ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

Toxic Text in Personas: An Experiment on User Perceptions

When algorithms create personas from social media data, the personas can become noxious via automatically including toxic comments. To investigate how users perceive such personas, we conducted a 2 × 2 user experiment with 496 participants that showed participants toxic and non-toxic versions of data-driven personas. We found that participants gave higher credibility, likability, empathy, similarity, and willingness-to-use scores to non-toxic personas. Also, gender affected toxicity perceptions in that female toxic data-driven personas scored lower in likability, empathy, and similarity than their male counterparts. Female participants gave higher perceptions scores to non-toxic personas and lower scores to toxic personas than male participants. We discuss implications from our research for designing data-driven personas

Toxic text in personas: An experiment on user perceptions

When algorithms create personas from social media data, the personas can become noxious via automatically including toxic comments. To investigate how users perceive such personas, we conducted a 2 × 2 user experiment with 496 participants that showed participants toxic and non-toxic versions of data-driven personas. We found that participants gave higher credibility, likability, empathy, similarity, and willingness-to-use scores to non-toxic personas. Also, gender affected toxicity perceptions in that female toxic data-driven personas scored lower in likability, empathy, and similarity than their male counterparts. Female participants gave higher perceptions scores to non-toxic personas and lower scores to toxic personas than male participants. We discuss implications from our research for designing data-driven personas.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An aesthetic for sustainable interactions in product-service systems?

Copyright @ 2012 Greenleaf PublishingEco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability. However the application of this concept is still very limited because its implementation and diffusion is hindered by several barriers (cultural, corporate and regulative ones). The paper investigates the barriers that affect the attractiveness and acceptation of eco-efficient PSS alternatives, and opens the debate on the aesthetic of eco-efficient PSS, and the way in which aesthetic could enhance some specific inner qualities of this kinds of innovations. Integrating insights from semiotics, the paper outlines some first research hypothesis on how the aesthetic elements of an eco-efficient PSS could facilitate user attraction, acceptation and satisfaction

Design and semantics of form and movement : DeSForM 2007

A strong theme that has emerged in our previous two conferences in the importance of narrative to the process of generating, developing and communicating new modalities of interaction between people, things and environments. Our researches have identified aspects of importance in the design and have begun to establish orders of, priority of approach and representation for these aspects as components of interaction. We have begun to grapple with the growth in the complexity of the interaction design process for truly ‘animated’ functionality in products, especially where this manifests itself as apparent behavioural characteristics resident in or portrayed by products. The findings and experience of researchers is that this increase in complexity is likely to be exponential compared to the rigours relating to the resolution of static physical product configuration or even system operated product with screen based interfaces. The emerging sense is that narrative in the process is essential to bring meaning and to ‘touch’ our humanity or connect with human experience. ‘The science of the artificial in conversation with the poetics of human experience’! Through this conference we will once again engage in presentations, debate and demonstrations on these issues. In this respect we, the conference co-chairs, have sought to bring together researchers from academia, industry and professional design practice and related disciplines connected with interactive product service and system development to share our latest thinking in the field, to asses its outcomes and to identify further research questions, opportunities and territories for future investigation and exploration

Design and semantics of form and movement : DeSForM 2007

A strong theme that has emerged in our previous two conferences in the importance of narrative to the process of generating, developing and communicating new modalities of interaction between people, things and environments. Our researches have identified aspects of importance in the design and have begun to establish orders of, priority of approach and representation for these aspects as components of interaction. We have begun to grapple with the growth in the complexity of the interaction design process for truly ‘animated’ functionality in products, especially where this manifests itself as apparent behavioural characteristics resident in or portrayed by products. The findings and experience of researchers is that this increase in complexity is likely to be exponential compared to the rigours relating to the resolution of static physical product configuration or even system operated product with screen based interfaces. The emerging sense is that narrative in the process is essential to bring meaning and to ‘touch’ our humanity or connect with human experience. ‘The science of the artificial in conversation with the poetics of human experience’! Through this conference we will once again engage in presentations, debate and demonstrations on these issues. In this respect we, the conference co-chairs, have sought to bring together researchers from academia, industry and professional design practice and related disciplines connected with interactive product service and system development to share our latest thinking in the field, to asses its outcomes and to identify further research questions, opportunities and territories for future investigation and exploration

