THE DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS PSYCHOMETRIC TOOL FOR ENHANCING FUNCTIONAL FLUENCY

Functional Fluency denotes efficacy of interpersonal functioning in terms of flexibility and balance of the behavioural modes a person uses. The aim of this project is to design and create a psychometric tool for mapping the patterns of such functioning. The intention is that feedback on the test results will stimulate the insights and understanding to support and encourage positive behavioural change. This process, involving the development of self-awareness, which is a key aspect of emotional intelligence, will thus promote emotional literacy. Transactional Analysis (TA) ego state theory provides the basis for the rational-theoretical strategy of instrument construction, which uses the author's expanded TA model of ego state function, the Functional Fluency model. The resulting self-report questionnaire, the Transactional Behaviour Profile, comprises a nine-scale index of Functional Fluency, the FFI. Methodological process includes construct conceptualisation, generation of behavioural indicators and transformation of these into test items. Validation of test items leads into instrument construction followed by a Pilot Study with over 300 respondents from a broad span of human service provision. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses provide evidence of both theoretical coherence and validity of the model as well as practical efficacy of the instrument in terms of the project aims. Indications for further refinement and correlation studies are examined, and plans proposed. The theory of Transactional Analysis addresses both the interpersonal and the intrapsychic. The FFI is designed to do likewise. Thus, although the FFI model is essentially one of interpersonal functioning, appropriate in a tool for training and personal development, it could potentially contribute an objective form of behavioural diagnosis in psychotherapeutic contexts, because of its coherent theoretical links with TA structural ego state models. The thesis constitutes the research basis for what will be ongoing development of the Transactional Behaviour Profile for indexing Functional Fluency in a variety of contexts

A perception-based emotion contagion model in crowd emergent evacuation simulation

With the increasing number of emergencies, the crowd simulation technology has attracted wide attention in recent years. Existing emergencies have shown that individuals are easy to be influenced by other’s emotion during the evacuation. This will make it easier for people to aggregate together and increase security risks. Some of the existing evacuation models without considering emotion are therefore not suitable for describing crowd behaviors in emergencies. We propose a perception-based emotion contagion model and use multi-agent technology to simulate the crowd behaviors. Navigation points are introduced to guide the movement of the agents. Based on the proposed model, a prototype simulation system for crowd emotion contagion is developed. The comparative simulation experiments verify that the model can effectively deduct the evacuation time and crowd emotion contagion. The proposed model could be an assistant analysis method for crowd management in emergencies

The citizen-user and the crowd-mediated politics of the Five Star Movement

This thesis described the trajectory of the Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S, 2005- 2014) from the perspective of the citizens who, as Internet users, participated in in the political enterprise. Citizen-users, enabled and empowered by Internet and mobile technologies, shaped and sustained the identity and evolution of the movement that became the M5S. The case study selected for this research, the M5S, is exceptional due to the magnitude of its success; but its features (Internet-centered and fluid ideology) are becoming more common among political organisations in Western democracies. The goal of the thesis is to assess the impact of the Internet on the political process, through its connecting, mobilising, organising, and to characterise the shape of political talk among citizens. This is achieved by applying quantitative methods, including network analysis and natural language processing, on 10 years of user-generated data collected mainly from four sources: the blog of the Movement’s founder, the M5S official forum, Facebook and Meetup.com. The thesis finds that the online discussion fora fostered diversity without fragmentation, and contributed on at least one occasion to shape the policy agenda of the M5S. Furthermore, the meetups of the Movement maintained their capacity to attract and mobilise users, and their territorial distribution clearly correlate with local results of the M5S in two elections, suggesting a positive impact of Internet-enabled mobilisation. Finally, given the votes received in the 2013 general election, the political communication generated over the Internet offset the low attention dedicated by TV news broadcast to the Movement during the electoral campaign. As Internet and mobile technologies are routinised, it is easy to see how their importance in political organisation and deliberation will grow. By studying the application of ICTs in the case of the M5S, this thesis offers insights into their use in practice, as well as pointing to possible democratic risks if online deliberation is non controlled to guarantee its fairness and openness but instead steered by the leadership, turning a deliberating community of citizen-users into a noisy crowd

