3,003 research outputs found

    Undergraduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    THE IMPACT OF HUMAN-CENTRIC LIGHTING PARAMETERS ON OLDER ADULT’S PERCEPTION, AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE

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    Population aging is a prominent demographic challenge. Older adults face increased risks of sleep dysfunctions, depression, and cognitive impairments due to physical, biological, and psychological factors associated with aging. These behavioral issues elevate safety risks at home, which necessitates the transition to assisted living facilities. Extensive research highlights the influence of healthcare environmental design, particularly related to architectural lighting impacts on residents' well-being and quality of life. To optimize older adults' health and well-being, it is essential to consider both the visual and non-visual effects of architectural lighting. Visual impacts include parameters related to task performance and visual acuity, while non-visual impacts may include outcomes such as circadian rhythm regulation, sleep quality, mood enhancement, and cognitive performance, thereby emphasizing the importance of implementing a holistic conceptual approach to human-centric lighting in indoor environments.While existing gerontology studies have primarily focused on light-level attributes, such as radiant flux, illuminance, and equivalent melanopic lux, there has been limited exploration of spectral and spatial pattern parameters in indoor lighting. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the impact of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of lighting design, including spatial layout characteristics such as uniformity, direction, centrality, and spectral attributes like correlated color temperature (CCT), on the visual perception, preference, mood, cognitive performance, and overall well-being of older adults in assisted living facilities. The study employed a multi-method approach across three main research phases. In phase I, a Q-sort survey involving 60 participants assessed the impact of diverse spatial light patterns on visual perception and preference. In phase II, a within-subject design evaluated the cognitive performance of 32 older adults in similar lighting scenarios within real and virtual environments. Lastly, in phase III, the study examined the relationship between spatial and spectral light patterns and cognitive performance through virtual reality testing with 32 participants. Results revealed significant effects of different spatial light patterns on older adults' environmental impressions, including visual preference, stress levels, and cognitive performance. Uniform and indirect lighting were preferred, with no substantial differences between peripheral and central spatial arrangements of light layers. Non-uniform lighting induced a relaxed impression, while uniform lighting heightened perceived stress. Furthermore, the study demonstrated the suitability of virtual reality environments (VR) for assessing cognitive performance and subjective perception. The findings underscore the substantial influence of spatial and spectral light patterns on the cognitive performance of older adults in assisted living facilities. This research contributes to the understanding of the visual and non-visual effects of human-centric lighting on the well-being of older adults. By considering spatial and spectral light attributes, designers can enhance cognitive function, reduce impairments, and cultivate healthier and more efficient living environments

    Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

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    In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

    Southern Adventist University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024

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    Southern Adventist University\u27s undergraduate catalog for the academic year 2023-2024.https://knowledge.e.southern.edu/undergrad_catalog/1123/thumbnail.jp

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    With the Participatory Consumer Audience in mind: exploring and developing professional brand identity designers reflexive practice

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    This PhD reflects upon first-hand unidirectional and passive consumer audience experience approaches prevalent in professional UK brand identity design. It explores: How brand identity designers might move towards an improved reflexive practice in the design of consumer audience experiences. This practice-led research focuses on the ideas generation stage of their design process. An ongoing constructivist audience paradigm shift signals that when thinking about and using their positionality in relation to their consumer audience experiences, designers need reflexive practice to support critical reflection of themselves, their biases and assumptions. This research uncovered a lack of relevant theory regarding reflexive practice specific to the context of brand identity design. This insufficiency throws into doubt designers' relational, participatory and equitable approaches in their working practices and their abilities to address market imperatives, including client requirements connected to the ongoing audience paradigm shift. Aligned with John Dewey's ethical pragmatism and drawing from Creswell, Tashakkori and Teddlie, my study adopts a mixed methods methodology. Alongside established qualitative and quantitative methods, this includes my practice via design visualisations, as discussed by Drucker, and builds upon Carl DiSalvo's approach of practice used to do inquiry and design as a method of inquiry. My practice enabled me to critically reflect, evaluate and construct reflexive practice knowledge, including the development of reflexive practice communications, to advance understanding of and improve other designers' reflexive practice, and to communicate my process of reflexive design practice research. Thirty UK-based professional brand identity designers participated in this research: nineteen participants in Phase One, a questionnaire, and six in Phase Two semi-structured interviews. Phase One and Two findings identified a gap in that designers are not employing a reflexive design practice and lack the resources to do so. Seeking to improve these shortcomings, eighteen initial reflexive design practice principles were explored and tested in Phase Three, a workshop involving five design participants. Results showed that the principles facilitated participants to advance prior thinking and engage in a reflexive design practice. Further reflections and insights from the same five Phase Three participants uncovered a need to refine and reduce the principles and communicate them in a guide. Eight revised overarching and eighteen sub-principles in a prototype guide were explored in Phase Four in applied practice by three brand identity designers involved in Phase Three. Results corroborated workshop findings and provided further recommendations. Contributions of this research are three-fold. First, offering an advanced understanding of professional brand identity designers' reflexive practice and process knowledge. Second, it produced a reflexive design guide with eight overarching and eighteen sub-reflexive design principles and corresponding digital app, thereby offering a preliminary new design practice method. This method offers a way to improve designers' thinking about and operation of their relational positionality, participatory consumer audience experience approaches, and reflexive design practice actions. Third, it provides a contribution to knowledge via its methodology, which integrates design visualisation practice into a mixed methods approach

