Dynamics of Affordances and Implications for Design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances

Optimal learning spaces: design implications for primary schools

Review guide of the design evidence for primary school

Restructuring Medicare's Benefit Design: Implications for Beneficiaries and Spending

Estimates the effects of options for restructuring Medicare's fee-for-service benefit design, including a $550 deductible for Parts A and B, a 20 percent coinsurance on nearly all services, and a$5,500 limit on cost sharing for Medicare-covered services

Cramér-Rao sensitivity limits for astronomical instruments: implications for interferometer design

Multiple-telescope interferometry for high-angular-resolution astronomical imaging in the optical–IR–far-IR bands is currently a topic of great scientific interest. The fundamentals that govern the sensitivity of direct-detection instruments and interferometers are reviewed, and the rigorous sensitivity limits imposed by the Cramér–Rao theorem are discussed. Numerical calculations of the Cramér–Rao limit are carried out for a simple example, and the results are used to support the argument that interferometers that have more compact instantaneous beam patterns are more sensitive, since they extract more spatial information from each detected photon. This argument favors arrays with a larger number of telescopes, and it favors all-on-one beam-combining methods as compared with pairwise combination

Embracing additive manufacture: implications for foot and ankle orthosis design

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The design of foot and ankle orthoses is currently limited by the methods used to fabricate the devices, particularly in terms of geometric freedom and potential to include innovative new features. Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, where objects are constructed via a series of sub-millimetre layers of a substrate material, may present the opportunity to overcome these limitations and allow novel devices to be produced that are highly personalised for the individual, both in terms of fit and functionality.</p> <p>Two novel devices, a foot orthosis (FO) designed to include adjustable elements to relieve pressure at the metatarsal heads, and an ankle foot orthosis (AFO) designed to have adjustable stiffness levels in the sagittal plane, were developed and fabricated using AM. The devices were then tested on a healthy participant to determine if the intended biomechanical modes of action were achieved.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The adjustable, pressure relieving FO was found to be able to significantly reduce pressure under the targeted metatarsal heads. The AFO was shown to have distinct effects on ankle kinematics which could be varied by adjusting the stiffness level of the device.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results presented here demonstrate the potential design freedom made available by AM, and suggest that it may allow novel personalised orthotic devices to be produced which are beyond the current state of the art.</p

Supply chain implications of sustainable design strategies for electronics products

Increasing legislative and consumer pressures on manufacturers to improve sustainability necessitates that manufacturers consider the overall life cycle and not be scope restricted in creating products. Product strategies to improve sustainability have design implications as many of the decisions made during the design stage will then determine the environmental performance of the final product. Coordination across the supply chain is potentially beneficial as products with improved energy efficiency can be better realised. This paper examines traditional product provision and proposes a sustainable product design process using life cycle assessment (LCA) at key points, as these decision points can provide opportunities for environmental improvements of products. Case studies of consumer and industry products in the electronics sector are examined in terms of improving sustainability by reviewing product architecture and technology solutions. This paper proposes methods and analytical models to better understand sustainable design strategies for manufacturing firms and thus aid manufacturers during the earliest stages of product planning to consider alternative product development approaches which are more sustainable

Design Implications for Technology-Mediated Audience Participation in Live Music

Mobile and sensor-based technologies have created new interaction design possibilities for technology-mediated au- dience participation in live music performance. However, there is little if any work in the literature that systematically identifies and characterises design issues emerging from this novel class of multi-dimensional interactive performance systems. As an early contribution towards addressing this gap in knowledge, we present the analysis of a detailed sur- vey of technology-mediated audience participation in live music, from the perspective of two key stakeholder groups - musicians and audiences. Results from the survey of over two hundred spectators and musicians are presented, along with descriptive analysis and discussion. These results are used to identify emerging design issues, such as expressive- ness, communication and appropriateness. Implications for interaction design are considered. While this study focuses on musicians and audiences, lessons are noted for diverse stakeholders, including composers, performers, interaction designers, media artists and engineers