Crowdsourcing for Engineering Design: Objective Evaluations and Subjective Preferences

Crowdsourcing enables designers to reach out to large numbers of people who may not have been previously considered when designing a new product, listen to their input by aggregating their preferences and evaluations over potential designs, aiming to improve ``good'' and catch ``bad'' design decisions during the early-stage design process. This approach puts human designers--be they industrial designers, engineers, marketers, or executives--at the forefront, with computational crowdsourcing systems on the backend to aggregate subjective preferences (e.g., which next-generation Brand A design best competes stylistically with next-generation Brand B designs?) or objective evaluations (e.g., which military vehicle design has the best situational awareness?). These crowdsourcing aggregation systems are built using probabilistic approaches that account for the irrationality of human behavior (i.e., violations of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity), approximated by modern machine learning algorithms and optimization techniques as necessitated by the scale of data (millions of data points, hundreds of thousands of dimensions). This dissertation presents research findings suggesting the unsuitability of current off-the-shelf crowdsourcing aggregation algorithms for real engineering design tasks due to the sparsity of expertise in the crowd, and methods that mitigate this limitation by incorporating appropriate information for expertise prediction. Next, we introduce and interpret a number of new probabilistic models for crowdsourced design to provide large-scale preference prediction and full design space generation, building on statistical and machine learning techniques such as sampling methods, variational inference, and deep representation learning. Finally, we show how these models and algorithms can advance crowdsourcing systems by abstracting away the underlying appropriate yet unwieldy mathematics, to easier-to-use visual interfaces practical for engineering design companies and governmental agencies engaged in complex engineering systems design.PhDDesign ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133438/1/aburnap_1.pd

Integration: A new design model for apparel and retail environments

As founder of Brinkworth, a London-based design consultancy, I am writing this thesis from a creative practitioner’s perspective. The main research question is: How has the role and the activity of an interior designer for apparel retail environments evolved since the intervention of digital platforms, including social media and online shopping? Pertaining to this lead research question are the following two questions: How have customer behaviour patterns changed due to the intervention of digital and social media platforms? And how has brand engagement and communication with their customer community evolved with respect to the development of digital technologies? The title of this PhD by public works, Integration, describes the key approach to my new model, which delivers appropriate physical retail spaces through a four-way system of integration: brand, space, location and community. A donor building is designed so as to successfully host the brand and facilitate the fusing of its customer community within the building’s own local culture. It theorises that the physical branded retail space is at the heart of a brand’s external facing retail activity. It is primarily the place that gives an invaluable opportunity for the development of a personal relationship between the customer community and the brand. This space is also the nucleus in which platforms of digital immersion, product fusion and narrative are integrated within a central, physical hub. This concept of integration seeks to replace the convention of outmoded, repetitive, traditional retail rollout methods. This thesis of public works outlines new models of thinking taken from Brinkworth’s portfolio. Utilising the research methodology of reflexivity, it contributes new knowledge to the field of professional practice and academic research in apparel retail design, both in terms of the design work carried out and the reflection on that work. The thesis starts by examining the academic context through an analysis of the limited published practitioners’ literature that it seeks to succeed. The research extends into broader and relevant academic areas of study. The specifics of apparel retail design will then be discussed, providing a blueprint by which Brinkworth implements its strategies and demonstrating why the process is significant. An assessment of how to structure and approach interior design for retail, as well as evidence and project planning information will be included within the thesis, something that has not been previously documented in this field of study. A recently formulated Model of Integration is theorised, demonstrated and disseminated through the case studies selected in order to exemplify each retail environment typology. This dynamic Model of Integration, driven by the evolving relationship between the brand and its customer community, is reflected in the communicative relationship between online and physical retail environments. This, in turn, drives the creation of a new type of outcome. In support of this, the resulting physical retail spaces produced are named Activation Retail Environments. These multipurpose retail environments host activities broader than retail, and include hospitality, brand/product education and events, where the customer is an active participant in a spatial and personal relationship with the brand. Following the Academic Context, a chapter entitled Typologies and Strategies seeks to identify the key individual types of physical retail stores. It also demonstrates the optimum approach to tackling each category of store. My Model of Integration is illustrated through examples from Brinkworth’s portfolio in the following chapter, and the thesis evidences the discussed retail typologies through a broad selection of completed projects

