Seesaw: An Interactive Display To Facilitate Social Interaction

This paper introduces Seesaw an interactive environment prototype that assists children to conquer common/potential fear during social communication in order to facilitate interactions that provide enhanced group-learning activities. Based on the games studies which emphasize children's psycho-behavioral and cognitive aspects, Seesaw aims at lowering the mental fears among 3-8 year old children, hence facilitating their social behavior. This prototype uniquely combines virtual reality and multi-touch technology. The design has been based mainly on the methodologies of tangible interaction design

Assessment of students’ cognitive–affective states in learning within a computer-based environment: Effects on performance

Students’ cognitive-affective states are human elements that are crucial in the design of computer-based learning (CBL) systems.This paper presents an investigation of students’ cognitiveaffective states (i.e., engaged concentration, anxiety, and boredom) when they learn a particular course within CBL systems.The results of past studies by other researchers suggested that certain cognitive-affective states; particularly boredom and anxiety could negatively influence learning in a computer-based environment.This paper investigates the types of cognitive-affective state that students experience when they learn through a specifi c instance of CBL (i.e., a content sequencing system). Further, research was carried to understand whether the cognitive-affective states would infl uence students’ performance within the environment.A one-way between-subject-design experiment was conducted utilizing four instruments (i) CBL systems known as IT-Tutor for learning computer network, (ii) a pre-test, (iii) a post-test, and (iv) self-report inventory to capture the students’ cognitive-affective states. A cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis were employed to identify and classify the students’ cognitiveaffective states.Students were classifi ed according to their prior knowledge to element the effects of it on performance.Then,non-parametric statistical tests were conducted on different pairs of cluster of the cognitive-affective states and prior knowledge to determine differences on students’ performance. The results of this study suggested that all the three cognitive-affective states were experienced by the students. The cognitive-affective states were found to have positive effects on the students’ performance.This study revealed that disengaged cognitive-affective states, particularly boredom can improve learning performance for lowprior knowledge students

Multimodality for Passive Experience: Effects of Visual, Auditory, Vibration and Draught Stimuli on Sense of Presence

Adequate use of multimodal stimuli plays a crucial role in help forming the sense of presence within a virtual environment. While most of the presence research attempts to engage more sensory modalities to induce a higher sense of presence, this paper investigates the relevance of each sensory modality and different combinations on the subjective sense of presence using a specifically designed scenario of a passive experience. We chose a neutral test scenario of “waiting at a train station while a train is passing by” to avoid the potential influence of story narrative on mental presence and replicated realistic multimodal stimuli that are highly relevant to our test setting. All four stimuli -visual, auditory, vibration, and draught -with 16 possibilities of combinations were systematically evaluated with 24 participants. The evaluation was performed on one crucial aspect of presence –“realness” to reflect user presence in general. The perceived realism value was assessed using a scalometer. The findings of main effects indicate that the auditory stimuli had the most significant contribution in creating the sense of presence. The results of interaction effects suggest the impact of draught stimuli is significant in relation to other stimuli -visual and auditory. Also, the gender effects revealed that the sense of presence reported by female participants is influenced by more factors than merely adding more sensory modalities

Assessment of student's cognitive-affective states in learning within a computer-based environment: Effects on performance

Students’ cognitive-affective states are human-elements that are crucial in the design of computer-based learning (CBL) systems.This paper presents an investigation of students’ cognitive affective states (i.e., engaged concentration, anxiety, and boredom) when they learn a particular course within CBL systems.The results of past studies by other researchers suggested that certain cognitive-affective states; particularly boredom and anxiety could negatively influence learning in a computer-based environment.This paper investigates the types of cognitive-affective state that students experience when they learn through a specific instance of CBL (i.e., a content sequencing system).Further, research was carried to understand whether the cognitive-affective states would influence students’ performance within the environment. A one-way between-subject-design experiment was conducted utilizing four instruments (i) CBL systems known as IT-Tutor for learning computer network, (ii) a pre-test, (iii) a post-test, and (iv) self-report inventory to capture the students’ cognitive-affective states. A cluster analysis and discriminant function analysis were employed to identify and classify the students’ cognitive affective states. Students were classified according to their prior knowledge to element the effects of it on performance. Then, non-parametric statistical tests were conducted on different pairs of cluster of the cognitive-affective states and prior knowledge to determine differences on students’ performance.The results of this study suggested that all the three cognitive-affective states were experienced by the students.The cognitive-affective states were found to have positive effects on the students’ performance. This study revealed that disengaged cognitive-affective states, particularly boredom can improve learning performance for low prior knowledge students

