Delivering Virtual Ethnicity Drama: A Pedagogical Design For Bridging Digital And Diversity Barriers

This study examines an original dramaturgical method for creating virtual world experience called virtual world drama. The instructional focus is improving students aptitude for analyzing ethnic identity by instilling both conceptual and multicultural competency. An exploratory research method is used, relying on observation (disguised and non-disguised) and survey information collected from a student sample spanning four academic quarters. Findings suggest that virtual world drama deepens the specificity of ethnic culture analysis and broadens the spectrum of ethnic culture awareness. In addition learning outcomes are evaluated based on improvements in ethnic aptitude collaboration, competence, and community

Back to the future of quantitative psychology and measurement: Psychometrics in the twenty-first century

Measurements in psychology always have been a significant challenge. Research in quantitative psychology has developed several methods and techniques to improve our understanding of humans. Over the last few decades, the rapid advancement of technology had led to more extensive study of human cognition, including both the emotional and behavioral aspects. Psychometric methods have integrated very advanced mathematical and statistical techniques into the analyses, and in our Frontiers Specialty (Quantitative Psychology and Measurement), we have stressed the methodological dimension of the best practice in psychology. The long tradition of using self-reported questionnaires is still of high interest, but it is not enough in the twenty-first century. We stress the use of innovative methods and technologies as psychometric tools. One of the most significant challenges in quantitative psychology and measurement concerns the integration of technologies and computational techniques into current standards. In the following, our aim is to show how data collection can involve human behavior, internal states and the manipulation of experimental settings. In particular, we define typical psychophysiological measures for a deeper understanding of internal states-analyzing the central and peripheral nervous system, hormonal factors in the endocrine system and the fascinating field of gene transcription in human neuroscience. These factors represent the measurement of the "internal" sphere that is becoming so interesting for measurement in all the field of psychology, including social and affective science, not only in the cognitive sciences. The idea to read internal states has always been very clear in clinical and experimental psychology, but now is becoming even more widespread. This is thanks to the improvements in technologies and lower costs. Next, we highlight the measurement of the exhibited behavior patterns representing the "external" sphere of human thinking through expressed behavior. Again, technology is a critical aspect shedding new light on the field. The use of low-cost and high-end technologies for understanding verbal and nonverbal patterns is helping to identify innovative ways to measure the psychological factors leading to a behavior. They can be considered a new challenge of behavioral science, e.g., the use of commercial devices (such as the Kinect) in motor and cognitive neurorehabilitation. Linked to psychophysiology and exhibited behavior patterns, virtual reality is becoming a cutting-edge tool for experimental manipulation, building personalized experimental settings, but found in a laboratory. We define and highlight the use of virtual reality in psychology as an incredible low-cost tool collecting data and creating realistic situations that can be used for clinical, experimental, social settings among others, and so of keen interest in several psychology fields. In conclusion, we present new methods and techniques already used in other fields, but incredibly expanding also in psychology and psychometrics. Computational science, complex networks, and simulations, are highlighted as the promising new methods for the best convergence of psychological science and technologies. These have ability to create innovative tools for better comprehension and a quantitative measurement in psychology

The platformer experience dataset

Player modeling and estimation of player experience have become very active research fields within affective computing, human computer interaction, and game artificial intelligence in recent years. For advancing our knowledge and understanding on player experience this paper introduces the Platformer Experience Dataset (PED) - the first open-access game experience corpus - that contains multiple modalities of user data of Super Mario Bros players. The open-access database aims to be used for player experience capture through context-based (i.e. game content), behavioral and visual recordings of platform game players. In addition, the database contains demographical data of the players and self-reported annotations of experience in two forms: ratings and ranks. PED opens up the way to desktop and console games that use video from webcameras and visual sensors and offer possibilities for holistic player experience modeling approaches that can, in turn, yield richer game personalization.peer-reviewe

REAL-TIME CAPTURE AND RENDERING OF PHYSICAL SCENE WITH AN EFFICIENTLY CALIBRATED RGB-D CAMERA NETWORK

From object tracking to 3D reconstruction, RGB-Depth (RGB-D) camera networks play an increasingly important role in many vision and graphics applications. With the recent explosive growth of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) platforms, utilizing camera RGB-D camera networks to capture and render dynamic physical space can enhance immersive experiences for users. To maximize coverage and minimize costs, practical applications often use a small number of RGB-D cameras and sparsely place them around the environment for data capturing. While sparse color camera networks have been studied for decades, the problems of extrinsic calibration of and rendering with sparse RGB-D camera networks are less well understood. Extrinsic calibration is difficult because of inappropriate RGB-D camera models and lack of shared scene features. Due to the significant camera noise and sparse coverage of the scene, the quality of rendering 3D point clouds is much lower compared with synthetic models. Adding virtual objects whose rendering depend on the physical environment such as those with reflective surfaces further complicate the rendering pipeline. In this dissertation, I propose novel solutions to tackle these challenges faced by RGB-D camera systems. First, I propose a novel extrinsic calibration algorithm that can accurately and rapidly calibrate the geometric relationships across an arbitrary number of RGB-D cameras on a network. Second, I propose a novel rendering pipeline that can capture and render, in real-time, dynamic scenes in the presence of arbitrary-shaped reflective virtual objects. Third, I have demonstrated a teleportation application that uses the proposed system to merge two geographically separated 3D captured scenes into the same reconstructed environment. To provide a fast and robust calibration for a sparse RGB-D camera network, first, the correspondences between different camera views are established by using a spherical calibration object. We show that this approach outperforms other techniques based on planar calibration objects. Second, instead of modeling camera extrinsic using rigid transformation that is optimal only for pinhole cameras, different view transformation functions including rigid transformation, polynomial transformation, and manifold regression are systematically tested to determine the most robust mapping that generalizes well to unseen data. Third, the celebrated bundle adjustment procedure is reformulated to minimize the global 3D projection error so as to fine-tune the initial estimates. To achieve a realistic mirror rendering, a robust eye detector is used to identify the viewer\u27s 3D location and render the reflective scene accordingly. The limited field of view obtained from a single camera is overcome by our calibrated RGB-D camera network system that is scalable to capture an arbitrarily large environment. The rendering is accomplished by raytracing light rays from the viewpoint to the scene reflected by the virtual curved surface. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed system is the first to render reflective dynamic scenes from real 3D data in large environments. Our scalable client-server architecture is computationally efficient - the calibration of a camera network system, including data capture, can be done in minutes using only commodity PCs

