Building a Socio-technical Perspective of Community Resilience with a Semiotic Approach

Situated in the diversity and adversity of real-life contexts facing crisis situations, this research aims at boosting the resilience process within communities supported by digital and social technology. In this paper, eight community leaders in different parts of the world are invited to express their issues and wishes regarding the support of technology to face social challenges. Methods and artefacts based on the Organisational Semiotics (OS) and the Socially-Aware computing have been applied to analyse and consolidate this data. By providing both a systemic view of the problem and also leading to the identification of requirements, the analysis evidences some benefits of the OS-based approach to consolidate perspectives from different real-life scenarios towards building a socio-technical solution

Acessibilidade Em Ambientes Educacionais: Para Além Das Guidelines

O acesso à tecnologia não pode ser confundido com o acesso ao conhecimento mediado pela tecnologia. Este trabalho amplia o conceito de acessibilidade, ao propor que se rompam barreiras entre pessoas e computadores de modo que o sujeito passe a ser parte integrante do ambiente de construção do conhecimento. Portanto, argumentamos que é preciso avançar no entendimento da acessibilidade, possibilitando a imersão do sujeito no ambiente educacional mediado pela tecnologia. Palavras-chave Interação humano-computador; Processos de ensino/aprendizagem Acessibilidade; Design participativo Abstract The access to the technology cannot be confused with the access to the knowledge mediated by the technology. This work enlarges the accessibility concept, when proposing to break up barriers between people and computers so that the subject become integral part of the environment of knowledge construction. Therefore,we argued that it is necessary to move forward in the understanding of the accessibility, making possible the subject's immersion in the educational environment mediated by the technology. Keywords Human-computer interaction; Teaching/learning processes; Accessibility; Participative design2213-2

Acessibilidade em ambientes educacionais: para além das guidelines

O acesso à tecnologia não pode ser confundido com o acesso ao conhecimento mediado pela tecnologia. Este trabalho amplia o conceito de acessibilidade, ao propor que se rompam barreiras entre pessoas e computadores de modo que o sujeito passe a ser parte integrante do ambiente de construção do conhecimento. Portanto, argumentamos que é preciso avançar no entendimento da acessibilidade, possibilitando a imersão do sujeito no ambiente educacional mediado pela tecnologia.The access to the technology cannot be confused with the access to the knowledge mediated by the technology. This work enlarges the accessibility concept, when proposing to break up barriers between people and computers so that the subject become integral part of the environment of knowledge construction. Therefore,we argued that it is necessary to move forward in the understanding of the accessibility, making possible the subject's immersion in the educational environment mediated by the technology

Interface de usuário sob a lente de abordagens semióticas

Computational systems can be seen as complex networks of signs that can be treated semiotically in several levels. The user interface of such systems can be understood as a "representamen" for the system. Evaluating interfaces in this perspective requires an analysis of the signs present in the interface, relative to the user's language and his/her processes of signification. In this paper we revisit the main approaches to the concept of interface and human-computer interaction, and explore the potential of the semiotic perspective in the understanding and analysis of user interfaces. We argue that Semiotics provides us with an accurate vocabulary and enables us to analyze interfaces under unique aspects. In this paper we apply a combination of semiotic approaches as a basis for a framework to analyze user interfaces. The proposal is illustrated with the analysis of elements of the interface of commercial e-mail systems

