Building informative audio-visual content automatically: a process to define the key aspects

Related to the population ageing that most of the countries are witnessing, several new challenges emerged in areas such as health and social care. Often, governments and entities does not have human, physical and infrastructural means available or in sufficient number to support all citizens’ needs. This trend requires different approaches to address their related problems. In this context, several technologies have recently emerged and have been explored as an important ally to cope with seniors’ needs. Interactive television (iTV) infrastructure have a lot of potential to deliver adapted solutions to seniors, although it is essential that such products are designed and developed with inputs from potential end users. The application of a participatory design approach is a key factor to assure high levels of final products’ adoption. In line with this, the present paper describes the process of data collection that aims to analyse the audio-visual elements that compose a set of videos that will be transmitted by an iTV platform and that intents to deliver informative contents about social and public services to Portuguese elders. The results will provide guidelines for the development of similar products that address older people’s needs

ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: A SCORECARD APPROACH TO ASSESS REGIONAL IMPACTS OF UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS

RESUMO As Universidades desempenham um papel importante no desenvolvimento das regiões, decorrentes da sua tripla missão (Brennan et al., 2004): Ensino, Investigação e "Envolvimento da Comunidade" (B-HERT, 2006). As Instituições de Ensino Superior estão equipadas com recursos humanos altamente qualificados e desempenham um papel fundamental na criação de conhecimento, bem como no desenvolvimento e na evolução das sociedades (European Union, 2011). Assim, é crucial uma efetiva incorporação destes conhecimentos no desenvolvimento de produtos e inovações (European Union, 2011). Ao longo das últimas décadas, as atividades de transferência de conhecimento foram alvo de especial atenção, nomeadamente pelo seu potencial para expandir o impacto das Universidades (Sánchez-Barrioluengo, 2014), através do desenvolvimento de relações com a comunidade. Assim, os países europeus estabeleceram políticas promotoras da transferência de conhecimentos da Universidade para as regiões europeias (Berbegal-Mirabent et al., 2013). A União Europeia (2011) elencou um conjunto de quatro áreas a partir das quais as Universidades estimulam o desenvolvimento regional: reforçar a inovação regional através das suas atividades de investigação; promoção das empresas, desenvolvimento e crescimento de negócios; contribuição para o desenvolvimento do capital humano regional e competências, e melhorar a igualdade social através da regeneração e desenvolvimento cultural. Este artigo centra-se na segunda área, abordando os projetos universitários que visam a promoção do empreendedorismo. O empreendedorismo tem um papel crucial no crescimento económico e na criação de emprego. A educação no empreendedorismo está incluída no leque de ferramentas através das quais se espera que as Universidades contribuam para o desenvolvimento regional (Laukkanen, 2000). Desde uma fase inicial que a educação ganhou relevância e foi definida como uma prioridade, tanto para a Comissão Europeia, como para as regiões europeias. Neste contexto, as Universidades têm beneficiado das oportunidades criadas pelos programas educacionais que promovem o desenvolvimento de um conjunto variado de competências, promovidos por Políticas de Educação Europeias (Cankaya et al., 2015). Atualmente o programa Erasmus+ cobre uma ampla gama de projetos destinados a aumentar as qualificações e a empregabilidade. O programa apoia parcerias transnacionais no campo da educação, formação