Material Food Probes:Personalized 3D Printed Flavors for Intimate Communication

Interactions with food are complex, integrating rich multisensory experiences within emotionally meaningful social contexts. Yet, the opportunities to explore food as material resource for emotional communication have been less explored. We describe a two-month project with 5 couples centered on the co-design of personalized flavors for intimate communication, which were experienced through an explorative three day study involving a 3D food printer in participants’ homes. We discuss the value of our findings indicating preferences for both remembered and imagined positive flavors and their integration in focal intimacy practices to support emotional coregulation. We also discuss material food probes and their value for exploring and inspiring both design-with and design-around food

A user-centred approach to affective interaction

We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending and receiving affective messages, with the explicit aim of addressing the inner experience of emotions. eMoto is a designed artifact that carries emotional experiences only achieved through interaction. Following on the theories of embodiment, we argue emotional experiences can not be design in only design for. eMoto is the result of a user-centered design approach, realized through a set of initial brain-storming methods, a persona, a Laban-analysis of body language and a two-tiered evaluation method. eMoto is not a system that could have been designed from theory only, but require an iterative engagement with end-users, however, in combination with theoretical work. More specifically, we will show how we have managed to design an ambiguous and open system that allows for users’ emotional engagement

Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

eMoto - Affectively Involving both Body and Mind

It is known that emotions are experienced by both body and mind. Oftentimes, emotions are evoked by sub-symbolic stimuli, such as colors, shapes, gestures, or music. We have built eMoto, a mobile service for sending affective mes-sages to others, with the explicit aim of addressing such sensing. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interac-tion pulls the user into an embodied ‘affective loop’. We present a user study of eMoto where 12 out of 18 subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interac-tion. The study also shows that the designed ‘openness’ and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and under-stood by our subjects

Design, learning, empathy & Intuition : an experience-centered research and design approach for digital, mobile, museum learning application design

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.This thesis aims to develop an experience-centered research and design approach for designing digital, mobile applications that facilitate personally, emotionally significant and transformational learning experiences for people in museums. A set of three design proposals result from this research. This approach aims to contribute the following new knowledge: a process for experience-centered design and research for design; and new knowledge encased within the digital, mobile, museum learning application designs, resulting from this research. This experience-centered research and design process proposes a philosophical focus; a set of contextual considerations; and a set of methods for researching and designing for individualised, free choice, museum learning experiences, facilitated by digital, mobile technology. Philosophical Focus Philosophically, an individualised, free-choice, museum learning experience could likely comprise of an aesthetic experience—because someone would encounter and respond to an artwork, an object, or a space and/or a flow experience if they are given a challenge that they can accomplish and enjoy. I propose that an individualised museum experience can become more personally emotionally significant if it comprises these two types of experience. Dewey’s Pragmatism proposes that “an experience” is different to the continuum of “experience” because it is defined with a beginning and an end. Dewey saw “an aesthetic experience” as being different to “an experience” because it possesses some sense of individualised ‘quality’ (an emotion) that defines it. It is therefore more likely to be the type of experience we have with art or design as opposed to science or mathematics. Also “an aesthetic experience” is conceived as a series of experiences that are tied together based on a thread of experience: emotional, spatiotemporal, compositional or sensual. Similarly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow speaks to the ‘quality’ of an experience, but defines it more specifically as an ‘optimal’, enjoyable experience. Flow also speaks to an individual’s sense of awareness within an experience, wherein a person is so immersed that they are no longer aware of themselves being present in the here and now. In addition to offering a perspective on experience, Flow Theory and Pragmatic Aesthetics also offer their own perspectives on learning. A flow experience occurs as the result of skills being met by challenges, skills improving and new attainable challenges being presented. An aesthetic experience defines one experience as independent from another and gives it meaning through it’s autonomy. Meaning is then given depth when an experience is incorporated with other experiences. Contextual Factors Meaning and the potential for learning are defined by the context in which the experience takes place. This research also looks at the impact ‘context’ can have upon the attainment of these experiences and how they effect someone’s ability to learn. In order to understand the impacts of context upon learning potentials, I have used Falk’s Contextual Model of Learning to understand the museum specific learning context. It proposes that three contexts—the Personal context, the Physical context, and the Socio-cultural context—predefined someone’s ability to learn. Factors such as: an individuals prior knowledge and interests; whether they are able to share; or whether they can orient themselves, can define this. Research and Design Methods Once the contextual factors have been considered, a designer can focus, more specifically, on designing to support the qualities of an aesthetics experience or a flow experience. This experience-centered research and design approach encourages a designer to support these levels of experience by designing for and with unique individuals. By considering someone’s personal context, (their personal interests, knowledge, perspectives, skills, and concerns); their physical context, (objects, spaces and orientation); and their socio-cultural context (cultural factors, potential mediation for learning, and their abilities to communicate with others) a designer will consider the “whole person”. I hypothesise that by designing a mobile, learning application with empathy for “the whole person”, it is more likely that an aesthetic experience or a flow experience could occur, because it is more likely that a person will feel comfortable, familiar and emotionally tied to the application. To help myself within this process (and other designers in the future) I’ve developed a model for designing to support optimal experience, aesthetic experience and learning. It considers all of these aspects, not to reduce them to absolutes, but to make them accessible to a designer as a tool within the design process. The opportunity within this research is to develop an experience-centered research and design approach for designers to use when designing digital, mobile museum learning applications focused on facilitating, optimal, emotionally rich, aesthetic, personally and contextually meaningful museum learning experiences; and to show this process within the design outcomes. This focus is under catered for and under researched and is the gap in current research that I will be filling

