Empathy, connectivity, authenticity, and trust: A rhetorical framework for creating and evaluating interaction design

Relationships are synergistic. Relational theories describe how we create and sustain relationships and take into consideration our own experiences, our own social location and include broad cultural signifiers. Part of our development as people is to learn about power; our own power, and others\u27 power. This thesis offers the combinational addition of Relational-Cultural Theory and the Connectivity Model to the spectrum of interaction design. Since interaction design is about designing mediating tools for people and their subsequent behaviors, particular attention is needed into establishing and maintaining relationship between designer and audience. Relational-Cultural Theory pushes against typical patriarchal structures and values in the United States. These typical power over values/structures include men over women, whites over blacks, logic over emotion, provider over nurturer, and so on. Relational-Cultural Theory seeks a flatness of power. It creates a sense of shared power, or power with others. This idea of shared power can lead to collaborative creation in interaction design to produce useful and good designs. Empathy, mutuality, and authenticity are essential in recognizing our own limits and strengths in connection with others. Building trust requires a mix of all three of these tenets, as well as evolution through conflict. Interaction designers can move toward creating an inclusive theory for this discipline by becoming vulnerable and sharing power with the people with whom they design interactions. Therefore, the rhetorical framework of empathy, connectivity, authenticity, and trust (e-CAT) is presented as a means of creating and evaluating interaction design

Smartphone Apps for Food Purchase Choices: Scoping Review of Designs, Opportunities, and Challenges

Background: Smartphone apps can aid consumers in making healthier and more sustainable food purchases. However, there is still a limited understanding of the different app design approaches and their impact on food purchase choices. An overview of existing food purchase choice apps and an understanding of common challenges can help speed up effective future developments.Objective: We examined the academic literature on food purchase choice apps and provided an overview of the design characteristics, opportunities, and challenges for effective implementation. Thus, we contribute to an understanding of how technologies can effectively improve food purchase choice behavior and provide recommendations for future design efforts.Methods: Following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines, we considered peer-reviewed literature on food purchase choice apps within IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. We inductively coded and summarized design characteristics. Opportunities and challenges were addressed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. From the quantitative perspective, we coded and summarized outcomes of comparative evaluation trials. From the qualitative perspective, we performed a qualitative content analysis of commonly discussed opportunities and challenges.Results: We retrieved 55 articles, identified 46 unique apps, and grouped them into 5 distinct app types. Each app type supports a specific purchase choice stage and shares a common functional design. Most apps support the product selection stage (selection apps; 27/46, 59%), commonly by scanning the barcode and displaying a nutritional rating. In total, 73% (8/11) of the evaluation trials reported significant findings and indicated the potential of food purchase choice apps to support behavior change. However, relatively few evaluations covered the selection app type, and these studies showed mixed results. We found a common opportunity in apps contributing to learning (knowledge gain), whereas infrequent engagement presents a common challenge. The latter was associated with perceived burden of use, trust, and performance as well as with learning. In addition, there were technical challenges in establishing comprehensive product information databases or achieving performance accuracy with advanced identification methods such as image recognition.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that designs of food purchase choice apps do not encourage repeated use or long-term adoption, compromising the effectiveness of behavior change through nudging. However, we found that smartphone apps can enhance learning, which plays an important role in behavior change. Compared with nudging as a mechanism for behavior change, this mechanism is less dependent on continued use. We argue that designs that optimize for learning within each interaction have a better chance of achieving behavior change. This review concludes with design recommendations, suggesting that food purchase choice app designers anticipate the possibility of early abandonment as part of their design process and design apps that optimize the learning experience

Information Outlook, September 2008

Volume 12, Issue 9https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2008/1008/thumbnail.jp

Considering stakeholders’ preferences for scheduling slots in capacity constrained airports

Airport slot scheduling has attracted the attention of researchers as a capacity management tool at congested airports. Recent research work has employed multi-objective approaches for scheduling slots at coordinated airports. However, the central question on how to select a commonly accepted airport schedule remains. The various participating stakeholders may have multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives stemming from their decision-making needs. This complex decision environment renders the identification of a commonly accepted solution rather difficult. In this presentation, we propose a multi-criteria decision-making technique that incorporates the priorities and preferences of the stakeholders in order to determine the best compromise solution

