Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Hands on Design : Comparing the use of sketching and gesturing in collaborative designing

This study explored the remaining potential of gestures as creative tools for collaborative designing. We compared novice designers' use of sketching against gesturing in early ideation and rough visualisation. To preserve the kinesic character of gestures, we developed a detailed video analysis method, which revealed that the majority of sketching and gesturing was complementary to speech. Sketching was important for defining complicated structures, while gesturing was frequently used for all aspects of designing. Moreover, we identified that the level of collaboration – the level and immediacy of sharing one's ideas for others – is an important factor. As an underrepresented phenomenon in the design literature, the meaning of collaboration unearthed here leads to unmistakable conclusions regarding the nature of gesturing, to the process of learning design, and to the use of design tools. Most notably, gesturing offers a complementary creative dimension - kinaesthetic thinking - which invites us to communicate and share instantaneously.Peer reviewe

Augmented reality meeting table: a novel multi-user interface for architectural design

Immersive virtual environments have received widespread attention as providing possible replacements for the media and systems that designers traditionally use, as well as, more generally, in providing support for collaborative work. Relatively little attention has been given to date however to the problem of how to merge immersive virtual environments into real world work settings, and so to add to the media at the disposal of the designer and the design team, rather than to replace it. In this paper we report on a research project in which optical see-through augmented reality displays have been developed together with prototype decision support software for architectural and urban design. We suggest that a critical characteristic of multi user augmented reality is its ability to generate visualisations from a first person perspective in which the scale of rendition of the design model follows many of the conventions that designers are used to. Different scales of model appear to allow designers to focus on different aspects of the design under consideration. Augmenting the scene with simulations of pedestrian movement appears to assist both in scale recognition, and in moving from a first person to a third person understanding of the design. This research project is funded by the European Commission IST program (IST-2000-28559)

Drawing close: on visual engagements in fieldwork, drawing workshops and the anthropological imagination

Participatory visual methods are becoming the new hype in anthropology. Researchers tend to present participatory visual methods as attractive approaches to not only promote innovative research that engages informants in original and collaborative ways but to engage students eager to find bridges between the academic world and a world progressively addicted to visual consumerism. Unlike photographing and filming, doodling-sketching-drawing – participatory or not – is more about linear image mental processing and communicating (and thus somewhat akin to handwriting, lack of linguistic encoding and propositionality notwithstanding) than an “objective” visual method. Based on discussions from a workshop dedicated to “ethnographic drawing” in the University of Aberdeen, we propose to tackle some of the features of the drawing practice, hoping that its much-misunderstood potential as a knowledge tool helps us reconsider what anthropological understanding is.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

10481 Abstracts Collection -- Computational Counting

From November 28 to December 3 2010, the Dagstuhl Seminar 10481 ``Computational Counting\u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Finding Subcube Heavy Hitters in Analytics Data Streams

Data streams typically have items of large number of dimensions. We study the fundamental heavy-hitters problem in this setting. Formally, the data stream consists of $d$-dimensional items $x_1,\ldots,x_m \in [n]^d$. A $k$-dimensional subcube $T$ is a subset of distinct coordinates $\{ T_1,\cdots,T_k \} \subseteq [d]$. A subcube heavy hitter query ${\rm Query}(T,v)$, $v \in [n]^k$, outputs YES if $f_T(v) \geq \gamma$ and NO if $f_T(v) < \gamma/4$, where $f_T$ is the ratio of number of stream items whose coordinates $T$ have joint values $v$. The all subcube heavy hitters query ${\rm AllQuery}(T)$ outputs all joint values $v$ that return YES to ${\rm Query}(T,v)$. The one dimensional version of this problem where $d=1$ was heavily studied in data stream theory, databases, networking and signal processing. The subcube heavy hitters problem is applicable in all these cases. We present a simple reservoir sampling based one-pass streaming algorithm to solve the subcube heavy hitters problem in $\tilde{O}(kd/\gamma)$ space. This is optimal up to poly-logarithmic factors given the established lower bound. In the worst case, this is $\Theta(d^2/\gamma)$ which is prohibitive for large $d$, and our goal is to circumvent this quadratic bottleneck. Our main contribution is a model-based approach to the subcube heavy hitters problem. In particular, we assume that the dimensions are related to each other via the Naive Bayes model, with or without a latent dimension. Under this assumption, we present a new two-pass, $\tilde{O}(d/\gamma)$-space algorithm for our problem, and a fast algorithm for answering ${\rm AllQuery}(T)$ in $O(k/\gamma^2)$ time. Our work develops the direction of model-based data stream analysis, with much that remains to be explored.Comment: To appear in WWW 201

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Grade eleven learners participation in the functions discourse: the case of a hyperbola and exponential function.

Degree of Doctor of philosophy (mathematics education) university of KwaZulu- Natal Durban,2018.The purpose of the study was to investigate the mathematical discourses of grade eleven learners related to the worded, numerical, tabular, and graphic asymptotes of the The purpose of the study was to investigate the mathematical discourses of grade eleven learners related to the worded, numerical, tabular, and graphic asymptotes of the hyperbola and exponential functions. The theory of commognition was referred to, with particular emphasis on the characteristics of the mathematical discourse; that is, word use, visual mediators, endorsed narratives, and routines. The study has fundamentally adopted an interview-based qualitative research design approach, with descriptive and interpretative elements complementing its data analysis processes. In addition, some quantitative aspects were administered by means of test-based activities. The study was conducted in four schools in the rural Mthatha district of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data was collected by means of a test administered to 112 respondents, and task-based interviews with 12 pairs of grade eleven students in those schools. In each school, about 30 learners participated in the test, and six from each school took part in the interviews. Data was analysed by means of the Discourse Profile of the Hyperbola and Exponential Function adapted from the Arithmetic Discourse Profile propounded by Ben-Yahuda and others. The findings revealed that learners have learnt functions in class, and were all familiar with the asymptotes of the hyperbola and the exponential function. While learners could answer questions on functions, a rephrasing of the question changed their response. There were also challenges of linking different representations of a function to each other. Students would also work efficiently on procedure tasks, but struggled on action-oriented tasks.. The theory of commognition was referred to, with particular emphasis on the characteristics of the mathematical discourse; that is, word use, visual mediators, endorsed narratives, and routines. The study has fundamentally adopted an interview-based qualitative research design approach, with descriptive and interpretative elements complementing its data analysis processes. In addition, some quantitative aspects were administered by means of test-based activities. The study was conducted in four schools in the rural Mthatha district of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data was collected by means of a test administered to 112 respondents, and task-based interviews with 12 pairs of grade eleven students in those schools. In each school, about 30 learners participated in the test, and six from each school took part in the interviews. Data was analysed by means of the Discourse Profile of the Hyperbola and Exponential Function adapted from the Arithmetic Discourse Profile propounded by Ben-Yahuda and others. The findings revealed that learners have learnt functions in class, and were all familiar with the asymptotes of the hyperbola and the exponential function. While learners could answer questions on functions, a rephrasing of the question changed their response. There were also challenges of linking different representations of a function to each other. Students would also work efficiently on procedure tasks, but struggled on action-oriented tasks