Critical Success Factors for Positive User Experience in Hotel Websites: Applying Herzberg's Two Factor Theory for User Experience Modeling

This research presents the development of a critical success factor matrix for increasing positive user experience of hotel websites based upon user ratings. Firstly, a number of critical success factors for web usability have been identified through the initial literature review. Secondly, hotel websites were surveyed in terms of critical success factors identified through the literature review. Thirdly, Herzberg's motivation theory has been applied to the user rating and the critical success factors were categorized into two areas. Finally, the critical success factor matrix has been developed using the two main sets of data.Comment: Journal articl

Fixing a Broken System: Transforming Maine's Child Welfare System

Describes how Maine reduced congregate care with help from Casey's "Family to Family" model of team decision making and keeping children in the neighborhood or with extended family and the Casey Strategic Consulting Group of experts working with agencies

Characteristics of Real-Time, Non-Critical Incident Debriefing Practices in the Emergency Department.

INTRODUCTION: Benefits of post-simulation debriefings as an educational and feedback tool have been widely accepted for nearly a decade. Real-time, non-critical incident debriefing is similar to post-simulation debriefing; however, data on its practice in academic emergency departments (ED), is limited. Although tools such as TeamSTEPPS® (Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety) suggest debriefing after complicated medical situations, they do not teach debriefing skills suited to this purpose. Anecdotal evidence suggests that real-time debriefings (or non-critical incident debriefings) do in fact occur in academic EDs;, however, limited research has been performed on this subject. The objective of this study was to characterize real-time, non-critical incident debriefing practices in emergency medicine (EM). METHODS: We conducted this multicenter cross-sectional study of EM attendings and residents at four large, high-volume, academic EM residency programs in New York City. Questionnaire design was based on a Delphi panel and pilot testing with expert panel. We sought a convenience sample from a potential pool of approximately 300 physicians across the four sites with the goal of obtaining \u3e100 responses. The survey was sent electronically to the four residency list-serves with a total of six monthly completion reminder emails. We collected all data electronically and anonymously using SurveyMonkey.com; the data were then entered into and analyzed with Microsoft Excel. RESULTS: The data elucidate various characteristics of current real-time debriefing trends in EM, including its definition, perceived benefits and barriers, as well as the variety of formats of debriefings currently being conducted. CONCLUSION: This survey regarding the practice of real-time, non-critical incident debriefings in four major academic EM programs within New York City sheds light on three major, pertinent points: 1) real-time, non-critical incident debriefing definitely occurs in academic emergency practice; 2) in general, real-time debriefing is perceived to be of some value with respect to education, systems and performance improvement; 3) although it is practiced by clinicians, most report no formal training in actual debriefing techniques. Further study is needed to clarify actual benefits of real-time/non-critical incident debriefing as well as details on potential pitfalls of this practice and recommendations for best practices for use

I Probe, Therefore I Am: Designing a Virtual Journalist with Human Emotions

By utilizing different communication channels, such as verbal language, gestures or facial expressions, virtually embodied interactive humans hold a unique potential to bridge the gap between human-computer interaction and actual interhuman communication. The use of virtual humans is consequently becoming increasingly popular in a wide range of areas where such a natural communication might be beneficial, including entertainment, education, mental health research and beyond. Behind this development lies a series of technological advances in a multitude of disciplines, most notably natural language processing, computer vision, and speech synthesis. In this paper we discuss a Virtual Human Journalist, a project employing a number of novel solutions from these disciplines with the goal to demonstrate their viability by producing a humanoid conversational agent capable of naturally eliciting and reacting to information from a human user. A set of qualitative and quantitative evaluation sessions demonstrated the technical feasibility of the system whilst uncovering a number of deficits in its capacity to engage users in a way that would be perceived as natural and emotionally engaging. We argue that naturalness should not always be seen as a desirable goal and suggest that deliberately suppressing the naturalness of virtual human interactions, such as by altering its personality cues, might in some cases yield more desirable results.Comment: eNTERFACE16 proceeding