Providing other people's trails for navigation assistance in physical environments

Asking other people the way has always been a widespread social wayfinding technique. In recent years wayfinding in unknown spatial environments has increasingly been supported by electronic navigation assistants. However, the social aspects of wayfinding, such as using other peoples’ experiences, have widely been ignored in the context of electronic navigation systems. In electronic environments such as the WWW the availability of community knowledge - also driven by Web 2.0 paradigms - becomes more and more valuable to users. Other people’s experiences, including recorded browsing paths and activities - so called user trails - are used for recommendation and navigation support and allow users to navigate vast information spaces more easily. In this paper we propose an approach for trail-based navigation in physical environments. An analysis and comparison of the concept of trails in both application areas establishes the basis for a trail model and the implementation of a trail-based navigation system prototype for mobile phones. Practical experiences with a prototype application and potential applications of trail-based navigation assistants are discussed in the context of a tourist scenario in the old town of Salzburg

Oceanus.

v. 26, no. 4 (1983

Beyond Wayfinding : Sensory Focused Design for the Non-Sighted

While visually oriented architectural design has long been used to enhance the perceptions that shape the world of an existing ocular-centric norm, this has led to a less than satisfactory experience for users with less-than-optimal visual abilities. Today’s urban environments have evolved to become sensorially overloaded resulting in a chaotic and overwhelming situation that is difficult for wayfinding in the absence of sightedness. Existing code-based requirements are barely sufficient for most spatial applications but tend to be seen as the maximum requirement by architects and urban designers. This thesis explores the potential of carefully adding other sensory means to enhance the overall spatial experience of the sight challenged population, with a broad focus on wayfinding. The thesis proposes possible approaches for designing architecturally enhanced sensory experiences. The research is aimed toward providing new design strategies for architects and urban designers as methods of engaging a non-sighted or partially sighted user alongside the sighted users to experience the space more clearly and deeply with their senses. While the universal language principles and existing techniques of traditional touching and tapping are studied as initial references, the final research comprises the integration of senses dealing with qualities of tactility, hapticity, auditory, olfactory and navigation related instances of architecture that can be globally applied. The thesis proposes a set of design strategies that have been developed through personal experiences that when applied to smaller-scale scenarios give rise to a predictive language. The strategic design layers are referenced from personal sensorial experiences and are illustrated within two smaller-scale integrated spaces of a pop-up market and a park with gardens, non-contextual in nature. It would be intended that these two scenarios would form a base point to demonstrate the potential effectiveness of the strategies to form a departure point for more global application in other scenarios

Beyond eureka moments: Supporting the invisible work of creativity and innovation

Introduction. This paper is about the challenges of working creatively and reflectively in the information-intensive environments characteristic of our digital age. Method. The paper builds upon earlier work about uncertainty in library and information science by incorporating work exploring risk cultures and uncertainty as everyday phenomena. It presents arguments emerging from an ongoing investigation of the background work involved in scholarly research practice. These threads are used to invite discussion about the particular strategic contribution that the ISIC community might make in answer to calls for more creativity and greater support for the human spirit in all that we do. Analysis. Ethnographic material about scholarly research practice is combined with varied research exploring creativity and uncertainty. Results. Analysis of conditions that can stimulate creativity suggests that working through and being in uncertainty provides a site of creativity stimulation that addresses Howkins's query about how and where we wish to do our thinking. Conclusions. As information researchers and practitioners, we can act as stewards within our communities and help shape the information services and infrastructures that support organisations and communities striving to be more creative and to engage with information in inventive ways. Doing so will require us to not only support the creativity and innovation of others, but to be creative and innovative ourselves. © the author 2011

THE IMPACT OF HUMAN-CENTRIC LIGHTING PARAMETERS ON OLDER ADULT’S PERCEPTION, AND COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE

