3,009 research outputs found
Exploring Bluetooth based Mobile Phone Interaction with the Hermes Photo Display
One of the most promising possibilities for supporting user interaction with public displays is the use of personal mobile phones. Furthermore, by utilising Bluetooth users should have the capability to interact with displays without incurring personal financial connectivity costs. However, despite the relative maturity of Bluetooth as a standard and its widespread adoption in todayâs mobile phones, little exploration seems to have taken place in this area - despite its apparent significant potential. This paper describe the findings of an exploratory study nvolving our Hermes Photo Display which has been extended to enable users with a suitable phone to both send and receive pictures over Bluetooth. We present both the technical challenges of working with Bluetooth and, through our user study, we present initial insights into general user acceptability issues and the potential for such a display to facilitate notions of community
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Entertaining situated messaging at home
Leisure and entertainment-based computing has been traditionally associated with interactive entertainment media and game playing, yet the forms of engagement offered by these technologies only support a small part of how we act when we are at leisure. In this paper, we move away from the paradigm of leisure technology as computer-based entertainment consumption, and towards a broader view of leisure computing. This perspective is more in line with our everyday experience of leisure as an embodied, everyday accomplishment in which people artfully employ the everyday resources in the world around them in carrying out their daily lives outside of work. We develop this extended notion of leisure using data from a field study of domestic communication focusing on asynchronous and situated messaging to explore some of these issues, and develop these findings towards design implications for leisure technologies. Central to our discussion on the normal, everyday and occasioned conduct of leisure lie the notions of playfulness and creativity, the interweaving of the worlds of work and leisure, and in the creation of embodied displays of affect, all of which may be seen manifested in the use of messaging artefacts. This view of technology in support of leisure-in-the-broad is strongly divergent from traditional entertainment computing models in its coupling of the mechanics of the organisation of everyday life to the ways that we make entertainment for ourselves. This recognition allows us to draw specific implications for domestic situated messaging technologies, but also more generally for technology design by tying activities that we tend to regard as purely functional to other multifaceted and leisure-related purposes
Establishing the social licence to operate large scale solar facilities in Australia: insights from social research for industry
This project sets our the preconditions and best practice principles for establishing social licence to operate.
Introduction
The main objective of the research was to identify the preconditions necessary for utility-scale solar installations to have a social licence to operate in Australia. Specifically, the research set out to understand general attitudes towards solar energy and the acceptability of large scale solar energy facilities with a view to creating this report.
The research consisted of three key components:
⢠Quantitative phase: a survey of a representative sample of 1,197 Australians.
⢠Qualitative phase: a series of 15 group discussions held in capital cities, regional centres and communities near large scale solar facilities. Research to investigate perceptions of the desirability of utility-scale solar facilities.
⢠Review phase: a review of the factors that influence social licence to operate solar facilities, conducted via in-depth interviews and covered in the group discussions with stakeholders in communities living near large scale solar facilities.
The quantitative survey included testing the impact of exposure to two sets of stimuli (consisting of images and information about large scale solar facilities) through asking survey participants about their attitudes towards large scale solar facilities relating to land use; efficiency; reliability; visual impacts; economic impacts; environmental impacts; health impacts and the cost of electricity before and after seeing the stimulus materials.
 
âPlease turn ON your mobile phoneâ â First Impressions of Text-messaging in Lectures
Previous work by Draper and Brown [3] investigated the use of specialized handsets to increase interactivity in lecture settings. Inspired by their encouraging findings we have been exploring the use of conventional mobile phones and text-messaging to allow students to communicate with the lecturer as the class proceeds. In our pilot-study, students were able to respond to MCQs and send free-text comments and questions to the lecturer via SMS. Through observations and interviews with students and lecturers, we gained useful impressions of the value of such an approach. Students enjoyed the opportunity to be more actively involved but voiced concerns about costs
A design space for social object labels in museums
Taking a problematic user experience with ubiquitous annotation as its point of departure, this thesis defines and explores the design space for Social Object Labels (SOLs), small interactive displays aiming to support users' in-situ engagement with digital annotations of physical objects and places by providing up-to-date information before, during and after interaction.