How to behave as Alice in Wonderland–about boredom and curiosity

In the context of cultural computing, we created a mixed reality environment that influences user affect and evokes predefined user behaviour. The theoretical challenge is applying persuasive design to virtual and augmented reality. Based on begin of the story ‘Alice’s in adventures in Wonderland’ users play the role of the character Alice in a park scene (the first stage out of a total of six). The mixed reality environment ALICE is designed for users to experience the same sequence of emotional and behavioural states as Alice did in her quest through surreal locations and events. This particular study addresses the sequential arousal and interdependencies of two drives: boredom and curiosity. Based on literature, we introduce general design guidelines for arousing boredom and explain how boredom can result in curiosity. We report on the design and redesign of the park environment with the entrance to the rabbit hole. In an experiment effectively arousing boredom can be demonstrated. Based on the experimental results we redesigned the park environment. In a second experiment effectively arousing curiosity was shown so that the particular sequence of events (e.g. appearance of the ‘White rabbit’ robot) had a significant positive influence on the arousal of curiosity and on triggering and guiding intended user behaviour

The Inspiration of Boredom: An Investigation of the Relationship Between Boredom and Creativity

The present thesis investigated the novel question of whether boredom could inspire creativity through two studies, the first focusing on trait creativity and the second on creative performance. The results reflect boredom and creativity’s complex, potentially null relationship. Study 1 found that trait boredom, controlling for overall personality structure, was not associated with creative personality. Study 2 found that neither state boredom nor the interaction between state and trait boredom was predictive of creative performance. Trait boredom, controlling for overall personality structure, was a positive predictor of curiosity (Study 1), and curiosity in turn was found to be a positive predictor of creative performance (Study 2), suggesting a potential mediated relationship. Future work exploring this possibility is encouraged. Researchers exploring the relationship between boredom and creativity are also urged to assess arousal and regulatory focus. Finally, work exploring multiple, potentially interacting components of creativity–particularly rater characteristics–is proposed

Really Boring Art

There is little question as to whether there is good boring art, though its existence raises a number of questions for both the philosophy of art and the philosophy of emotions. How can boredom ever be a desideratum of art? How can our standing commitments concerning the nature of aesthetic experience and artistic value accommodate the existence of boring art? How can being bored constitute an appropriate mode of engagement with a work of art as a work of art? More broadly, how can there be works of art whose very success requires the experience of boredom? Our goal in this paper is threefold. After offering a brief survey of kinds of boring art, we: i) derive a set of questions that we argue constitutes the philosophical problem of boring art; ii) elaborate an empirically informed theory of boredom that furnishes the philosophical problem with a deeper sense of the affect at the heart of the phenomenon; and iii) conclude by offering and defending a solution to the problem that explains why and how artworks might wish to make the experience of boredom key to their aesthetic and artistic success

Design for nysgjerrighet: Et virkemiddel for å fremme unge pasienters engasjement i egen helserett

For at dagens ungdom og fremtidens voksne skal kunne benytte seg av sitt fullstendige helse- og omsorgstilbud, forutsettes det at de kjenner sin helserett. Dette er et komplisert fagfelt som kan være vanskelig og tungt å tilnærme seg. Målet for denne studien er å finne ut hvordan man kan designe for nysgjerrighet. Bakgrunnen for dette er at nysgjerrighet kan fremme motivasjon til å tilegne seg ny kunnskap når interessen uteblir, og kan potensielt brukes som et strategisk virkemiddel i design. Studien forespeiler en helserettslig nettside for ungdom, hvor designet støtter brukerens nysgjerrighet og øker engasjement til å utforske og involvere seg i sin helserett. Med deltakende design og forskning gjennom design som tilnærming, har det blitt gjennomført workshoper med designaktiviteter i samarbeid med 8 deltakere fra ungdomsrådet ved Ahus. I workshopene har det blitt brukt prototyper for å utforske deltakernes opplevelse av nysgjerrighet gjennom design. Resultatene viser at et oppsiktsvekkende design som fremstår som relevant for brukeren og som skaper tillit til å kunne anvende nettsiden slik som ønsket, har potensiale til å støtte brukerens nysgjerrighet. Design for nysgjerrighet handler om å oppnå balanse mellom ulike uttrykk i designet. Denne balansen er avhengig av hvem brukerne av designet er og hva som er formålet til designet. Resultatene brukes som grunnlag for å utforme prinsipper for å designe for nysgjerrighet. Prinsippene er et bidrag til HCI-forskning og –praksis, da disse kan potensielt brukes som veiledning i fremtidige designprosjekter eller brukes videre i forskning på design for bestemte brukeropplevelser