    Redefining Disproportionate Arrest Rates: An Exploratory Quasi-Experiment that Reassesses the Role of Skin Tone

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    The New York Times reported that Black Lives Matter was the third most-read subject of 2020. These articles brought to the forefront the question of disparity in arrest rates for darker-skinned people. Questioning arrest disparity is understandable because virtually everything known about disproportionate arrest rates has been a guess, and virtually all prior research on disproportionate arrest rates is questionable because of improper benchmarking (the denominator effect). Current research has highlighted the need to switch from demographic data to skin tone data and start over on disproportionate arrest rate research; therefore, this study explored the relationship between skin tone and disproportionate arrest rates. This study also sought to determine which of the three theories surrounding disproportionate arrests is most predictive of disproportionate rates. The current theories are that disproportionate arrests increase as skin tone gets darker (stereotype threat theory), disproportionate rates are different for Black and Brown people (self-categorization theory), or disproportionate rates apply equally across all darker skin colors (social dominance theory). This study used a quantitative exploratory quasi-experimental design using linear spline regression to analyze arrest rates in Alachua County, Florida, before and after the county’s mandate to reduce arrests as much as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect the prison population. The study was exploratory as no previous study has used skin tone analysis to examine arrest disparity. The findings of this study redefines the understanding of the existence and nature of disparities in arrest rates and offer a solid foundation for additional studies about the relationship between disproportionate arrest rates and skin color

    Breaking Virtual Barriers : Investigating Virtual Reality for Enhanced Educational Engagement

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    Virtual reality (VR) is an innovative technology that has regained popularity in recent years. In the field of education, VR has been introduced as a tool to enhance learning experiences. This thesis presents an exploration of how VR is used from the context of educators and learners. The research employed a mixed-methods approach, including surveying and interviewing educators, and conducting empirical studies to examine engagement, usability, and user behaviour within VR. The results revealed educators are interested in using VR for a wide range of scenarios, including thought exercises, virtual field trips, and simulations. However, they face several barriers to incorporating VR into their practice, such as cost, lack of training, and technical challenges. A subsequent study found that virtual reality can no longer be assumed to be more engaging than desktop equivalents. This empirical study showed that engagement levels were similar in both VR and non-VR environments, suggesting that the novelty effect of VR may be less pronounced than previously assumed. A study against a VR mind mapping artifact, VERITAS, demonstrated that complex interactions are possible on low-cost VR devices, making VR accessible to educators and students. The analysis of user behaviour within this VR artifact showed that quantifiable strategies emerge, contributing to the understanding of how to design for collaborative VR experiences. This thesis provides insights into how the end-users in the education space perceive and use VR. The findings suggest that while educators are interested in using VR, they face barriers to adoption. The research highlights the need to design VR experiences, with understanding of existing pedagogy, that are engaging with careful thought applied to complex interactions, particularly for collaborative experiences. This research contributes to the understanding of the potential of VR in education and provides recommendations for educators and designers to enhance learning experiences using VR

    Running to Your Own Beat:An Embodied Approach to Auditory Display Design

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    Personal fitness trackers represent a multi-billion-dollar industry, predicated on devices for assisting users in achieving their health goals. However, most current products only offer activity tracking and measurement of performance metrics, which do not ultimately address the need for technique related assistive feedback in a cost-effective way. Addressing this gap in the design space for assistive run training interfaces is also crucial in combating the negative effects of Forward Head Position, a condition resulting from mobile device use, with a rapid growth of incidence in the population. As such, Auditory Displays (AD) offer an innovative set of tools for creating such a device for runners. ADs present the opportunity to design interfaces which allow natural unencumbered motion, detached from the mobile or smartwatch screen, thus making them ideal for providing real-time assistive feedback for correcting head posture during running. However, issues with AD design have centred around overall usability and user-experience, therefore, in this thesis an ecological and embodied approach to AD design is presented as a vehicle for designing an assistive auditory interface for runners, which integrates seamlessly into their everyday environments

    UMSL Bulletin 2022-2023

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    The 2022-2023 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1087/thumbnail.jp
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