Supporting memory and identity in older people: findings from a ‘Sandpit’ process

Identity in old age is challenged by physical changes, evolving roles within the family, and life transitions such as retirement. Supporting identity is therefore important in later life, and might be assisted by media technologies which allow people to reflect on their lives, record their personal histories and share these with family, friends and caregivers. This possibility was explored in two creative ‘Sandpits’ with older people as part of the SUS-IT project, funded by the New Dynamics of Ageing programme in the UK. Discussions were held with PC and non-PC user groups of retirement age to understand memory and identity practices and elicit reactions to three novel product concepts. These included a Reminiscing Radio for life review, a Story Lamp for associating spoken stories with photographs and memorabilia, and a pair of virtual reality Travel Glasses for transporting you back to a special place in the past. The main findings of these discussions will be presented, along with concepts generated by the participants in a re-design exercise. This paper will also show how the sandpits enabled older people to be involved in the design process by allowing them to shape early design concepts through exploring their own ideas and motivations

An exploratory study on the links between individual upcycling, product attachment and product longevity

Product attachment, the emotional bond experienced with a product, is an emerging concept for sustainable production and consumption. The logic behind it is that when people are attached to any product, they are more likely to handle the product with care and to postpone its replacement or disposal. Some types of product have been studied regarding product attachment in past research but the focus has been on the perspectives of professional designers and manufacturers rather than on consumers’ ‘everyday creativity’ activities such as ‘individual upcycling’. Individual upcycling, creation out of used materials resulting in a higher quality or value product than the compositional elements, is particularly relevant to product attachment. This is because upcycling, as a creative, participatory user activity, may offer the experiences of self-expression, group affiliation, special memories and pleasure, all of which are possible product attachment determinants

Freight logistics services for rural economies : User needs and future challenges

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

My boy builds coffins. Future memories of your loved ones

The research is focus on the concept of storytelling associated with product design, trying to investigate new ways of designing and a possible future scenario related to the concept of death. MY BOY BUILDS COFFINS is a gravestone made using a combination of cremation’s ashes and resin. It is composed by a series of holes in which the user can stitch a text, in order to remember the loved one. The stitching need of a particular yarn produced in Switzerland using some parts of human body. Project also provides another version which uses LED lights instead of the yarn. The LEDs - thanks to an inductive coupling - will light when It will be posed in the hole. The gravestone can be placed where you want, as if it would create a little altar staff at home. In this way, there is a real connection between the user and the dearly departed

Creating First-Mover Advantages: The Case of Samsung Electronics

This paper analyzes the sources of first-mover advantages by examining the case of Samsung Electronics, a firm which has maintained and strengthened the technological leadership in the DRAM industry since 1992. The focus is on endogeneity of first-mover advantages under changing technological and competitive environments, part of which are also shaped by the technology leader. The paper also discusses general implications of this case study for strategy and organization for innovation.First-mover advantages, innovation, firm growth, Samsung Electronics, semiconductors

Towards hardware acceleration of neuroevolution for multimedia processing applications on mobile devices

This paper addresses the problem of accelerating large artificial neural networks (ANN), whose topology and weights can evolve via the use of a genetic algorithm. The proposed digital hardware architecture is capable of processing any evolved network topology, whilst at the same time providing a good trade off between throughput, area and power consumption. The latter is vital for a longer battery life on mobile devices. The architecture uses multiple parallel arithmetic units in each processing element (PE). Memory partitioning and data caching are used to minimise the effects of PE pipeline stalling. A first order minimax polynomial approximation scheme, tuned via a genetic algorithm, is used for the activation function generator. Efficient arithmetic circuitry, which leverages modified Booth recoding, column compressors and carry save adders, is adopted throughout the design

Testing Embedded Memories in Telecommunication Systems

Extensive system testing is mandatory nowadays to achieve high product quality. Telecommunication systems are particularly sensitive to such a requirement; to maintain market competitiveness, manufacturers need to combine reduced costs, shorter life cycles, advanced technologies, and high quality. Moreover, strict reliability constraints usually impose very low fault latencies and a high degree of fault detection for both permanent and transient faults. This article analyzes major problems related to testing complex telecommunication systems, with particular emphasis on their memory modules, often so critical from the reliability point of view. In particular, advanced BIST-based solutions are analyzed, and two significant industrial case studies presente

Foregrounding accessibility for user experience design

textI am interested in creating generative tools and techniques for designing accessible user experiences for end users. As a user experience designer, I am working on embracing the web accessibility standards and guidelines and including them from the beginning of the User Experience (UX) design process. My projects are directed at facilitating design students and professionals to understand two things: that the broad concept of web accessibility is important, and how they can embed web accessibility into the UX design process at a very early stage. To do this, I used different media (website, posters and videos etc.) to create awareness and educate designers in an interesting, simple and engaging way. In this report, I will discuss the definition and role of accessible design, identify limitations in existing tools and methods, and demonstrate how future designers might research, prototype, analyze, and implement their designs for all users.Desig