The role and impact of the influencer marketing strategy in fashion companies: Farfetch case study

Lately, we’re seeing a turning point in digital marketing, with the growing interest in digital influencers, whose mission is to share their opinions and thoughts on different brands or products with what we call ‘followers’ on different social media platforms. At first, this strategy has been fiercely contested, and many marketers were not sure of its effectiveness. It is by seeing more and more successful companies entirely basing their social media approach on these influencers, that it has officially now become proper marketing expertise. In this in-company project, the influencer marketing strategy of the online luxury marketplace FARFETCH will be analyzed to understand the importance this strategy can have in fashion companies. A literature review will help to identify the key aspects and concepts of this social media strategy. Moreover, an online survey on social media usage and influencer marketing allowed us to gather a strong database about the subject. A total of 126 answers have been collected and analyzed. This survey helped to highlight areas that Farfetch has not exploited yet and which could be considered as solutions and potential directions to further develop their influencer marketing strategy in the future. Four ideas have been presented in this thesis: (1) Farfetch should invest to develop stronger relationships with the influencers; (2) Farfetch should consider extending its influencer marketing strategy to new platforms such as Tiktok; (3) Farfetch should consider working with sustainable influencers; (4) Farfetch should also analyze the benefits of working with/creating their own virtual influencers. In this study, we realized that influencer marketing is a complex social media strategy that needs to be precisely studied by fashion brands in order to be a great success.Nos últimos anos, temos assistido a um ponto de viragem no marketing digital, com o crescente interesse por influenciadores digitais, cuja missão é partilhar as suas opiniões e pensamentos sobre diferentes marcas ou produtos com o que chamamos de "seguidores" em diferentes plataformas de redes sociais. No início, esta estratégia foi ferozmente contestada, e muitos anunciantes não tinham a certeza da sua eficácia. Ao ver cada vez mais empresas bem sucedidas a basearem inteiramente a sua comunicação nas redes sociais com estes influenciadores, que se tornou oficialmente uma experiência de marketing adequada. Neste projeto, a estratégia de marketing de influenciadores do mercado de luxo online da empresa FARFETCH será analisada para entender a importância que esta estratégia pode ter nas empresas de moda. Uma revisão da literatura ajudará a identificar os aspetos e conceitos fundamentais desta estratégia das redes sociais. Além disso, um inquérito online sobre o uso das redes sociais e o marketing de influenciadores permitiu-nos reunir uma base de dados de opiniões sobre o assunto. Um total de 126 respostas foram recolhidas e analisadas. Este inquérito ajudou a destacar áreas que a Farfetch ainda não explorou e que poderiam ser consideradas como soluções e direções potenciais para desenvolver a sua estratégia de marketing de influenciadores no futuro. Foram apresentadas quatro ideias nesta tese: (1) A Farfetch deve investir para desenvolver relações mais fortes com os influenciadores; (2) A Farfetch deve considerar o alargamento da sua estratégia de marketing de influenciadores a novas plataformas como o Tiktok; (3) A Farfetch deve considerar o trabalho com influenciadores sustentáveis; (4) A Farfetch deve igualmente analisar os benefícios de trabalhar/criar os seus próprios influenciadores virtuais. Neste estudo, percebemos que o marketing de influenciadores é uma estratégia complexa nas redes sociais e que precisa de ser cuidadosamente estudada pelas marcas de moda para ser um grande sucesso

Augmented Realities: Fusing Consumers' Experiences and Interactions with Immersive Technologies in Physical Retail Settings

Drawing upon previous research into immersive environments and technology-enhanced stores, this exploratory study elucidates the concept of the 'augmented store' – a physical store modified to accommodate augmented reality (AR) technology. In doing so, it extends previous research conducted in experimental laboratory settings to an empirical real-world scenario. Qualitative data gathered from interviews with, and observation of, consumers using AR technology in-store are analysed to provide naturalistic understandings of interactions with, and perceptions of, a physical store enhanced with AR technology. Findings suggest that consumers appreciate the ability to experience an enhanced, more immersive store environment arising from the AR experience. They perceive interaction with the augmented store to be 'realistic' and articulated hedonic motivations as drivers for interaction in this shopping environment. The augmented store appears to stimulate brand engagement, increasing consumers' desire to shop at the retailer, providing managerial opportunities to reinforce brand positioning

Theories and Models of Teams and Groups

This article describes some of the theoretical approaches used by social scientists as well as those used by computer scientists to study the team and group phenomena. The purpose of this article is to identify ways in which these different fields can share and develop theoretical models and theoretical approaches, in an effort to gain a better understanding and further develop team and group research