Communicating through sound in museum exhibitions: unravelling a field of practice

The twentieth century was the stage for several phenomena which have paved the way for museums to start exhibiting sound and to nurture a vivid and increasing interest in its potentialities. The burgeoning of sound recording technologies stands as a milestone in this respect. These have allowed sound to become a physical object and, hence, new understandings and conceptualizations to emerge. In the wake of these developments, the ways in which museum curators look at sound has gone into a huge reconfiguration. The fact that both new museology and museum practice have been turning their attention to and focus on the visitor has similarly accelerated the curators’ interest in sound as a means to build museum exhibitions. One of the latest and most striking instances in this process has been the role of ethnomusicology and sound studies in demonstrating the cultural, social, political, economic and ethical significance of sound thereby stimulating museum’s interest in dealing with sound as a mode to build both individual subjectivities and communities in museum settings. The development of audio technologies and digital and multisensorial technologies (Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality) also plays a part in this process. These have the merit to provide ways to deal with the elusiveness of sound when exhibited in museum galleries and to facilitate interactions underpinned by rationales such as experience, embodiment, and emplacement. During at least the last ten years, there has been a boost in the development of sound-based multimodal museum practices. These practices, nonetheless, have yet to be mapped, and their representational and experiential (emotional and sensorial) opportunities to be closely analysed. My thesis strives to start closing this gap by taking two analytical steps. Based on the analysis of 69 sound-based multimodal museum exhibitions staged in Europe and in the United States of America, I provide a five-use framework categorizing sound-based multimodal museum practices into sound as a “lecturing” mode, sound as an artefact, sound as “ambiance”/soundtrack, sound as art, and sound as a mode for crowd-curation. The case-study of sound art The Visitors, it unravels the communicative potential of sound for museums. In detail, the analysis stresses how sound and space comingle to articulate individual subjectivities and a sense of “togetherness.” The scope of the thesis is clearly multidisciplinary, encompassing ethnomusicology, sound studies, museum studies, and social semiotics. Overall, I seek to contribute towards the development of the study of sound in museums to develop and establish as a cohesive research field. I moreover seek to foster a sensory formation shift from a visual epistemology to one that merges the visual and the auditory.O século XX foi palco de vários fenómenos que conduziram a que os museus começassem a expor o som e a demonstrar um interesse crescente pelas suas potencialidades comunicativas. O aparecimento das tecnologias de gravação sonora constitui-se como um momento fundamental neste processo. Ao permitirem que o som se estabeleça enquanto objeto físico, vieram potenciar o aparecimento de novos entendimentos e conceptualizações sobre o som. Na sequência destes acontecimentos, a forma como os curadores de exposições começaram a olhar para o som sofreu grandes alterações. Simultaneamente, o facto de tanto os estudos museológicos como a prática museológica estarem cada vez mais preocupados com o visitante veio também acelerar o interesse dos curadores pelo som como meio para construir exposições museológicas. Os estudos musicais, em particular a etnomusicologia e os estudos de som, tiveram igualmente um papel preponderante: ao demonstrarem o valor cultural, social, político, económico e ético do som vieram claramente estimular o interesse dos curadores em usar o som como material para trabalhar noções de identidade, subjectividade e “comunhão.” É ainda de destacar o papel que o desenvolvimento de tecnologias áudio, digitais e multisensoriais (Realidade Virtual, Realidade Aumentada e Realidade Mista) têm no processo. Ao proporcionarem formas de lidar com a imaterialidade do som quando exposto em galerias, vieram também fomentar interações museológicas sustentadas pela experiência. Nos últimos dez anos, os museus têm, pois, assistido ao incrementar das práticas museológicas multimodais baseadas no som. O mapeamento e a categorização destas práticas, bem como o estudo das suas potencialidades narrativas e experienciais (emocionais e sensoriais), no entanto, está claramente por determinar. A minha tese visa dar início ao colmatar desta lacuna através de dois passos: providenciar uma estrutura classificativa das práticas multimodais baseadas em som com base na análise de 69 exposições que tiveram lugar nos últimos dez anos na Europa e nos Estados Unidos da América. A estrutura compreende as seguintes categorias: som como um modo "discursivo," som como artefacto, som como "ambiance"/banda sonora, som como arte, e som como curadoria partilhada. Simultaneamente, dar início ao desvendar do potencial comunicativo do som para exposições museológicas através do estudo de caso de arte sonora The Visitors. A análise deste estudo de caso veio demonstrar que som, em articulação com o espaço permitem trabalhar noções de identidade, subjetividade, e ainda de “comunhão.” O âmbito da tese é claramente multidisciplinar e engloba a etnomusicologia, os estudos de som, os estudos museológicos e a semiótica social. De uma forma geral, com a minha dissertação procuro contribuir para o desenvolvimento e o estabelecimento do estudo do uso do som nos museus como um campo de investigação multidisciplinar e coeso. Procuro ainda potenciar uma mudança de formação sensorial nos museus, em particular, estimular a passagem de uma epistemologia visual para uma epistemologia simultaneamente visual e auditiva