Assisted Lows: Collaboratively Finding Ways to Support T1D Patients During Hypoglycemia Episodes

This research focuses on how hypoglycemia episodes -- low blood sugar events -- spark specific communication needs in Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) patients. As a 22 year T1D veteran, I've personally faced challenges when needing, requesting and receiving an adequate response to help me overcome an episode. This research is born out of the knowledge that other people want to genuinely help, and aims to close the gap between a failure of knowing 'what to do' and effective actions

Persona based marketing strategies:creation of personas through data analytics

Abstract. In this study, we purposed a novel approach of using data analytics for persona generation. We design a process which can be adoptable for companies to enhance their marketing efforts, specifically, enabled them to focus real potential audience. To carry out our research we use company’s sales data and digital analytics to generate consumer personas. These personas can be used in various actions like content creation, UX designing and creation of marketing strategies. The research focuses on the development of marketing strategies and analyzes the impact of those marketing strategies on conversion rate. Previously researchers worked on customer segmentation by using customer data from Google Analyticsand data originated from social media analytics, however, this research focuses on giving the action-based approach to companies in order to find out their real customers and enhance their conversion rate by using all means of analytical data i.e. companies own sales data, social media analytics, and Google Analytics. This study adopts persona development to recognize and define potential customers. Personas are fictional but with the help of data, we can develop them more closely to a real audience. The rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape required more and more technicalities to drive result-oriented marketing strategies. In this study, we employed a qualitative methodology, which includes designing a process (framework) from digital data analytics. Some of the features of personas were extracted from data analytics obtained from Facebook insights, Google Analytics, and company’s sales database while some of the qualitative feature like Bio, motivation and taglines of personas were extracted from specially designed workshop with people from company’s sales and marketing department. This research is conducted in a company named “Quieton Oy” and the results of this research depicts the effectiveness of the process, its validity and the reliability of the process. The main objective of this thesis is to enable the creation of consumers personas based on data analytics and the efficient utilization of those personas for defining the marketing strategies

Writing user personas with Large Language Models: Testing phase 6 of a Thematic Analysis of semi-structured interviews

The goal of this paper is establishing if we can satisfactorily perform a Thematic Analysis (TA) of semi-structured interviews using a Large Language Model (more precisely GPT3.5-Turbo). Building on previous work by the author, which established an embryonal process for conducting a TA with the model, this paper will perform a further analysis and then cover the last phase of a TA (phase 6), which entails the writing up of the result. This phase was not covered by the previous work. In particular, the focus will be on using the results of a TA done with the LLM on a dataset of user interviews, for writing user personas, with the model building on the TA to produce the personas narratives. User personas are models of real users, usually built from a data analysis like interviews with a sample of users. User personas are tools often used in User Centered Design processes. The paper shows that the model can build basic user personas with an acceptable quality deriving them from themes, and that the model can serve for the generation of ideas for user personas

Blurring the Lines Between the Digital and Physical: Designing a User-Interface to Create the 21st Century Town Square

Metaphors are instrumental to facilitate learning, and to the formation and maintenance of new ideas and concepts, especially in design thinking. This paper discusses the relationship of a specific metaphor in the design process, as well as in design outcomes of the collaborative project titled SQWhere. The thesis explores how a town square metaphor functioned as a creative thinking methodology and research tool throughout the design process. This metaphor provided novel ways of looking at the complex phenomena of digital social networks and human agency. Ultimately, this provides a detailed example of how a metaphorical approach to exploring a concept can guide a user-centered design process in Interaction Design. SQWhere, a mobile storytelling application for the urban pedestrian will connect people in real time and real space in environments. The SQWhere application for mobile phones will enable social interactions and information exchange through location-based storytelling— utilizing video, audio, images, and text. SQWhere will make connections happen at the grassroots level creating an environment of peer-to-peer knowledge exchange— storytelling.MetaphorTown squareLocatio