While the concept of ubiquitous annotation has potential applications in a wide range of domains, the research focuses in particular on SOLs in a museum context, where they can support the institution's educational goals by engaging visitors in the interpretation of exhibits and providing a platform for public discourse to complement official interpretations provided on traditional object labels.
The thesis defines and structures the design space for SOLs, investigates how they can support social interpretation in museums and develops empirically validated design recommendations. Reflecting the developmental character of the research, it employs Design Research as a methodological framework, which involves the iterative development and evaluation of design artefacts together with users and other stakeholders.
The research identifies the particular characteristics of SOLs and structures their design space into ten high-level aspects, synthesised from taxonomies and heuristics for similar display concepts and complemented with aspects emerging from the iterative design and evaluation of prototypes. It presents findings from a survey exploring visitors' mental models, preferences and expectations of commenting in museums and translates them into requirements for SOLs. It reports on scenario-based design activities, expert interviews with museum professionals, formative user studies and co-design sessions, and two empirical evaluations of SOL prototypes in a gallery environment. Pulling together findings from these research activities it then formulates design recommendations for SOLs and supports them with related evidence and implementation examples.
The main contributions are (i) to delineate and structure the design space for SOLs, which helps to ground SOLs in the literature and understand them as a distinct display concept with its own characteristics; (ii) to explore, for the first time, a visitor perspective on commenting in museums, which can inform research, development and policies on user-generated content in museums and the wider cultural heritage sector; (iii) to develop empirically validated design recommendations, which can inform future research and development into SOLs and related display concept.
The thesis concludes by summarising findings in relation to its stated research questions, restating its contributions from ubiquitous computing, domain and methodology perspectives, and discussing open issues and future work
Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)
Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend
Supporting user appropriation of public displays
Despite their prevalence, public engagement with pervasive public displays is typically very low. One method for increasing the relevance of displayed content (and therefore hopefully improving engagement) is to allow the viewer themselves to affect the content shown on displays they encounter â for example, personalising an existing news feed or invoking a specific application on a display of their choosing. We describe this process as viewer appropriation of public displays. This thesis aims to provide the foundations for appropriation support in future âopenâ pervasive display networks. Our architecture combines three components: Yarely, a scheduler and media player; Tacita, a system for allowing users to make privacy-preserving appropriation requests, and Mercury, an application store for distributing content. Interface points between components support integration with thirdparty systems; a prime example is the provision of Content Descriptor Sets (CDSs) to describe the media items and constraints that determine what is played at each display. Our evaluation of the architecture is both quantitive and qualitative and includes a mixture of user studies, surveys, focus groups, performance measurements and reflections. Overall we show that it is feasible to construct a robust open pervasive display network that supports viewer appropriation. In particular, we show that Yarelyâs thick-client approach enables the development of a signage system that provides continuous operation even in periods of network disconnection yet is able to respond to viewer appropriation requests. Furthermore, we show that CDSs can be used as an effective means of information exchange in an open architecture. Performance measures indicate that demanding personalisation scenarios can be satisfied, and our qualitative work indicates that both display owners and viewers are positive about the introduction of appropriation into future pervasive display systems
Sensing and visualizing spatial relations of mobile devices
Location information can be used to enhance interaction with mobile devices. While many location systems require instrumentation of the environment, we present a system that allows devices to measure their spatial relations in a true peer-to-peer fashion. The system is based on custom sensor hardware implemented as USB dongle, and computes spatial relations in real-time. In extension of this system we propose a set of spatialized widgets for incorporation of spatial relations in the user interface. The use of these widgets is illustrated in a number of applications, showing how spatial relations can be employed to support and streamline interaction with mobile devices
Un-constraining the medium: design software systems to support situated action
This dissertation is concerned with Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
and in particular with ways in which insights from ethnomethodology can be melded
into the design of CSCW systemsâa relationship that has been labelled technomethodology.
The dissertation outlines a number of possible ways in which system design
can learn from ethnomethodology and concentrates on one particular aspectânamely
that CSCW should look closely at its foundational assumptions and, if necessary,
re-specify any concepts which appear problematic in their formulation. [Continues.
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