e instituições e organizações jovens que promovam a cooperação e estabeleçam pontes entre o mundo da educação e do trabalho, com o objetivo de colmatar as lacunas de competências na Europa. A educação em empreendedorismo está no centro destas preocupações. O Erasmus+ promove o desenvolvimento de competências empresariais que criam um ambiente propício para o empreendedorismo (European Commission, 2010; European Commission, 2016), e oferece suporte para a promoção da educação empreendedora pelas Universidades, (Jansen et al., 2015). Este artigo propõe uma abordagem inspirada na abordagem de scorecard para desenvolver uma metodologia para aferir os impactos regionais dos projetos de empreendedorismo universitários desenvolvidos no âmbito do programa Erasmus+.   Palavras-chave: Educação em empreendedorismo; transferência de conhecimento; scorecard; cooperação universidade-região   ABSTRACT Universities play an important role in the development of regions (Brennan et al., 2004), stemming from their threefold acknowledged mission: Teaching, Research and "Community Engagement" (B-HERT, 2006). Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are equipped with highly qualified human resources and hold a key role in knowledge creation and on the development and evolution of societies (European Union, 2011). To this end an effective incorporation of such knowledge into product development and innovation is crucial (European Union, 2011). Over the past decades knowledge transfer activities have received special attention, notably for their potential for expanding the impact of Universities (Sánchez-Barrioluengo, 2014) through the development of relationships with communities. On this regard, European countries established policies encouraging the transfer of knowledge from university to the European regions (Berbegal-Mirabent et al., 2013). The European Union (2011) has put forward four main areas from which Universities stimulate regional development: enhancing regional innovation through their research activities; promoting enterprise, business development and growth; contributing to the development of regional human capital and skills, and improving social equality through regeneration and cultural development. This paper focuses in the second area, by addressing the university projects aiming the promotion of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is regarded as instrumental in economic growth, and job creation. Entrepreneurial education therefore is included in the range of ways by which Universities are expected to contribute to regional development (Laukkanen, 2000). Education has gain relevance as priority for the European Commission and for European regions from an early stage. In this context, Universities have benefited from the opportunities created by the educational programs fostering the development of a varied set of competences that have been promoted, nurtured by European Education Policies (Cankaya et al., 2015). Currently the Erasmus+ program offers an umbrella for projects aimed at boosting skills and employability. The program supports transnational partnerships among Education, Training, and Youth institutions and organisations to foster cooperation and bridge the worlds of Education and work in order to tackle the skills gaps in Europe. Entrepreneurship education is at the core of these concerns. Erasmus+ promotes the development of entrepreneurial competencies which grant a propitious environment for entrepreneurship (European Commission, 2010; European Commission, 2016), and offers support for the promotion of entrepreneurship education by Universities (Jansen et al., 2015) This paper builds on a scorecard approach to develop a methodology for assessing the regional impacts of university entrepreneurship projects developed under the Erasmus+ program.   Keywords: Entrepreneurship education; knowledge transfer; scorecard; university region cooperatio

