Tourism

The tourism sector is one of the largest and fastest growing global industries and is a significant contributor to national and local economies around the world. The interface between climate and tourism is multifaceted and complex, as climate represents both a vital resource to be exploited and an important limiting factor that poses risks to be managed by the tourism industry and tourists alike. All tourism destinations and operators are climate-sensitive to a degree and climate is a key influence on travel planning and the travel experience. This chapter provides a synopsis of the capacities and needs for climate services in the tourism sector, including current and emerging applications of climate services by diverse tourism end-users, and a discussion of key knowledge gaps, research and capacity-building needs and partnerships that are required to accelerate the application of climate information to manage risks to climate variability and facilitate successful adaptation to climate change

Weather and Climate Information for Tourism

The tourism sector is one of the largest and fastest growing global industries and is a significant contributor to national and local economies around the world. The interface between climate and tourism is multifaceted and complex, as climate represents both a vital resource to be exploited and an important limiting factor that poses risks to be managed by the tourism industry and tourists alike. All tourism destinations and operators are climate-sensitive to a degree and climate is a key influence on travel planning and the travel experience. This chapter provides a synopsis of the capacities and needs for climate services in the tourism sector, including current and emerging applications of climate services by diverse tourism end-users, and a discussion of key knowledge gaps, research and capacity-building needs and partnerships that are required to accelerate the application of climate information to manage risks to climate variability and facilitate successful adaptation to climate change