Tangible user interfaces : past, present and future directions

In the last two decades, Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) have emerged as a new interface type that interlinks the digital and physical worlds. Drawing upon users' knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, TUIs show a potential to enhance the way in which people interact with and leverage digital information. However, TUI research is still in its infancy and extensive research is required in or- der to fully understand the implications of tangible user interfaces, to develop technologies that further bridge the digital and the physical, and to guide TUI design with empirical knowledge. This paper examines the existing body of work on Tangible User In- terfaces. We start by sketching the history of tangible user interfaces, examining the intellectual origins of this field. We then present TUIs in a broader context, survey application domains, and review frame- works and taxonomies. We also discuss conceptual foundations of TUIs including perspectives from cognitive sciences, phycology, and philoso- phy. Methods and technologies for designing, building, and evaluating TUIs are also addressed. Finally, we discuss the strengths and limita- tions of TUIs and chart directions for future research

Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning:Foregrounding lived experience and community voices in studies of cities with participatory and digital visual methods

“Expanding Data Imaginaries in Urban Planning” synthesizes more than three years of industrial research conducted within Gehl and the Techno–Anthropology Lab at Aalborg University. Through practical experiments with social media images, digital photovoice, and participatory mapmaking, the project explores how visual materials created by citizens can be used within a digital and participatory methodology to reconfigure the empirical ground of data-driven urbanism. Drawing on a data feminist framework, the project uses visual research to elevate community voices and situate urban issues in lived experiences. As a Science and Technology Studies project, the PhD also utilizes its industrial position as an opportunity to study Gehl’s practices up close, unpacking collectively held narratives and visions that form a particular “data imaginary” and contribute to the production and perpetuation of the role of data in urban planning. The dissertation identifies seven epistemological commitments that shape the data imaginary at Gehl and act as discursive closures within their practice. To illustrate how planners might expand on these, the dissertation uses its own data experiments as speculative demonstrations of how to make alternative modes of knowing cities possible through participatory and digital visual methods

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

Exploring The Nature Of The Co-emergence Of Students’ Representational Fluency And Functional Thinking

Abstract In this dissertation, I explore ways to support secondary school students’ meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. Specifically, I investigate how students co-developed representational fluency (RF) and functional thinking (FT), when they gained meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. I also characterize students’ co-emergence of RF and FT on each representation (e.g., a graph, a symbolic equation, and a table) and across multiple representations. To accomplish these goals, I employed a design research methodology: a teaching experiment with eight Turkish-American secondary school students in an after-school context at a Turkish Community Center. I constructed the design principles and design elements for the study by networking two distinct domains of literature—representations and quantitative reasoning—to support students’ meaningful learning. I conducted ongoing and retrospective analyses on the enhanced transcriptions of small- and whole-group interactions. The analyses revealed a learning-ecology framework that supported secondary school students’ meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. The learning-ecology framework consisted of three components: enacted task characteristics, teacher pedagogical moves, and socio-mathematical norms. Furthermore, the findings showed that students employed two types of reasoning when they created and connected representations of quantities and the relationships between them: static thinking and lateral thinking. Static thinking is recalling a learned fact to represent a quantitative relationship with no attention to how quantities covary on a representation, while lateral thinking is a creative way of thinking wherein students conceive of concrete representations of functions as an emergent quantitative relationship. The findings also showed that students’ co-emergence of RF and FT can be operationalized into four levels starting from lesser sophisticated reasoning to greater sophisticated reasoning. Level 0 is a disconnection, level 1 is a partial connection, level 2 is a connection and level 3 is flexible a connection between students’ RF and FT. The dissertation informs teachers and the mathematics education community by (a) reporting and verifying the learning-ecology framework that supported students’ meaningful understanding of quadratic functions; and (b) characterizing students’ co-emergence of RF and FT within and across multiple representations

Exploring the Nature of the Co-emergence of Students\u27 Representational Fluency and Functional Thinking

Abstract In this dissertation, I explore ways to support secondary school students\u27 meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. Specifically, I investigate how students co-developed representational fluency (RF) and functional thinking (FT), when they gained meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. I also characterize students\u27 co-emergence of RF and FT on each representation (e.g., a graph, a symbolic equation, and a table) and across multiple representations. To accomplish these goals, I employed a design research methodology: a teaching experiment with eight Turkish-American secondary school students in an after-school context at a Turkish Community Center. I constructed the design principles and design elements for the study by networking two distinct domains of literature—representations and quantitative reasoning—to support students\u27 meaningful learning. I conducted ongoing and retrospective analyses on the enhanced transcriptions of small- and whole-group interactions. The analyses revealed a learning-ecology framework that supported secondary school students\u27 meaningful understanding of quadratic functions. The learning-ecology framework consisted of three components: enacted task characteristics, teacher pedagogical moves, and socio-mathematical norms. Furthermore, the findings showed that students employed two types of reasoning when they created and connected representations of quantities and the relationships between them: static thinking and lateral thinking. Static thinking is recalling a learned fact to represent a quantitative relationship with no attention to how quantities covary on a representation, while lateral thinking is a creative way of thinking wherein students conceive of concrete representations of functions as an emergent quantitative relationship. The findings also showed that students\u27 co-emergence of RF and FT can be operationalized into four levels starting from lesser sophisticated reasoning to greater sophisticated reasoning. Level 0 is a disconnection, level 1 is a partial connection, level 2 is a connection and level 3 is flexible a connection between students\u27 RF and FT. The dissertation informs teachers and the mathematics education community by (a) reporting and verifying the learning-ecology framework that supported students\u27 meaningful understanding of quadratic functions; and (b) characterizing students\u27 co-emergence of RF and FT within and across multiple representations