Population aging is a prominent demographic challenge. Older adults face increased risks of sleep dysfunctions, depression, and cognitive impairments due to physical, biological, and psychological factors associated with aging. These behavioral issues elevate safety risks at home, which necessitates the transition to assisted living facilities. Extensive research highlights the influence of healthcare environmental design, particularly related to architectural lighting impacts on residents' well-being and quality of life. To optimize older adults' health and well-being, it is essential to consider both the visual and non-visual effects of architectural lighting. Visual impacts include parameters related to task performance and visual acuity, while non-visual impacts may include outcomes such as circadian rhythm regulation, sleep quality, mood enhancement, and cognitive performance, thereby emphasizing the importance of implementing a holistic conceptual approach to human-centric lighting in indoor environments.While existing gerontology studies have primarily focused on light-level attributes, such as radiant flux, illuminance, and equivalent melanopic lux, there has been limited exploration of spectral and spatial pattern parameters in indoor lighting. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the impact of both quantitative and qualitative aspects of lighting design, including spatial layout characteristics such as uniformity, direction, centrality, and spectral attributes like correlated color temperature (CCT), on the visual perception, preference, mood, cognitive performance, and overall well-being of older adults in assisted living facilities. The study employed a multi-method approach across three main research phases. In phase I, a Q-sort survey involving 60 participants assessed the impact of diverse spatial light patterns on visual perception and preference. In phase II, a within-subject design evaluated the cognitive performance of 32 older adults in similar lighting scenarios within real and virtual environments. Lastly, in phase III, the study examined the relationship between spatial and spectral light patterns and cognitive performance through virtual reality testing with 32 participants. Results revealed significant effects of different spatial light patterns on older adults' environmental impressions, including visual preference, stress levels, and cognitive performance. Uniform and indirect lighting were preferred, with no substantial differences between peripheral and central spatial arrangements of light layers. Non-uniform lighting induced a relaxed impression, while uniform lighting heightened perceived stress. Furthermore, the study demonstrated the suitability of virtual reality environments (VR) for assessing cognitive performance and subjective perception. The findings underscore the substantial influence of spatial and spectral light patterns on the cognitive performance of older adults in assisted living facilities. This research contributes to the understanding of the visual and non-visual effects of human-centric lighting on the well-being of older adults. By considering spatial and spectral light attributes, designers can enhance cognitive function, reduce impairments, and cultivate healthier and more efficient living environments

Paved Trails: Crip Poetics as an approach towards decolonizing accessibility

Poetry is a gentle but relentless coach, a lover, personal benchmark, and record for growth. She shifts beliefs, practices, and emotions, tracking pitfalls, steps back, steps around, stillness, like a smooth laketop or slow-streaming river. In this Research-Creation thesis, I develop my version of ‘Crip Poetics’ through autoethnographic methods including video poems and hybrid prose-poetry writing. Drawing on Critical Disability Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Mobility Studies, I bring questions of white supremacy and settler colonialism into conversation with accessibility in Canada. I interview Indigenous people with varying relationships to disability and disabled people of multiple settler cultures, using qualitative methods including Hangout as Method and Wheeling Interviews. Engaging with interview transcripts as text, to continue conversation and exchange (with interviewees), this study offers reflections on interviewing as a method. Reflecting on the limits of participant-action research and representation, I interrogate the role of researchers in marginalized knowledge production, engaging with the limits and possibilities of ‘unsettling research’. I aim to redirect eugenic trends in disability discourse and history towards prioritizing the telling of our own stories. It's my hope that these conversations and the intersections of these struggles are brought to the fore—this thesis being one avenue among many to further this work. Come with me as I play with mainstream, heteronormative, settler framings of dichotomies between accessibility and nature. Dance with me between words and beyond political affiliation, witness my searching for ancestors in the words of an earlier generation of People with Disabilities, on waves actuated by water taxi, towards my interviews

Spatial Aspects of Metaphors for Information: Implications for Polycentric System Design

This dissertation presents three innovations that suggest an alternative approach to structuring information systems: a multidimensional heuristic workspace, a resonance metaphor for information, and a question-centered approach to structuring information relations. Motivated by the need for space to establish a question-centered learning environment, a heuristic workspace has been designed. Both the question-centered approach to information system design and the workspace have been conceived with the resonance metaphor in mind. This research stemmed from a set of questions aimed at learning how spatial concepts and related factors including geography may play a role in information sharing and public information access. In early stages of this work these concepts and relationships were explored through qualitative analysis of interviews centered on local small group and community users of geospatial data. Evaluation of the interviews led to the conclusion that spatial concepts are pervasive in our language, and they apply equally to phenomena that would be considered physical and geographic as they do to cognitive and social domains. Rather than deriving metaphorically from the physical world to the human, spatial concepts are native to all dimensions of human life. This revised view of the metaphors of space was accompanied by a critical evaluation of the prevailing metaphors for information processes, the conduit and pathway metaphors, which led to the emergence of an alternative, resonance metaphor. Whereas the dominant metaphors emphasized information as object and the movement of objects and people through networks and other limitless information spaces, the resonance metaphor suggests the existence of multiple centers in dynamic proximity relationships. This pointed toward the creation of a space for autonomous problem solving that might be related to other spaces through proximity relationships. It is suggested that a spatial approach involving discrete, discontinuous structures may serve as an alternative to approaches involving movement and transportation. The federation of multiple autonomous problem-solving spaces, toward goals such as establishing communities of questioners, has become an objective of this work. Future work will aim at accomplishing this federation, most likely by means of the IS0 Topic Maps standard or similar semantic networking strategies

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3