Iconography’s development for a seniors’ iTV informative platform

Technological solutions, namely interactive television (iTV) applications, have a lot of potential to deliver adapted solutions to wider audiences or to specific groups of users. Elderly can be one of these groups but require a special attention by specialists due to their specificities. One of the central questions to develop pleasant and usable technological solutions is the iconography used in the applications, as graphical interface elements. To make icons appealing and perceptible visual representations, with a high degree of iconicity ensured, it is important to design them taking end users’ inputs into account. This paper reports on the iconographic design process and its results, carried out in the scope of an academic project that aims to develop an iTV platform for seniors. The purpose of the icons is to support users to perceive, visually, the area in which the information sent through this platform belongs to. After developing three icon proposals per each one of the seven areas of information, the proposals were presented to a group of 19 elderly people who, through election voting test, defined their preferred options. In this work it was also possible to validate a process that can be applied to similar studies. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS - International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies

Custos diretos da demência em lar de idosos

Mestrado em GerontologiaA demência impõe enormes encargos económicos aos países. O custo económico total da demência é produzido pela soma de dois tipos de custos, os diretos e indiretos. Os custos diretos representam os recursos usados que tendem a aumentar com a progressão da doença, quando existe institucionalização do doente ou quando é necessário um cuidador formal. O presente estudo tem como objetivos analisar os custos diretos da demência em lar de idosos em Portugal no ano de 2012, comparar estes valores entre utentes com e sem demência e criar um modelo preditivo de custos. Consideraram-se 6 dimensões para a análise dos custos, nomeadamente (1) a utilização de serviços de urgência, consultas hospitalares, consultas no centro de saúde e privadas, (2) os episódios de internamento contabilizados em dias, (3) a medicação gasta pelo doente, (4) a utilização de serviços sociais, (5) a utilização de ajudas técnicas e (6) a utilização de serviços de reabilitação. A amostra foi constituída por 72 utentes (36 utentes com diagnóstico de demência e 36 utentes sem demência). A recolha de dados foi feita através do acesso a documentos institucionais, recibos mensais dos utentes e juntos de pessoal da instituição. Os custos anuais médios de um utente com demência foram de 15.287€, dos quais 73% estão afetos à utilização de serviços sociais. Os custos com um utente nas mesmas condições mas sem quadro demencial rondam os 12.289€. As variáveis “capacidade de fazer-se compreender”, “auto desempenho: vestir-se” e “distúrbios da tiroide” são as três variáveis que permitem predizer um aumento de custos nos utentes com demência. Em lar de idosos, no ano de 2012, uma pessoa com demência foi 1,2 vezes mais dispendiosa do que um utente sem quadro demencial. Conhecer os custos reais de um utente com demência em lar de idosos, permite uma gestão mais eficaz e eficiente dos recursos nacionais.Dementia represents an economical burden to societies nowadays. Total dementia expenses are calculated by the sum of direct and indirect costs. Through the stages of the diseases, as the patients may require institutionalization or a formal caregiver, the direct costs tend to increase. This study aims to analyze the direct costs of dementia in Portuguese nursing homes in 2012, compare the spending between seniors with and without dementia and propose a predictive costs model. The expenses analysis was based on (1) the use of emergency rooms and doctors, appointments, either in public or private institutions, (2) days of hospitalizations, (3) medication, (4) social services use, (5) need of technical support and (6) utilization of rehabilitation services. The sample group was composed of 72 people, half with dementia and half without. Data collection was made by review of institutional documents, receipts monthly users and staff of the institution. The average annual expenses of a patient with dementia was 15.287€, from which 73% were due to the use of social services, while the costs of a patient without dementia are about 12.289€. The variables “ability to make himself understood”, “self-performance: dress up” and “thyroid disorders” were found to be statistically significant to the prediction of an increase of expenses with patients with dementia. In nursing homes, in 2012, the costs per patient with dementia were 1,2 times higher than per patient without dementia. The knowledge of the real costs of a patient with dementia in a nursing home might allow a more effective and efficient management of national resources

+TV4E: An Interactive Television Platform as a Support to Broadcast Information about Social Services

In the last decades almost all countries face the increasing of elderly population [1]. Given these recent changes, there have been appearing a several number of gerontechnologies to enhance seniors’ quality of life. In this context and despite the strong investment from the Governments to disseminate services like distance help or provision of medical information, the level of success is still very low. Possibly this failure is due to the fact that most of these approaches requires the user to search for the information (a "pull-oriented" activity from the user's perspective) rather than a "push-oriented" where the user receives the information. Television (TV) is one of the privileged resources to reach the general population, but it is an even more powerful way to achieve older people, limited to their home or in institutional context, due to the fact that almost all seniors are familiar with a TV set. Elderly are commonly in a disadvantaged position, for not knowing how to access public and social services they can benefit from (e.g. medication discounts, medical appointments, etc.). Regarding this, it is being developed an iTV platform (+TV4E) which aims to disseminate information about public and social services for seniors, by interrupting the visualization of linear TV content with audio-visual content about these services. In order to broadcast the information that elderly viewer most need and want to receive, it will defined a set of user profiles. The profiles’ definition will be achieved throughout a set of selection phases, and the first phase involves the definition of the individuals that will be able to interact with the +TV4E. In this paper is presented a set of criteria for the first filtration of users who can benefit from this type of iTV services and the respective services that they can be interested in receive information abou

