Social Transparency in Enterprise Information Systems: Peculiarities and Assessment Factors

Social transparency within an organisation refers to the intentional sharing by individuals of information relating to themselves and their group to others in the workplace. This includes announcingpersonal interests, activity status, prioritiesandpersonal achievements. Such transparency is typically intendedto increase relatedness, motivation and trust amongst colleagues.Social networking features are being embedded within organisational information systems,allowing an online version of social transparency.An ad-hoc implementation of such transparency can poseissues such as information overload, motivating unwantedgrouping amongst colleagues and increasingpressureto perform in a certain manner. This results in organisational problems such asreduced productivity, unproductive competition and high turnover rates. Our ultimate aim isto address these issues by proposing an assessmentmethod for online social transparency to detect and minimise its negative impact on employees and organisations. In this paper, we report on empirical study results and present (1) a set of peculiarities of implementing online transparency in enterprise information systems and (2) a set of essential factors that relate to the assessment process

Bodily resonance: Exploring the effects of virtual embodiment on pain modulation and the fostering of empathy toward pain sufferers

Globally, around 20% of people suffer from chronic pain, an illness that cannot be cured and has been linked to numerous physical and mental conditions. According to the BioPsychoSocial model of pain, chronic pain presents patients with biological, psychological, and social challenges and difficulties. Immersive virtual reality (VR) has shown great promise in helping people manage acute and chronic pain, and facilitating empathy of vulnerable populations. Therefore, the first research trajectory of this dissertation targets chronic pain patients’ biological and psychological sufferings to provide VR analgesia, and the second research trajectory targets healthy people to build empathy and reduce patients’ social stigma. Researchers have taken the attention distraction approach to study how acute pain patients can manage their condition in VR, while the virtual embodiment approach has mostly been studied with healthy people exposed to pain stimulus. My first research trajectory aimed to understand how embodied characteristics affect users’ sense of embodiment and pain. Three studies have been carried out with healthy people under heat pain, complex regional pain syndrome patients, and phantom limb pain patients. My findings indicate that for all three studies, when users see a healthy or intact virtual body or body parts, they experience significant reductions in their self-reported pain ratings. Additionally, I found that the appearance of a virtual body has a significant impact on pain, whereas the virtual body’s motions do not. Despite the prevalence of chronic pain, public awareness of it is remarkably low, and pain patients commonly experience social stigma. Thus, having an embodied perspective of chronic pain patients is critical to understand their social stigma. Although there is a growing interest in using embodied VR to foster empathy towards gender or racial bias, few studies have focused on people with chronic pain. My second trajectory explored how researchers can foster empathy towards pain patients in embodied VR. To conclude, this dissertation uncovers the role of VR embodiment and dissects embodied characteristics in pain modulation and empathy generation. Finally, I summarized a novel conceptual design framework for embodied VR applications with design recommendations and future research directions

Remote Non-invasive Stereoscopic Imaging of Blood Vessels: First In-vivo Results of a New Multispectral Contrast Enhancement Technology

We describe a contactless optical technique selectively enhancing superficial blood vessels below variously pigmented intact human skin by combining images in different spectral bands. Two CMOS-cameras, with apochromatic lenses and dual-band LED-arrays, simultaneously streamed Left (L) and Right (R) image data to a dual-processor PC. Both cameras captured color images within the visible range (VIS, 400–780 nm) and grey-scale images within the near infrared range (NIR, 910–920 nm) by sequentially switching between LED-array emission bands. Image-size-settings of 1280 × 1024 for VIS & 640 × 512 for NIR produced 12 cycles/s (1 cycle = 1 VIS L&R-pair + 1 NIR L&R-pair). Decreasing image-size-settings (640 × 512 for VIS and 320 × 256 for NIR) increased camera-speed to 25 cycles/s. Contrasts from below the tissue surface were algorithmically distinguished from surface shadows, reflections, etc. Thus blood vessels were selectively enhanced and back-projected into the stereoscopic VIS-color-image using either a 3D-display or conventional shutter glasses. As a first usability reconnaissance we applied this custom-built mobile stereoscopic camera for several clinical settings: • blood withdrawal; • vein inspection in dark skin; • vein detection through iodide; • varicose vein and nevi pigmentosum inspection. Our technique improves blood vessel visualization compared to the naked eye, and supports depth perception