Customer service in retailing: the case of downtown department stores in Singapore

Eating and shopping are Singaporeans' favourite past-times. However, in recent years, the retail sector performed poorly. Department stores, the dinosaurs of Singapore's retail scene because of their large size and long establishment, faced difficulty in adapting promptly to the environmental changes. Unless these retailers know how to capitalise on their large size with the right merchandise and service staff, being big can be a barrier. The focus of this thesis is twofold: Firstly, it assesses the potential of excellent customer service as a viable strategy to help these department stores in a fiercely competitive retail market. Another area of interest is to track the current service level of department stores for areas of improvement. Secondly, it is an academic exercise to contribute to the understanding of retailing by examining the impact of customer service in improving sales in a non-western context - Singapore. The earlier chapters outline the forces of change in the retail climate that promote strategic planning in retailing. Literature survey shows that various retail strategies are used to address the different business trading conditions over the years. With the intensification of competition and a saturated market in the 1990s, the effectiveness of using customer service as a functional strategy in increasing sales is examined. Because the scope of study is on downtown department stores, a study on the characteristics and peculiarities of these stores is conducted to better understand the working mechanism of this retail concept. Concepts on customer service are examined to assess how department stores can use this service tool. The later chapters deal with the selection and modification of an appropriate service measurement tool to track the current service level and to propose areas for improvement. Adopting the Servqual model of service quality, an external survey is conducted to examine the shoppers' views on the importance of customer service in their shopping decision and to track the current service performance of downtown department stores in Singapore. Internal audits comprising of a managements' and a front-line staffs' surveys are conducted to seek areas for service improvement. The findings are analysed using the SPSS software and recommendations are proposed. The external survey reveals that 12% of the respondents rated service as their top consideration in affecting their decision on where to shop. Besides, a department store may stand to lose as much as 39% of its customers in the event of poor services rendered. The external survey indicates a service gap for the Singapore's department stores industry. Shoppers rank responsiveness as the most important attribute. However, responsiveness receives the poorest ratings for its performance. Tangibles is ranked as the least important but it receives satisfactory performance rating. CK Tang emerges as the best department store based on its good service performance. Further investigations on the service gap show that managements need to improve on their efforts to solicit feedback from their shoppers in order to respond to their changing lifestyles and preferences. Front-line staffs' survey reveals that a fairer compensation package, more role congruence, more empowerment and a better reward system can minimise Gap 3. Limitations for the surveys are also highlighted and areas for future research work are proposed. Service has become a key factor in this fiercely competitive environment cluttered with many similar retail offerings. These surveys confirm that there is much room for improvement in this service element. This sentiment towards offering excellent service is also shared by Mr. Kazuhide Kimoto, Managing Director of Takashimaya Singapore Limited who feels that good location, varied and quality merchandise and excellent service will ensure a good future for department stores (SRA The Retailer, 1996,7). With the sophistication of today's shoppers who are widely travelled and the easy accessibility of goods through technological advancement, the service element win become increasingly important as they learn more about the western world of retailing. The author feels that giving excellent external customer service is only possible when there is excellent internal customer service. Internal customer service refers to the well-being and positive group dynamics of staff who can work together to help the shoppers. Service stems from service providers. If staff are truly happy, they will be motivated and committed to share the same joy with their external shoppers. Therefore, treating internal staff well promotes external customer service excellence. Given that one happy customer would share his/her experience with five more people whereas one unhappy customer would share with nine others in a TARP study, it pays to solve an external service problem before it surfaces. Therefore, a proactive approach to giving service may mean delighting one's employees first. A service culture which promotes excellent service delivery with a system of service awards and a constant service tracking system are critical for any retailers who want to give good service. Currently, most department stores professed to provide customer service. In reality, the customer service concept in Singapore is not clearly understood and hence, its potential undermined. Most department stores perceive customer service as a list of services to be offered to their shoppers Finally, this thesis contributes to the academic understanding of retailing in Singapore by documenting the retail scene in Singapore from the 1960s to 1990s with emphasis on the downtown department stores and testing the applicability of Servqual model as a tool to track service level in a non-westem region i.e. Singapore. The findings from the 3 surveys conducted on downtown department stores revealed the local shoppers' behavioural preferences, sentiments and the most important service dimension in retail using the Servqual Model, a first report in retail customer service

