Designing meaningful products in the digital age: How users value their technological possessions

© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. Devices such as phones, laptops and tablets have become central to the ways in which many people communicate with others, conduct business and spend their leisure time. This type of product uniquely contains both physical and digital components that affect how they are perceived and valued by users. This article investigates the nature of attachment in the context of technological possessions to better understand ways in which designers can create devices that are meaningful and kept for longer. Findings from our study of the self-reported associations and meaningfulness of technological possessions revealed that the digital contents of these possessions were often the primary source of meaning. Technological possessions were frequently perceived as systems of products rather than as singular devices. We identified several design opportunities for materialising the associations ascribed to the digital information contained within technological products to more meaningfully integrate their physical and digital components

Ontology-based information extraction from learning management systems

In this work we present a system for information extraction from Learning Management Systems. This system is ontology-based. It retrieves information according to the structure of the ontology to populate the ontology. We graphically present statistics about the ontology data. These statistics present latent knowledge which is difficult to see in the traditional Learning Management System. To answer questions about the ontology, a question answering system was developed using Natural Language Processing in the conversion of the natural language question into an ontology query language; Sumário: Extração de Informação de Sistemas de Gestão para Educação Usando Ontologias Neste dissertação apresentamos um sistema de extracção de informação de sistemas de gestão para educação (Learning Management Systems). Este sistema é baseado em ontologias e extrai informação de acordo com a estrutura da ontologia para a popular. Também permite apresentar graficamente algumas estatísticas sobre os dados da ontologia. Estas estatísticas revelam o conhecimento latente que é difícil de ver num sistema tradicional de gestão para a educação. Para poder responder a perguntas sobre os dados da ontologia, um sistema de resposta automática a perguntas em língua natural foi desenvolvido usando Processamento de Língua Natural para converter as perguntas para linguagem de interrogação de ontologias

Inside a sentimental enclave: The poetics of miniature landscape

In my master thesis research, I study the relationship between poetry ( Japanese and Chinese ancient poems) and miniature landscape (penjing or bonsai) from three different directions that lead to three outcomes: 1. Through this paper, I first look into the history of art in China and Japan (1600 BC – Late 1800 CE); by tracing the origin of miniature landscape and how it was represented in paintings and woodblock prints, I find that miniature landscape is not a mere interior decoration or a part of garden art that human appropriate from nature, it is a poetic extension where the human imaginations and emotional bonds with the world are preserved. Miniature landscape gives its viewers a strong sense of belongingness and possession, and its visual elements invite all senses to open as the nostalgic memory of the past emerges from deep within. Next, I analyse Japanese Haiku poems and Chinese Tang Poems; by paying attention to the objects and images inside the landscape where the poets let their emotions dwell, I discover that the world inside these poems is not only a place where the poets document observations of nature and express their feelings and emotions, it is also a world lived with the poetics of miniature and immensity. Finally, based on previous examinations of miniature landscape in art history and poetry, I explain my concept of creating an atmospheric landscape of memory and imagination by combining miniature landscape and poetry, followed by thoughts and questions that have occurred to me during the process of making the installations. 2. The poetry book “After Wishes Of The Waterfall, The Fallen Hair” is the second part of the thesis. This book includes poems that I wrote during the period 2014 – 2017, when I was traveling between Europe and China. The poems are edited into five themes, each of which is associated with a semi-imaginary landscape and specific emotions: Senses and Memory, You and Light, Time and Places, Fear and Saffron, Dreams and Home. 3. The third part and the final production of this thesis research is an installation work of five miniature landscapes; built with ceramics, soil, live and dead plants as well as other found materials, each is narrated by the poems from the book “After Wishes of The Waterfall, The Fallen Hair”, This experiment of combining poetry, miniature landscape and sound is based on both my understanding of the poetics of miniature landscape in history, the sentimental landscape inside poetry, and the nature of my own poems

The impact of a supervisor-generated metaphor on the clinical hypothesis formation skills of counselors-in-training

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact that a narrative analogy metaphor, when generated by a counselor supervisor, would have on the clinical hypothesis formation skills of counselors-in-training. Thirty first year, second semester, masters level counselors-in-training (25 female and 5 male) comprised the sample which consisted of 27 Whites, 2 African Americans, and 1 Asian American. A ~ test comparison between the two treatment groups (metaphorical communication versus literal communication) who viewed videotaped analogues of a counselor and supervisor discussing a client, revealed that there were no statistically significant differences in the groups ability to generate clinical hypotheses. There were also no significant differences in how the supervisors were viewed with regard to the social influence dimensions of Expertness, Attractiveness, and Trustworthiness. The p value for the Expertness subscale, however, did approach significance at .0544. Further, a power calculation indicated that the Expertness dimension had power of .766, suggesting that if a larger sample had been obtained, significant differences between the treatment groups may have been found

Sympathetic Sentiments

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Sympathetic Sentiments develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a culture of feeling that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which sentiments are frequently denounced for being sentimental and self-indulgent. These tensions are traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive ‘spectacle of sympathy’, in which sympathy entails public forms of expression whereby being on show is both a condition of the authenticity of such affects and of their capacity to be masked and simulated. This, John Jervis suggests, is at the root of a range of controversies central to modern life, art and culture, including contemporary debates around trauma and compassion fatigue. Connected to these debates is the issue of modern sensationalism, discussed here and elaborated in a companion volume: Sensational Subjects: The Dramatization of Experience in the Modern World, which is published simultaneously by Bloomsbury

Investigating Recommended Language Instruction of Complex Literary Texts: A Content Analysis of Close Reading Lesson Plans for Elementary Grades