Mergers and Acquisitions as a Business Opportunity for Competitors

Expanding business through acquiring new customers can be challenging in the industries with high supplier switch barriers. In the attempt to increase reliability in the operation and maintain stable quality level companies tend to establish long-term, value-added cooperation. Strong relationship between a supplier and a customer significantly decreases companies’ agility. Nevertheless, a major organizational change, like a merger or an acquisition, in supplying company are able to destabilize strong partnership, that has been built even through years of cooperation. The objective of this thesis is to explore business opportunities mergers and acquisitions represent for competitors in industries with high supplier switch barriers, and to create a tool for their proactive identification. Organizational changes not only affect a company in which they take place, but their consequences spread outside company’s boundaries and influence business partners. The stronger cooperation between companies, the bigger impact on partners a change will cause. Although mergers and acquisitions are usually aimed at increasing value delivered to customers, practice shows that during post-merger stage customers often experience insecurity and disbelief in positive outcome, and exhibit resentment toward the change. The outcomes of this study suggest that temporary customer dissatisfaction with current supplier and supplier’s inability to deliver previous value to customer that occur during mergers and acquisitions creates favourable environment for competitive responses. Although mergers and acquisitions happen comparatively infrequently, they can impact a group of potential customers at a time. For this reason, it is important that a company, which is going to use mergers and acquisitions in competitors as opportunities to get new customers, integrates it as a strategy and continuously woks on gaining competitive intelligence in order to be proactive and catch opportunities timely

Organic food systems: meeting the needs of Southern Africa

Organic agriculture world-wide allows farmers to produce healthy food with low levels of external inputs, and often shortens the value chains, giving farmers a higher share of the consumer dollar. This book reports on long-term comparative organic farming systems research trials carried out over the last four years in South Africa's Southern Cape, as well as research on the organic sector and the technical tools it requires in South Africa, Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania. The trials show how the yield gap between organic and conventional crops was closed over 3 years. Water use efficiency was also greater in the organic farming system, and pests and diseases were effectively controlled using biological products. Farmer training approaches, soil carbon analysis, participatory guarantee systems, the Zambian organic farming sector (agronomy) and Ugandan organic farmer training support, and a sector plan for southern African organic farming are examined

Federal Register

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

FAMILY-CENTERED PRACTICE IN EARLY INTERVENTION SERVICES FOR INFANTS AND TODDLERS: THE EXPERIENCE OF FAMILIES AND PROFESSIONALS IN ONE LOCAL INTERAGENCY COORDINATING COUNCIL

Part H [recently reauthorized as Part C] of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates the application of family-centered practice principles to early intervention services. There has been a considerable amount of literature published in early intervention journals related to family and professional relationships in early intervention and its connection to family-centered care in early intervention services. There is very little literature, however, that examined the implementation of family-centered principles from a perspective that transcended the relationship between families and early intervention providers. This inquiry was a constructivist policy analysis of the implementation of the family-centered intent of Part H of IDEA in one Local Interagency Coordinating Council (LICC) in Virginia. Perspectives about the implementation of the family-centered intent of Part H were assessed through in-depth interviews with several stakeholder groups, including families receiving Part H early intervention services, families who were never able to access services, members of the LICC, professionals from center-based programs, professionals from home-based programs, and professionals from hospital-based programs. While data were primarily collected via in-depth interviews with participants from each stakeholder group, the inquirer also observed five LICC meetings. Document analyses and observations of LICC meetings also were used for triangulation of incoming data. Twenty-two family participants were sampled that represented variation according to socio-economic status. Twenty professional participants were sampled who represented a range of professional disciplines. Findings from this inquiry highlight some issues regarding implementation of a broad federal policy (i.e.,Part H of IDEA) at the local level. The intent of Part H was to mandate the construction of state level service delivery systems, local service delivery systems, and suggested program and professional practices for the early intervention field. Very little guidance, however, was provided to states on how to construct their systems and even less was provided on developing local early intervention service delivery systems. Few financial resources were committed for the construction of these state and local service delivery systems adding additional complications. Specifically, the legislation provided no financial support for new early intervention programs; instead, the intent was for states and local service delivery systems to coordinate already existing providers using existing funds. There are many policy and practice implications resulting from this inquiry. First, there are implications for federal, state, and local early intervention policy. Second, there are implications for early intervention practice. Third, there are implications for empowerment of families who have children receiving early intervention services. Fourth, there are implications for social work practice in the field of early intervention. Finally, there are implications for future research related to family-centered service delivery