User experience, performance, and social acceptability: usable multimodal mobile interaction

This thesis explores the social acceptability of multimodal interaction in public places with respect to acceptance, adoption and appropriation. Previous work in multimodal interaction has mainly focused on recognition and detection issues without thoroughly considering the willingness of users to adopt these kinds of interactions in their everyday lives. This thesis presents a novel approach to user experience that is theoretically motivated by phenomenology, practiced with mixed-methods, and analysed based on dramaturgical metaphors. In order to explore the acceptance of multimodal interfaces, this thesis presents three studies that look at users’ initial reactions to multimodal interaction techniques: a survey study focusing on gestures, an on-the-street user study, and a follow-up survey study looking at gesture and voice-based interaction. The investigation of multimodal interaction adoption is explored through two studies: an in situ user study of a performative interface and a focus group study using experience prototypes. This thesis explores the appropriation of multimodal interaction by demonstrating the complete design process of a multimodal interface using the performative approach to user experience presented in this thesis. Chapter 3 looks at users’ initial reactions to and acceptance of multimodal interactions. The results of the first survey explored location and audience as factors the influence how individuals behave in public places. Participants in the on-the-street study described the desirable visual aspects of the gestures as playful, cool, or embarrassing aspects of interaction and how gestures could be hidden as everyday actions. These results begin to explain why users accepted or rejected the gestures from the first survey. The second survey demonstrated that the presence of familiar spectators made interaction significantly more acceptable. This result indicates that performative interaction could be made more acceptable by interfaces that support collaborative or social interaction. Chapter 4 explores how users place interactions into a usability context for use in real world settings. In the first user study, participants took advantage of the wide variety of possible performances, and created a wide variety of input, from highly performative to hidden actions, based on location. The ability of this interface to support flexible interactions allowed users to demonstrate the the purposed of their actions differently based on the immediately co-located spectators. Participants in the focus group study discussed how they would go about placing multimodal interactions into real world contexts, using three approaches: relationship to the device, personal meaning, and relationship to functionality. These results demonstrate how users view interaction within a usability context and how that might affect social acceptability. Chapter 5 examines appropriation of multimodal interaction through the completion of an entire design process. The results of an initial survey were used as a baseline of comparison from which to design the following focus group study. Participants in the focus groups had similar motives for accepting multimodal interactions, although the ways in which these were expressed resulted in very different preferences. The desire to use technology in a comfortable and satisfying way meant different things in these different settings. During the ‘in the wild’ user study, participants adapted performance in order to make interaction acceptable in different contexts. In some cases, performance was hidden in public places or shared with familiar spectators in order to successfully incorporate interaction into public places

Eyes-Off Physically Grounded Mobile Interaction

This thesis explores the possibilities, challenges and future scope for eyes-off, physically grounded mobile interaction. We argue that for interactions with digital content in physical spaces, our focus should not be constantly and solely on the device we are using, but fused with an experience of the places themselves, and the people who inhabit them. Through the design, development and evaluation of a series ofnovel prototypes we show the benefits of a more eyes-off mobile interaction style.Consequently, we are able to outline several important design recommendations for future devices in this area.The four key contributing chapters of this thesis each investigate separate elements within this design space. We begin by evaluating the need for screen-primary feedback during content discovery, showing how a more exploratory experience can be supported via a less-visual interaction style. We then demonstrate how tactilefeedback can improve the experience and the accuracy of the approach. In our novel tactile hierarchy design we add a further layer of haptic interaction, and show how people can be supported in finding and filtering content types, eyes-off. We then turn to explore interactions that shape the ways people interact with aphysical space. Our novel group and solo navigation prototypes use haptic feedbackfor a new approach to pedestrian navigation. We demonstrate how variations inthis feedback can support exploration, giving users autonomy in their navigationbehaviour, but with an underlying reassurance that they will reach the goal.Our final contributing chapter turns to consider how these advanced interactionsmight be provided for people who do not have the expensive mobile devices that areusually required. We extend an existing telephone-based information service to support remote back-of-device inputs on low-end mobiles. We conclude by establishingthe current boundaries of these techniques, and suggesting where their usage couldlead in the future

The Machine as Art/ The Machine as Artist

The articles collected in this volume from the two companion Arts Special Issues, “The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)” and “The Machine as Artist (in the 21st Century)”, represent a unique scholarly resource: analyses by artists, scientists, and engineers, as well as art historians, covering not only the current (and astounding) rapprochement between art and technology but also the vital post-World War II period that has led up to it; this collection is also distinguished by several of the contributors being prominent individuals within their own fields, or as artists who have actually participated in the still unfolding events with which it is concerne

News from Now/here: Ed Dorn, Lawrence, Kansas, & the Poetics of Migration - 1965-1970

The stylistic variety of Edward Dorn's poetic career, from the 1950s through the 1990s, has been criticized as lacking cohesion, and deemed his work's fundamental shortcoming. The earlier poetry's somber lyricism has been pitted against the caustic epigrams of the later writing, and these modes are set on either side of Gunslinger, Dorn's mock-epic of the "sicksties," which has received disproportionate scholarly attention, to the detriment of Dorn's manifold, contemporaneous work. While formal experimentation and the development of a multi-voiced perspective might provide a context for approaching Dorn's stylistic diversity, instead those objectives have been critically cemented to an embittered tendentiousness, a resistance, insufficient to address either the biography or the writing. Due to the fragmentary displacements of these assumptions, this thesis seeks an integrated reading that celebrates, rather than condemns, discrepancies in Dorn's unmoored political/poetic identity. Through unpublished archival materials, it reexamines the Gunslinger era--part of which Dorn spent among the countercultural tumult in Lawrence, Kansas--when Dorn's interest in geography expanded to address both "the landscape of the imagination," and the inevitable constraints of an ideologically-infused language

The Markan matrix (a literary-structural analysis of the Gospel of Mark)

This thesis takes account of the basic need, in regard to all study of Mark's Gospel, of an understanding of his outline plan, and his presentational-method. A thorough-going, purely literary-structural analysis is tackled. It is a task that has been waiting to be done in this era of modern biblical criticism. In the Introduction, it is recognised that through the years investigative methodologies have been developed, and that today still more are being added to the list. That fundamental questions remain unanswered, however, is also recognised. On matters of Mark's leading idea, and his theological, literary and compositional abilities, all these methodologies have led so far only to a bewildering increase in contradictory views. An analysis of the text is needed still. The cultural and historical context of the Gospel, therefore is addressed afresh. Underlying issues regarding the functionings of the 'new' literary genre of Gospel are raised. The particular requirements of a plan and presentational method are also explored. Against this backdrop, the primary importance of "Days" in Mark's presentation is introduced, and Mark's "Day" is defined. Literary-structural analysis begins with identifying the signals of primary structure. It develops as Mark's construction method becomes clear. In chapters 2 to 7, the text of the Gospel, as it stands, is examined and analysed fully. The gospel narrative (1.21-16.8) is found to consist of twenty-eight days which are presented in four Series of seven "Days". Each Series represents a Stage in the Mission of Jesus. Contrary to accepted scholarship, the Prologue is defined as the first twenty verses (1.1-20), and a reduced "longer ending" of nine-and-a-half verses (16.9-16,19,20a) is deemed to be representative, in its form and in the majority of its details, of an Epilogue which Mark himself created with the Prologue as a frame to his Gospel