Expectations have been placed upon elementary teachers from the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts to guide students through close readings of informational and literary texts. This content analysis examined online close reading lesson plans to determine common objectives in elementary close reading lessons using literary text and to delineate which aspects of language are recommended for close reading instruction. Lessons for primary and intermediate grade levels were stratified and highlighted which instructional moves and student tasks are recommended for making complex language in texts more comprehensible. Key findings indicate a lack of alignment in lesson planning between objectives, lesson content, recommended vocabulary, student tasks, and assessment of multiple aspects of language creating a possible challenge for teachers to use close reading lesson plans as clear resources of close reading instruction. The most common objectives centered on the processes and routines of close reading through discussions of elements of fiction. There is scarce representation of instruction or modeling of language structure grammar and syntax, figurative language, language use and conventions used in literary text language. Intentional and incidental vocabulary instruction and use of context clues is the predominant language focus

Mental Imagery in the Experience of Literary Narrative: Views from Embodied Cognition

Defined as vicarious sensorimotor experiencing, mental imagery is a powerful source of aesthetic enjoyment in everyday life and, reportedly, one of the commonest things readers remember about literary narratives in the long term. Furthermore, it is positively correlated with other dimensions of reader response, most notably with emotion. Until recent decades, however, the phenomenon of mental imagery has been largely overlooked by modern literary scholarship. As an attempt to strengthen the status of mental imagery within the literary and, more generally, aesthetic discipline, this dissertation proposes an analysis positioned at a confluence of literary theory and the cognitive sciences, especially the emergent research framework of embodied cognition. Questions asked throughout the dissertation include the following: a) What are the basic varieties of mental imagery in the reading of literary narrative? b) By what contents or narrative strategies are they most likely to be prompted? c) What is it like to experience a mental image of a particular variety? d) What are its psychophysiological underpinnings? e) How does a mental image of a particular variety relate to perception? f) How does it relate to higher-order meaning-making? Four prototypical imagery varieties are distinguished on the basis of two variables with two values each (referential vs. verbal domain; inner vs. outer stance). Gradual transitions and in-between imagery varieties are acknowledged. The imagery typology and related hypotheses are grounded in introspection but carefully supported with indirect empirical evidence and, whenever possible, formulated so as to facilitate direct validation

The photographic portrait: directions of meaning and the ineffable (1970-2005)

This thesis uses the photographic portrait as an example of contemporary art practice to examine developments in aesthetic sensibility and constructions of meaning with particular address to ineffable qualities in both the subject and in the photograph. It examines the contribution of practice to a wider cultural debate, predominantly described as poststructural. Thomas Ruff's contention that it is impossible to photographically depict an individual, establishes a methodology that interrogates assumptions and directs examination toward reconfiguring issues of theory and practice. In the photographic portrait, what is `essential' equates with the expectation of visual statements that are definitive and what is 'ineffable' is that which transcends words. The persistent premise of capturing the 'essence' is dependant on the notion of 'presence', the certainty of pure perception or essential meaning, now undermined by poststructuralism in terms of conceptions of meaning and authorship. If essential depiction is problematic, how might a correlative adjustment to conceiving and validating photographic meaning be framed? How are essential or ineffable qualities displaced, formed and manifested? What constitutes the contemporary 'meaningful' portrait? Realigned as 'depictions of people', the 'portrait' serves a complex function, adjusted in the light of psychoanalysis and poststructuralism and visibly manifested as metaphor for contemporary consciousness. With particular reference to texts by Julia Kristeva, Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, this thesis demonstrates photographic practice as a form of discourse that visualises implicit truth-values, and participates in debate. It asserts figural interpretations to photographs over literary systems like narrative, and immanent property over aspirations to 'transcendence' or 'essence' and proposes reconfigurations of psychological, critical or poetic 'fiction' as alternatives. It repositions the ineffable as a conceptual domain of possibility that assimilates the dynamic of differance as its poststructural equivalent and proposes a conceptual aesthetic that celebrates aspects of poststructuralism and is rooted in what the photograph provokes rather than what it depicts

Material culture and domestic texts: Textiles in the texts of Warner, Adams, Wilson, Sadlier, Stoddard, and Phelps

In Material Culture and Domestic Texts: Textiles in the Texts of Warner, Adams, Wilson, Sadlier, Stoddard, and Phelps, I draw from recently revised notions of the discourse of domesticity to argue that the imagery of textile production, consumption, and containment enables authors to configure experimental domestic forms. Mid-nineteenth-century authors used textiles---including their inherent textility and feminine associations---to play out new domestic configurations in response to exigencies of economy, race, intemperance, competitive desire, and labor. Their literature demystifies textiles\u27 ability to invest social hierarchies of race, class, gender, and religion; it also enacts material changes of women\u27s domestic spaces and roles in order to model ideological shifts. Because I trace the externalization of domestic values in material practices and conditions, I use material culture and historical approaches to contextualize textile production and consumption as part of a contested, ever-expanding fabric language. My project begins with consideration of a normative imperialism of textiles as productive of white, middle-class domesticity and then turns to study those texts which, through metaphorical and ritualized uses of textiles, resist the domesticity of true womanhood. I consider works by Susan Warner, Canterbury Shaker sister Hester Ann Adams, Harriet Wilson, Irish-Catholic novelist Mary Anne Sadlier, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps to argue for textiles\u27 role in the defense and negotiation of domesticity. For a few brief decades in the mid-nineteenth century, authors in the United States and also abroad interrogated the potential of the growing textile industry. These women authors plotted a path from passive, angelic, and victimized heroines toward a New Womanhood dictated not by moral pitch but by professional and material engagement with the world. At a time when women were often legally invisible and female literary heroines ethereal and self-effacing, these women authors crafted a material presence not only through their texts but through the use of substantial textile goods to reconfigure domestic space