Validation of a recommender system for prompting omitted foods in online dietary assessment surveys

Recall assistance methods are among the key aspects that improve the accuracy of online dietary assessment surveys. These methods still mainly rely on experience of trained interviewers with nutritional background, but data driven approaches could improve cost-efficiency and scalability of automated dietary assessment. We evaluated the effectiveness of a recommender algorithm developed for an online dietary assessment system called Intake24, that automates the multiple-pass 24-hour recall method. The recommender builds a model of eating behavior from recalls collected in past surveys. Based on foods they have already selected, the model is used to remind respondents of associated foods that they may have omitted to report. The performance of prompts generated by the model was compared to that of prompts hand-coded by nutritionists in two dietary studies. The results of our studies demonstrate that the recommender system is able to capture a higher number of foods omitted by respondents of online dietary surveys than prompts hand-coded by nutritionists. However, the considerably lower precision of generated prompts indicates an opportunity for further improvement of the system

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Sustainability Education and Learning Committee Web Portal

Course Code: ENR/AEDE 4567This project was completed for The Sustainability Education and Learning Committee (SELC) of OSU's Sustainability Institute to provide insight and student perspective on the best way to design an interactive web portal that encompasses and makes easily accessible all sustainability-centric and and sustainability-related majors, minors, and coursework in one platform.Sustainability Education and Learning CommitteeAcademic Major: Environment, Economy, Development, and Sustainabilit

User producer interaction in context: a classification

Science, Technology and Innovation Studies show that intensified user producer interaction (UPI) increases chances for successful innovations, especially in the case of emerging technology. It is not always clear, however, what type of interaction is necessary in a particular context. This paper proposes a conceptualization of contexts in terms of three dimensions – the phase of technology development, the flexibility of the technology, and the heterogeneity of user populations – resulting in a classification scheme with eight different contextual situations. The paper identifies and classifies types of interaction, like demand articulation, interactive learning, learning by using and domestication. It appears that each contextual situation demands a different set of UPI types. To illustrate the potential value of the classification scheme, four examples of innovations with varying technological and user characteristics are explored: the refrigerator, clinical anaesthesia, video cassette recording, and the bicycle. For each example the relevant UPI types are discussed and it is shown how these types highlight certain activities and interactions during key events of innovation processes. Finally, some directions for further research are suggested alongside a number of comments on the utility of the classification

ENHANCING USERS’ EXPERIENCE WITH SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

The aim of this thesis is to investigate mobile guides for use with smartphones. Mobile guides have been successfully used to provide information, personalisation and navigation for the user. The researcher also wanted to ascertain how and in what ways mobile guides can enhance users' experience. This research involved designing and developing web based applications to run on smartphones. Four studies were conducted, two of which involved testing of the particular application. The applications tested were a museum mobile guide application and a university mobile guide mapping application. Initial testing examined the prototype work for the ‘Chronology of His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah’ application. The results were used to assess the potential of using similar mobile guides in Brunei Darussalam’s museums. The second study involved testing of the ‘Kent LiveMap’ application for use at the University of Kent. Students at the university tested this mapping application, which uses crowdsourcing of information to provide live data. The results were promising and indicate that users' experience was enhanced when using the application. Overall results from testing and using the two applications that were developed as part of this thesis show that mobile guides have the potential to be implemented in Brunei Darussalam’s museums and on campus at the University of Kent. However, modifications to both applications are required to fulfil their potential and take them beyond the prototype stage in order to be fully functioning and commercially viable

Simple identification tools in FishBase

Simple identification tools for fish species were included in the FishBase information system from its inception. Early tools made use of the relational model and characters like fin ray meristics. Soon pictures and drawings were added as a further help, similar to a field guide. Later came the computerization of existing dichotomous keys, again in combination with pictures and other information, and the ability to restrict possible species by country, area, or taxonomic group. Today, www.FishBase.org offers four different ways to identify species. This paper describes these tools with their advantages and disadvantages, and suggests various options for further development. It explores the possibility of a holistic and integrated computeraided strategy

Managing obesity through mobile phone applications: a state-of-the-art review from a user-centred design perspective

