Spartan Daily, March 7, 2018

Volume 150, Issue 18https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartan_daily_2018/1017/thumbnail.jp

On the record: an account of regional non-theatregoers' responses to a selection of plays toured to northern Australia in 2004-2005

When groups of regional non-theatregoers experience a selection of plays and then report that most enjoyed them, could understand them, could relate to them, and would like to see more of them, the obvious questions to ask are “Why were they non-theatregoers? and how can we ensure that they now return?” This paper details regional non-theatregoers’ (or new audiences’) reception of plays to demonstrate how theatre is perceived by the recently-introduced. By better understanding new audiences and their reception of plays, more effective decisions can be made to impact on the creation of new work, the programming of seasonal repertoire, and the marketing of plays with this significant segment of the community in mind. Likewise, the non-theatregoers’ introduction to ‘the world of theatre’ enables them to directly experience live plays and to become more knowledgeable about what the theatre has to offer and how they might engage with it

Design as communication in micro-strategy — strategic sensemaking and sensegiving mediated through designed artefacts.

This paper relates key concepts of strategic cognition in microstrategy to design practice. It considers the potential roles of designers' output in strategic sensemaking and sensegiving. Designed artifacts play well-known roles as communication media; sketches, renderings, models, and prototypes are created to explore and test possibilities and to communicate these options within and outside the design team. This article draws on design and strategy literature to propose that designed artifacts can and do play a role as symbolic communication resources in sensemaking and sensegiving activities that impact strategic decision making and change. Extracts from interviews with three designers serve as illustrative examples. This article is a call for further empirical exploration of such a complex subject

A simple hybrid algorithm for improving team sport AI

In the very popular genre of team sports games defeating the opposing AI is the main focus of the gameplay experience. However the overall quality of these games is significantly damaged because, in a lot of cases, the opposition is prone to mistakes or vulnerable to exploitation. This paper introduces an AI system which overcomes this failing through the addition of simple adaptive learning and prediction algorithms to a basic ice hockey defence. The paper shows that improvements can be made to the gameplay experience without overly increasing the implementation complexity of the system or negatively affecting its performance. The created defensive system detects patterns in the offensive tactics used against it and changes elements of its reaction accordingly; effectively adapting to attempted exploitation of repeated tactics. This is achieved using a fuzzy inference system that tracks player movement, which greatly improves variation of defender positioning, alongside an N-gram pattern recognition-based algorithm that predicts the next action of the attacking player. Analysis of implementation complexity and execution overhead shows that these techniques are not prohibitively expensive in either respect, and are therefore appropriate for use in games

XP customer practices: A grounded theory

The Customer is a critical role in XP, but almost all XP practices are presented for developers by developers. While XP calls for Real Customer Involvement, it does not explain what XP Customers should do, nor how they should do it. Using Grounded Theory, we discovered eight customer practices used by successful XP teams: Customer Boot Camp, Customer’s Apprentice, Customer Pairing, and Programmer’s Holiday support the well-being and effectiveness of customers; Programmer On-site and Road shows support team and organization interactions; and Big Picture Up Front and Re-calibration support Customers steering the whole project. By adopting these processes, XP Customers and teams can work faster and more sustainably

What is a robot companion - friend, assistant or butler?

The study presented in this paper explored people's perceptions and attitudes towards the idea of a future robot companion for the home. A human-centred approach was adopted using questionnaires and human-robot interaction trials to derive data from 28 adults. Results indicated that a large proportion of participants were in favour of a robot companion and saw the potential role as being an assistant, machine or servant. Few wanted a robot companion to be a friend. Household tasks were preferred to child/animal care tasks. Humanlike communication was desirable for a robot companion, whereas humanlike behaviour and appearance were less essential. Results are discussed in relation to future research directions for the development of robot companions