Classification of time series by shapelet transformation

Time-series classification (TSC) problems present a specific challenge for classification algorithms: how to measure similarity between series. A \emph{shapelet} is a time-series subsequence that allows for TSC based on local, phase-independent similarity in shape. Shapelet-based classification uses the similarity between a shapelet and a series as a discriminatory feature. One benefit of the shapelet approach is that shapelets are comprehensible, and can offer insight into the problem domain. The original shapelet-based classifier embeds the shapelet-discovery algorithm in a decision tree, and uses information gain to assess the quality of candidates, finding a new shapelet at each node of the tree through an enumerative search. Subsequent research has focused mainly on techniques to speed up the search. We examine how best to use the shapelet primitive to construct classifiers. We propose a single-scan shapelet algorithm that finds the best $k$ shapelets, which are used to produce a transformed dataset, where each of the $k$ features represent the distance between a time series and a shapelet. The primary advantages over the embedded approach are that the transformed data can be used in conjunction with any classifier, and that there is no recursive search for shapelets. We demonstrate that the transformed data, in conjunction with more complex classifiers, gives greater accuracy than the embedded shapelet tree. We also evaluate three similarity measures that produce equivalent results to information gain in less time. Finally, we show that by conducting post-transform clustering of shapelets, we can enhance the interpretability of the transformed data. We conduct our experiments on 29 datasets: 17 from the UCR repository, and 12 we provide ourselve

A socially inspired energy feedback technology: challenges in a developing scenario

Raising awareness of the environmental impact of energy generation and consumption has been a recent concern of contemporary society worldwide. Underlying the awareness of energy consumption is an intricate network of perception and social interaction that can be mediated by technology. In this paper we argue that issues regarding energy, environment and technology are very much situated and involve tensions of sociocultural nature. This exploratory investigation addresses the subject by introducing the design of a Socially-inspired Energy Eco-Feedback Technology (SEET), which is composed of an interactive system to trigger and mediate collective savings and a tangible device as a public feedback. Results of an evaluation situated in the context of a school in a socially disadvantaged area in Brazil are discussed, shedding light on the sociocultural aspects related to the subject. The role of the SEET to motivate energy awareness collectively among the social group is assessed, as well as the design characteristics that contributed to that. Outcomes bring to light social aspects and dynamics that would hardly have been predicted, evidencing critical factors related to a socially inspired design approach in the energy awareness domain

Collective intelligence for promoting changes in behaviour: a case study on energy conservation

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges humanity faces today. Despite of high investments in technology, battling climate change is futile without the participation of the public, and changing their perception and habits. Collective intelligence tools can play an important role in translating this “distant” concept that is climate change into practical hints for everyday life. In this paper, we report a case study grounded on collective intelligence tools to collaboratively build knowledge around energy conservation. A preliminary study to raise energy awareness in an academic environment is summarised, setting the scene to a more ambitious initiative based on personal stories to transform energy awareness into behaviour change. The role of the collective intelligence tools and other technical artefacts involved are discussed, suggesting strategies and features that contributed (or not) to users’ engagement and collective awareness. Lessons learned from both studies are reported with a sociotechnical approach as implications for design pursuing behaviour change

Exercise load monitoring: integrated approaches to advance the individualisation of exercise oncology

Whether slowing disease progression or combatting the ills of advancing age, the extensive utility of exercise training has contributed to the outright declaration by the American College of Sports Medicine that ‘exercise is medicine’. Consistent with general framework of adaptation, the advantages of exercise training are indiscriminate—benefitting even the most susceptible clinical populations. Still, the benefit of exercise training presupposes healthy adaptation wherein progressive overload matches sufficient recovery. Indeed, a difference exists between healthy adaptation and non-functional over-reaching (ie, when internal/external load exceeds recovery capacity)—a difference that may be blurred by cancer treatment and/or comorbidity. Recent advances in smartwatches make them ideally suited to non-invasively monitor the physiological stresses to exercise training. Resolving whether individuals are successfully adapting to exercise training via load monitoring bears clinical and practical relevance. While behaviour-change research aims to identify positive constructs of exercise adherence, further attention is needed to uncover how to optimise exercise prescription among cancer populations. Herein, we briefly discuss the constituents of exercise load monitoring, present examples of internal and external load and consider how such practices can be applied to cancer populations

Monitoramento de safras via Web: um caso de sucesso em pesquisa multidisciplinar.

Este trabalho descreve o projeto WebMaps em desenvolvimento na UNICAMP, um esforço multidisciplinar envolvendo ciências agrárias e de computação , cujo objetivo é desenvolver uma plataforma baseada em serviços Web para o planejamento agro-ambiental.SBIAgro 2007