Impact of Customer Crowding on Frontline Service Employees: Theoretical and Empirical Implications

This study investigates the impact of crowding on frontline service employees. In particular, this study examines how customer crowding affects frontline service employees’ stress, emotions, job performance, and displayed emotions. This study pioneers a new avenue by investigating employee (as opposed to consumer) reactions to customer crowding and addressing the gap in the literature on employees’ interaction with the physical environment. The underlying theoretical framework of the study is rooted in Lazarus’s (1966; 1991) model that links appraisal, emotional response, and coping in a sequential process. Applying theory to the context issue of customer crowding, the major constructs for this study are determined as: 1)the stressor (customer crowding), (2)appraisal,(3) emotions, (4)coping, and (5)service quality outcomes. The four major areas investigated in this study are: (1)stress levels of FSE due to customer crowding, (2)their emotions in the crowded service environment, (3)coping strategies they use under these circumstances, and(4)effects of such coping strategies on job performance and displayed emotions. A laboratory experiment is conducted with 200 frontline service employees where human density (a precursor to crowding)is manipulated via scenarios and videos. Analyzing the data via ANOVA, simple regression, and multiple regression, the results showed: (1)a positive relationship between crowding and stress, (2)an inverse relationship between positive emotions and stress, (3)a positive relationship between stress and negative emotions, (4) a negative impact of escape and confrontive coping strategies on service quality outcomes, and (5) a positive impact of distancing and social support on service quality outcomes. The contributions of the study are that: (1)it pioneers a new research avenue which opens avenues for future research, (2)it goes beyond the traditional Stimulus-Organism-Response approach to person-environment interaction and expands the domain of inquiry by incorporating the Lazarus transactional theory in the study of person-environment interaction, and (3)it provides a number of managerial implications regarding design of servicescapes to reduce the experience of crowding and training of frontline service employees on successful coping strategies