Affective Interaction in Smart Environments

AbstractWe present a concept where the smart environments of the future will be able to provide ubiquitous affective communication. All the surfaces will become interactive and the furniture will display emotions. In particular, we present a first prototype that allows people to share their emotional states in a natural way. The input will be given through facial expressions and the output will be displayed in a context-aware multimodal way. Two novel output modalities are presented: a robotic painting that applies the concept of affective communication to the informative art and an RGB lamp that represents the emotions remaining in the user's peripheral attention. An observation study has been conducted during an interactive event and we report our preliminary findings in this paper

Redesigning a workshop from physical to digital:Principles for designing distributed co-design approaches

This paper presents a case study of a redesign of a physical workshop into a virtual one to illustrate the application of a set of principles for designing and running co-design online events. Such workshops require a different co-design approach to overcome the challenges of working in spatially distributed settings, such as the lack of audiovisual cues, digital skills and physical presence. This approach involves developing a new design ‘language’ that a community can understand and use in engagement projects. In this paper, we present a set of principles for planning and facilitating online events, and designing interactive resources, and the application of such principles in a redesign process of a conference workshop. The findings from the case study suggest that microlearning activities and active facilitation assisted by a technical producer can support the delivery of effective online workshops, enabling participants to achieve desired outcomes in a timely manner

Disentangling capabilities for industry 4.0 - an information systems capability perspective

Digital technologies revolutionise the manufacturing industry by connecting the physical and digital worlds. The resulting paradigm shift, referred to as Industry 4.0, impacts manufacturing processes and business models. While the ‘why’ and ‘what’ of Industry 4.0 have been extensively researched, the ‘how’ remains poorly understood. Manufacturers struggle with exploiting Industry 4.0’s full potential as a holistic understanding of required Information Systems (IS) capabilities is missing. To foster such understanding, we present a holistic IS capability framework for Industry 4.0, including primary and support capabilities. After developing the framework based on a structured literature review, we refined and evaluated it with ten Industry 4.0 experts from research and practice. We demonstrated its use with a German machinery manufacturer. In sum, we contribute to understanding and analysing IS capabilities for Industry 4.0. Our work serves as a foundation for further theorising on Industry 4.0 and for deriving theory-led design recommendations for manufacturers

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

How Do Designers Deal With Uncertainty

Uncertainty touches most aspects of life and cannot be avoided, anybody is frequently presented with situations wherein a decision must be made when he/she is uncertain of exactly how to proceed. Narrow down into Information Systems (IS) field, uncertainty could be regarded as a basic but difficult problem that every HCI designer need to deal with within their design process. The purpose of this thesis is to find out how do human-computer interaction (HCI) practitioners deal with the uncertainty in their daily work. Based on this purpose, we assume that design approaches could be the methods for the designers to deal with uncertainty. There is however very few existing research on how to deal with uncertainty. In this study, we firstly categorized the uncertainty into a logical taxonomy, also ranked four design approaches by the extent of user involvement. We interviewed five HCI practitioners in different organizations that are or were working as designers. We found that most uncertainties are resulted from their customers, which can also be the most difficult to handle by them. In order to solve uncertainty, the designers need to make a good communication with others in specific situation, and some of them also proposed other practical solutions, such as “Role Play” and “Instinct Follower”. Additionally, the designers all proposed that the relationship between uncertainty and design approaches can be weak or inexistent. Interestingly, modest user involvement can be a helper for designers to solve or avoid uncertainty in the design process

E-Learning

E-learning enables students to pace their studies according to their needs, making learning accessible to (1) people who do not have enough free time for studying - they can program their lessons according to their available schedule; (2) those far from a school (geographical issues), or the ones unable to attend classes due to some physical or medical restriction. Therefore, cultural, geographical and physical obstructions can be removed, making it possible for students to select their path and time for the learning course. Students are then allowed to choose the main objectives they are suitable to fulfill. This book regards E-learning challenges, opening a way to understand and discuss questions related to long-distance and lifelong learning, E-learning for people with special needs and, lastly, presenting case study about the relationship between the quality of interaction and the quality of learning achieved in experiences of E-learning formation

"Are You Gay?": A Queer Ethnography of Sex and Sexuality in Cairo

Focusing specifically in urban cosmopolitan Cairo during the aftermath of the alleged January 25th Revolution, this ethnographic project is an invitation to a deeper exploration of sex and sexuality in the Middle East. During the 18 days of the January 25th Revolution, media outlets worldwide discussed the historic event as not only a site of political opportunity, but also as the beginning of a sexual(ity) revolution that had the potential to transform understandings of gender and sexuality in Egypt, the “gay isues” by pointing towards the colliding assemblage of revolutions, same-sex practices, Arabness, identity construction, human rights activism, Islamic theology and cyberspaces. “Are You Gay?” conceptualizes the sexualities of Egyptian men from within the interweaving of institutions, religions, culture and histories that produce them. This thesis also deploys queer theory to queer ethnographic practice by analyzing sexual experience and deconstructing the normalized ethnographic time and space by entering fluid cyberspaces—a virtual manifestation of the forces of globalization. This project also seeks to mobilize queer theory towards the East, specifically Cairo and the Middle East, to conceptualize how sexual subjectivities are created at the nexus of encounters between Western understandings of sexuality and traditional expressions and understandings of male same sex practices in the Middle East. Lastly, by using queer theory, “Are You Gay?” seeks to open up sites of resistance through the conceptual power of queerness for what I term queer subjects in Egypt.Undergraduate honors thesis presented to the department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies