Engaging the Periphery for Visual Communication on Mobile Phones

While mobile phones have become ubiquitous instruments of communication and social interaction, they still require explicit interaction, placing high demands on attention. Engaging the periphery of users’ attention offers opportunities for awareness and interaction while reducing demands on attention and risks of disruption. We explore the mobile peripheral design space with Emotipix, an application for camera phones that turns the background of the phone’s display into a place for visual conversations. We conducted an exploratory 2-week user study with 6 pairs and one 4-person group, and found that Emotipix facilitated ongoing social practices. Our study shows that there is an unexploited opportunity to use mobile phones for peripheral awareness. We provide recommendations for managing users ’ expectations, desires for control, and privacy in mobile peripheral display design. 1

The teacher as action researcher : Using technology to capture pedagogic form

The paper argues that we make best use of learning technologies if we begin with an understanding of educational problems, and use this analysis to target the solutions we should be demanding from technology. The focus is to address the issue from the perspective of teachers and lecturers – the 'teaching community', and to consider how they could become the experimental innovators and reflective practitioners who will use technology well. Teachers could become 'action researchers', collaborating to produce their own development of knowledge about teaching with technology. For this to be possible, they must be able to share that knowledge, and the paper proposes the use of an online learning activity management system (LAMS) as a way of capturing and sharing the pedagogic forms teachers design. An action research approach, like all research, needs a theoretical framework from which to challenge practice, and paper shows how teachers could use the Conversational Framework to design and test an optimally effective learning experience. Examples of 'generic' learning designs illustrate how such approach can help the teaching community rethink their teaching, collectively, and embrace the best of conventional and digital methods. In this way they will be more likely to harness technology to the needs of education, rather than simply search for the problems to which the latest technology is a solution

Toxins in the Collection: Museum Awareness and Protection

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss museum policies regarding toxic materials used in the creation of an object or added to it as a preservation or pesticide technique. After surveying different museums, it has been found that many museums are unaware of what parts of their collections contain toxic materials. Because of this unfamiliarity with the danger these materials might pose, many museums to not have policies in place regarding them. Toxins in collection items may pose a threat to museum staff who are working with them on a day to day basis. Toxic materials are prevalent in any number of collections: this thesis focuses on three areas where toxic materials play a major part in the creation or their prolonging their life in museums. Lack of documentation of toxic materials in museum collection records can lead to mishandling of objects containing toxic materials and the potential for contamination by museum staff. This thesis argues that museums need to create safety plans that identify the toxic materials found in their collections, and develop training protocols to educate and protect staff members handling these objects, including providing protective equipment that will allow staff members to handle toxins without fear of contamination

Appropriation of mobile cultural resources for learning

Copyright © 2010 IGI Global. This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices - as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them - as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the "mobile complex". Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery: self-actualisation, social justice and the politics of career guidance

This paper is an extended text of Tristram Hooley’s inaugural lecture: Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery: self- actualisation, social justice and the politics of career education. The lecture was given on the 17th September 2015 at the University of Derby. The lecture explores the interrelationship between politics, social justice and career guidance. The paper argues that our careers emerge out of social and economic conditions. In unequal societies our position within the economic and social system is central to our chance of having a successful career and realising our potential (self-actualising). The lecture explores the role that career education and guidance can have in supporting individuals to self-actualise and notes that career education and guidance is in itself embedded in social, economic and political relationships. The ideal of the lifelong guidance system is advanced and it is argued that this could be part of a new kind of society. A society in which a lifelong guidance system was realised could be more socially justand would signal a new kind of relationship between paid work, citizenship and leisure. The lecture concludes with a consideration of the role that career education can play in bringing about a new kind of society. The paper proposes a pedagogic framework for a radical career education and guidance. This framework argues that radical career education and guidance should be seeking tohelp us to: (1) explore ourselves and the world where we live, learn and work; (2) examine how our experience connects to broader historical, political and social systems; (3) develop strategies that allow us individually to make the most of our current situation; (4) develop strategies that allow us collectively to make the most of our current situations; and (5) consider how the current situation and structures should be changed

Cross-device media: a review of second screening and multi-device television

Television viewers interacting with second screens has become a common sight in the modern living room. Such activities are a mixture of related, semi-related, and non-related browsing of content. This growing trend is revolutionising the way that broadcasters think about their content. Through the envisioned connected home, driven by end-to-end IP connected networks, television content creators and app developers are now considering the design space for multi-device, interactive experiences. In this review paper, we consider the pre-digital beginnings of such scenarios, and progress to discuss how the introduction of mobile devices has affected the TV viewing experience. We discuss dual-screen usage over a variety of contexts in the connected home, with a focus on ‘designed’ dual-screen experiences such as companion applications. We conclude with reflections on the future of this area so that app developers, broadcasters, and academics may push further the space and improve future dual- and multi-screen experiences

Designing kinetic objects for digital information display

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53).Andrew Martin Dahley.M.S

Enhancing interaction with dual-screen television through display commonalities

Second screening - engaging with a mobile device while watching TV - is ubiquitous. Previous research demonstrates that this is hampered by cognitive and physical disjuncts between the simultaneous content streams. To engage effectively with more than one screen, users must manage their attention, for example, by frequently adjusting their gaze or posture. This can lead to cognitive effort, which leads to disengagement, content sacrifice, and ultimately, affects user experience (UX) negatively. In this paper, we look to improve the design of the dual-screen scenario through display commonalities; the mirroring of one content stream (e.g., TV material or second screen content) within the other. We evaluate this design space with professional broadcast practitioners, and then conduct an empirical investigation to determine the impact of the most successful methods towards understanding their impact, and designing towards positive UX with multi-device scenarios. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s)

Enhancing Interaction with Dual-Screen Television Through Display Commonalities

Second screening - engaging with a mobile device while watching TV - is ubiquitous. Previous research demonstrates that this is hampered by cognitive and physical disjuncts between the simultaneous content streams. To engage effectively with more than one screen, users must manage their attention, for example, by frequently adjusting their gaze or posture. This can lead to cognitive effort, which leads to disengagement, content sacrifice, and ultimately, affects user experience (UX) negatively. In this paper, we look to improve the design of the dual-screen scenario through \emph{display commonalities}; the mirroring of one content stream (e.g., TV material or second screen content) within the other. We evaluate this design space with professional broadcast practitioners, and then conduct an empirical investigation to determine the impact of the most successful methods towards understanding their impact, and designing towards positive UX with multi-device scenarios

The design of personal ambient displays

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59).The goal of this thesis is to investigate the design of personal ambient displays. These are small, physical devices worn to display information to a person in a subtle, persistent, and private manner. They can be small enough to be carried in a pocket, worn as a watch, or even adorned like jewelry. In my implementations, information is displayed solely through tactile modalities such as thermal change (heating and cooling), movement (shifting and vibration), and change of shape (expanding, contracting, and deformation). Using a tactile display allows information to be kept private and reduces the chance of overloading primary visual and auditory activities. The display can remain ambient, transmitting information in the background of a person's perception through simple, physical means. The specific focus of this thesis is to create a number of these tactile displays, to identify and implement applications they can serve, and to evaluate aspects of their effectiveness. I have created a group of small, wireless objects that can warm up and cool down or gently move or shift. Users can reconfigure each display so that information sources like stock data or the activity of people on the internet are mapped to these different tactile modalities. Furthermore, in this thesis I consider the implications that human perception have on the design of these displays and examine potential application areas for further implementations.Craig Alexander Wisneski.S.M