Evidence has shown that the trend of increasing obesity rates has continued in the last decade. Mobile phone applications, benefiting from their ubiquity, have been increasingly used to address this issue. In order to increase the applications’ acceptance and success, a design and development process that focuses on users, such as User-Centred Design, is necessary. This paper reviews reported studies that concern the design and development of mobile phone applications to prevent obesity, and analyses them from a User-Centred Design perspective. Based on the review results, strengths and weaknesses of the existing studies were identified. Identified strengths included: evidence of the inclusion of multidisciplinary skills and perspectives; user involvement in studies; and the adoption of iterative design practices. Weaknesses included the lack of specificity in the selection of end-users and inconsistent evaluation protocols. The review was concluded by outlining issues and research areas that need to be addressed in the future, including: greater understanding of the effectiveness of sharing data between peers; privacy; and guidelines for designing for behavioural change through mobile phone applications

Advancing Dietetic Practice through the Implementation and Integration of Smartphone Apps

As the burden of obesity and its related chronic diseases grows, dietitians have integral roles in providing individualised medical nutrition therapy. Smartphone mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) have potential to support and extend reach of dietetic services. This thesis examines how mHealth apps could be implemented and integrated by dietitians to advance nutrition care. Based on a narrative review of current evidence, the novel mobile Nutrition Care Process grid was developed, providing dietitians with best-practice guidance for using mHealth apps across the nutrition care process. Surveying dietitians internationally revealed that 62% used mHealth apps in their practice, although primarily as an information resource and for patient self-monitoring rather than as an integral part of the nutrition care process. Similarly, the public used commercial health and fitness apps, such as MyFitnessPal, to track health behaviours. However, individuals performed suboptimally when using MyFitnessPal to track dietary intake, with the app underestimating mean energy intake by -1863kJ (SD=2952kJ, P=0.0002) compared to 24-hour recalls. Qualitative feedback from dietitians, the public and patients are presented to guide app developers in designing quality mHealth apps. A behavioural analysis was conducted using the COM-B model and intervention recommendations were formulated to facilitate uptake of mHealth apps into dietetic practice. These recommendations were incorporated into a two-phase intervention comprising of an educational and training workshop and a 12-week phase where dietitians used an integrated commercial app platform with their patients. The intervention was found to be feasible to deliver and improved dietitians’ mHealth app self-efficacy. There is translational potential for this intervention to equip the profession with greater capability, opportunity, motivation and self-efficacy to use mHealth apps in dietetic practice and in patient nutrition care

Designing and evaluating a user interface for continous embedded lifelogging based on physical context

PhD ThesisAn increase in both personal information and storage capacity has encouraged people to store and archive their life experience in multimedia formats. The usefulness of such large amounts of data will remain inadequate without the development of both retrieval techniques and interfaces that help people access and navigate their personal collections. The research described in this thesis investigates lifelogging technology from the perspective of the psychology of memory and human-computer interaction. The research described seeks to increase my understanding of what data can trigger memories and how I might use this insight to retrieve past life experiences in interfaces to lifelogging technology. The review of memory and previous research on lifelogging technology allows and support me to establish a clear understanding of how memory works and design novel and effective memory cues; whilst at the same time I critiqued existing lifelogging systems and approaches to retrieving memories of past actions and activities. In the initial experiments I evaluated the design and implementation of a prototype which exposed numerous problems both in the visualisation of data and usability. These findings informed the design of novel lifelogging prototype to facilitate retrieval. I assessed the second prototype and determined how an improved system supported access and retrieval of users’ past life experiences, in particular, how users group their data into events, how they interact with their data, and the classes of memories that it supported. In this doctoral thesis I found that visualizing the movements of users’ hands and bodies facilitated grouping activities into events when combined with the photos and other data captured at the same time. In addition, the movements of the user's hand and body and the movements of some objects can promote an activity recognition or support user detection and grouping of them into events. Furthermore, the ability to search for specific movements significantly reduced the amount of time that it took to retrieve data related to specific events. I revealed three major strategies that users followed to understand the combined data: skimming sequences, cross sensor jumping and continued scanning