Empowering Users to Create Augmented Reality-Based Solutions – Deriving Design Principles for No-Code AR Authoring Tools

Grounded on an experimental study with 18 participants, we derive 15 design principles for no-code AR authoring tools in an organizational setting. The study consists of two distinct treatments that aim to augment lightweight processes with AR. The outcomes are two interactive tutorials utilizing AR instructions. Following the no-code approach, the participants were empowered to create relevant AR content using a reduced interface and no need for advanced configurations or coding. The study thus combines two research streams with the aim of better understanding mechanisms for AR use in a professional context. As prior work has shown, despite the potential benefits, the adoption of AR authoring tools is limited because ramping up AR to productive use is heavily dependent on consulting and custom software solutions. Our novel approach bears the potential to broaden application domains and empower professionals to apply AR

Filter Feeding

This paper is an investigation of the mechanics of evolutionary processes and its methods. These investigations are representative of both a world view and a methodology of artistic production. I consider a central consideration of my current work to be the interaction of distinct components and the new experience that these interactions produce when pondered by a viewer. Evolution and the development of life is driven ever forward by the interactions between organisms, both as groups and individuals. By grouping these relationships into three categories: parasitism, predation, and symbiosis, I aim to provide a lens through which to consider both the imagery and material choices in my work

SciTech News Volume 70, No. 4 (2016)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 4 SLA Annual Meeting 2016 Report (S. Kirk Cabeen Travel Stipend Award recipient) 6 Reflections on SLA Annual Meeting (Diane K. Foster International Student Travel Award recipient) 8 SLA Annual Meeting Report (Bonnie Hilditch International Librarian Award recipient)10 Chemistry Division 12 Engineering Division 15 Reflections from the 2016 SLA Conference (SPIE Digital Library Student Travel Stipend recipient)15 Fundamentals of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services (IEEE Continuing Education Stipend recipient) 17 Makerspaces in Libraries: The Big Table, the Art Studio or Something Else? (by Jeremy Cusker) 19 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 21 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 22 Advertisements IEEE 17 WeBuyBooks.net 2

Populating 3D Scenes by Learning Human-Scene Interaction

Humans live within a 3D space and constantly interact with it to perform tasks. Such interactions involve physical contact between surfaces that is semantically meaningful. Our goal is to learn how humans interact with scenes and leverage this to enable virtual characters to do the same. To that end, we introduce a novel Human-Scene Interaction (HSI) model that encodes proximal relationships, called POSA for "Pose with prOximitieS and contActs". The representation of interaction is body-centric, which enables it to generalize to new scenes. Specifically, POSA augments the SMPL-X parametric human body model such that, for every mesh vertex, it encodes (a) the contact probability with the scene surface and (b) the corresponding semantic scene label. We learn POSA with a VAE conditioned on the SMPL-X vertices, and train on the PROX dataset, which contains SMPL-X meshes of people interacting with 3D scenes, and the corresponding scene semantics from the PROX-E dataset. We demonstrate the value of POSA with two applications. First, we automatically place 3D scans of people in scenes. We use a SMPL-X model fit to the scan as a proxy and then find its most likely placement in 3D. POSA provides an effective representation to search for "affordances" in the scene that match the likely contact relationships for that pose. We perform a perceptual study that shows significant improvement over the state of the art on this task. Second, we show that POSA's learned representation of body-scene interaction supports monocular human pose estimation that is consistent with a 3D scene, improving on the state of the art. Our model and code are available for research purposes at https://posa.is.tue.mpg.de

Locating culture, heritage and histories with[in] Tembisa: the museum as a living institution in the urban periphery

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017Traditional definitions of the museum present a building type that is intended to act as a repository for the collection, preservation and display of static artefacts. Since 1994, numerous efforts have been made to conceive and construct appropriate museums in previously excluded townships. What has resulted from these efforts is, in many cases, large scale State driven projects that elevate political grandstanding over considered contextual engagement and much needed social cohesion. This thesis aims to question the traditional role of museums as an architectural typology within the specific context of peri-urban township areas. The context chosen for this exploration towards a new museum is Tembisa. Tembisa received its first inhabitants in 1957 and is located within the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. It is the second largest township in the country by population. Unlike many of the country’s older townships, this peripheral neighbourhood is yet to receive sustained cultural interventions. As such, it lends itself as the ideal testing ground for the creation of a ’living museum’. The thesis aims to create a living museum that does not rely on imposing a master narrative, but instead aims to actively locate traces of history, heritage and culture with [IN] Tembisa for collection, reproduction and display. In this museum the ‘artefacts’ on display are the result of evolving processes that are not only present within the confines of the museum itself, but are informed by, and spill out into the fabric and consciousness of the immediate context. This is explored through a reconsidered museum program that includes a historical archive and art ensemble for Tembisa.GR201

A design investigation into the use of recycled thermoplastics for furniture applications in the Australian market

The use of recycled thermoplastic materials in furniture products is the result of the application of a methodology that is grounded in design and making within an ecodesign framework. This framework includes techniques and methods for ease of assembly and disassembly, material efficiency and reuse, economy of production and lifecycle extension within the practice of furniture design. Through the development of innovative furniture products that incorporate recycled thermoplastics derived from mixed material and product sources, this project challenges the proposition that thermoplastics may only be successfully recycled into products of significant value when separated into single polymer types. Grounded in research through design this practice combines the use of waste from plastic recycling in Victoria as a source material to explore and create a range of furniture that challenges the value proposition above. This research proposes that the process of furniture design incorporating recycled thermoplastics produces new forms, techniques and implications for design practice