138 research outputs found
Optical high dynamic range acquisition of crack density evolution in cyclic loaded GFRP cross-ply laminates affected by stitching
Point-wise evaluation of the growth driving direction for arbitrarily shaped delamination fronts using cohesive elements
Predicting users' first impressions of website aesthetics with a quantification of perceived visual complexity and colorfulness
Users make lasting judgments about a website's appeal within a split second of seeing it for the first time. This first impression is influential enough to later affect their opinions of a site's usability and trustworthiness. In this paper, we demonstrate a means to predict the initial impression of aesthetics based on perceptual models of a website's colorfulness and visual complexity. In an online study, we collected ratings of colorfulness, visual complexity, and visual appeal of a set of 450 websites from 548 volunteers. Based on these data, we developed computational models that accurately measure the perceived visual complexity and colorfulness of website screenshots. In combination with demographic variables such as a user's education level and age, these models explain approximately half of the variance in the ratings of aesthetic appeal given after viewing a website for 500ms only.Engineering and Applied Science
Document Word Clouds: Visualising Web Documents as Tag Clouds to Aid Users in Relevance Decisions
Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοInformation Retrieval systems spend a great effort on determining
the significant terms in a document. When, instead, a user
is looking at a document he cannot benefit from such information. He
has to read the text to understand which words are important. In this
paper we take a look at the idea of enhancing the perception of web
documents with visualisation techniques borrowed from the tag clouds
of Web 2.0. Highlighting the important words in a document by using a
larger font size allows to get a quick impression of the relevant concepts
in a text. As this process does not depend on a user query it can also
be used for explorative search. A user study showed, that already simple
TF-IDF values used as notion of word importance helped the users to
decide quicker, whether or not a document is relevant to a topic
Design and Development of a Web Extension to Help Facilitate the Learning of a Foreign Language
Learning a foreign language is a time consuming task that
requires perseverance, commitment and hard work. The time required to
learn a foreign language can range from hundreds to thousands of hours,
depending on the language being learnt and the native language of the
learner. Two major barriers to learning a language are lack of motivation and time. Spending increasing amounts of time online also has a
detrimental effect on learning a language. The global digital language
learning industry is growing and the market has more than doubled in
size in the last decade due to the world becoming increasingly interconnected. There is a need to provide users with a web browser extension
that is both interactive and continuous for learning a language. This paper presents the design and development of a web browser extension that
will help facilitate the learning of foreign languages. The web extension
overrides the default content when either a new tab or window is opened
with interactive language learning material. The web extension is compatible with the desktop version of the Chrome web browser. Each time
a new tab or window is opened, a range of language learning material are
presented at random, which can be read, understood and completed in 30
seconds or less with immediate feedback. Overriding the web browser’s
functionality ensures the user is exposed to language learning material
Species trait selection along a prescribed fire chronosequence
1. Fire is a widespread management practice used in the maintenance of European heathland. Frequent prescribed burns in small patches have been shown to benefit carabid communities; however, how fire favours specific life-history traits is poorly understood. 2. In this study, we identify characteristic species of the successional stages within heathlands, and find the traits which are characteristic of species in burnt areas versus areas dominated by older heath stands. 3. We identify 10 species as indicator species for heathland in the pioneer stage (0–5 years old); Amara lunicollis, Bembidion lampros, Calathus fuscipes, Carabus problematicus, Cicindela campestris, Nebria salina, Notiophilus aquaticus, Poecilus cupreus, P. lepidus and P. versicolor. Dyschirius globosus is identified as an indicator for the building stage (6–14 years old), and Carabus violaceus as an indicator for the mature stage (15–25 years old). 4. Moisture preference and diet are identified as traits that determine species response to prescribed fire. Collembolan specialists and species with no moisture preference are shown to be most abundant in burnt patches, whereas generalist predators and species with a high moisture preference are less tolerant of fire. 5. Knowledge of species sorting along a prescribed fire gradient can provide valuable information for heathland conservation.publishedVersio
When the going gets tough the beautiful get going: aesthetic appeal facilitates task performance.
The current studies examined the effect of aesthetic appeal on performance. According to one hypothesis, appeal would lead to overall decrements or enhancements in performance [e.g. Sonderegger & Sauer, (Applied Ergonomics, 41, 403-410, 2010)]. Alternatively, appeal might influence performance only in problem situations, such as when the task is difficult [e.g. Norman, (2004)]. The predictions of these hypotheses were examined in the context of an icon search-and-localisation task. Icons were used because they are well-defined stimuli and pervasive to modern everyday life. When search was made difficult using visually complex stimuli (Experiment 1), or abstract and unfamiliar stimuli (Experiment 2), icons that were appealing were found more quickly than their unappealing counterparts. These findings show that in a low-level visual processing task, with demand characteristics related to appeal eliminated, appeal can influence performance, especially under duress
Two images of Nantes as a ‘Green Model’ of Urban Planning and Governance: The ‘Collaborative City’ Versus the ‘Slow City’
This article examines how the city of Nantes, European Green Capital in 2013, came to promote plans for a new international airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Deploying poststructuralist discourse theory, it analyses how the highly politicised struggle against the airport reveals the limits of the Nantes model of urban sustainability and collaboration, giving rise to a counter model, which we provisionally characterise as the ‘slow city’. While the struggle against the airport can be understood as a rural social movement, we show how its ideals and logics have been progressively displaced to Nantes itself, disclosing new images and possibilities of urban governance
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