Revitalização do Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos

Desde o reinado de D. João IV, a imagem da Virgem Maria sob os seus diferentes epítetos, tem vindo a ser adorada até aos tempos de hoje. É tal a devoção a Nossa Senhora, que segundo uma lenda transmontana, sete capelinhas com orago à Mãe de Jesus, localizadas em topos de montes da região transmontana, se avistam e as respetivas Virgens comunicam entre si, todas as manhãs. Freixo de Espada à Cinta, vila transmontana e, também, devota a Nossa Senhora afirma, contrariamente à lenda, que Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos é uma das sete irmãs. Tal se afirma, uma vez que, segundo se fala, numa manhã aquando da preparação da capelinha da Senhora dos Montes Ermos, foi encontrada terra no vestido da imagem, supondo assim à peregrinação desta até às ermidas das suas irmãs. Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos permanece no seu santuário, localizado no cume do cabeço de S. Brás, a cerca de 3 km de Freixo de Espada à Cinta e que, por ocasião da sua festividade, visita a vila, percorrendo as principais ruas, em procissão. No último dia das festividades regressa ao seu santuário onde são celebrados os rituais religiosos de forma simples e humilde, uma vez que o espaço e a sua envolvente não permitem a grandiosidade desejada. Não sabendo ao certo a veracidade dos factos lendários abordados, a presente dissertação de Mestrado Integrado em Arquitetura propõe a revitalização do Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos de modo a que proporcione aos seus devotos condições para a adoração e realização dos ritos religiosos e, assim, propor que a Senhora dos Montes Ermos integre a Irmandade das 7 virgens.Since the reign of D. João IV, the image of the Holy Mary under its different epithets, has been adored until today. Such is the devotion of the Holy Mary that, according to Trásos-Montes legend, there are seven chapels allusive to Jesus’s Mother, located on top of the mountains in the Trás-os-Montes region, and each Virgin in each chapels is able to communicate with each other every morning. In “Freixo de Espada à Cinta”, a village in Trás-os-Montes also devoted to the Holy Mary, doesn’t agree with the legend and affirme that “Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos” is one of the seven sisters of the legend. Therefore, in “Freixo de Espada à Cinta” is belived that, in one morning when preparing the chapel of “Senhora dos Montes Ermos”, dirt was found in the dress of the image, thus supposing its jorney to visit her hermitages sisters. “Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos” remains in its sanctuary, located on “S. Brás’s” montain, about 3 km from “Freixo de Espada à Cinta” and when occurs the festivities in “Freixo de Espada à Cinta”, the image goes around the village, and its main streets in procession. On the last day of the festivities, the image returns to the sanctuary, where religious rituals take place in a more simple and humble way, due to the small space that the chapel offers and its not possible to have major celebrations there, as much as they would like to have. We don’t know exactly how much of this is true or not about the facts, however, this dissertation of Master’s Degree in Architecture proposes the revitalization of the Sanctuary of “Nossa Senhora dos Montes Ermos” with the main purpose to provide to all of the devotees all the conditions to worship and have all of the religious rites and provide “Senhora dos Montes Ermos” to be once more part of the sisterhood of the 7 virgins

A TV Interativa como veículo para infoinclusão dos seniores: um plano de execução de projeto

Os indivíduos portugueses com 65 anos e mais, representam a faixa populacional que consome mais conteúdos televisivos no panorama nacional. Sendo que muitos seniores apresentam dificuldades no acesso a informação sobre diversas temáticas, reconhece-se que a TV é um meio com grande potencial para fazer chegar informação de forma eficaz a estes indivíduos. O projeto +TV4E: Televisão Interativa como veículo de difusão de serviços sociais para apoio aos seniores tem como principal objetivo promover a infoinclusão e a qualidade de vida dos seniores portugueses. Este projeto pretende desenvolver uma plataforma de televisão interativa (iTV) que permita enriquecer a experiência televisiva com a integração de conteúdos informativos sobre serviços públicos e sociais. A plataforma a desenvolver entregará o conteúdo informativo de forma personalizada de acordo com interesses, particularidades e a localização geográfica do utilizador, sendo este mecanismo construído ao longo do tempo através de um processo de machine learning. Este artigo descreve, sucintamente, o projeto +TV4E, e apresenta o plano de execução do mesmo, bem como os resultados esperados de cada uma das tarefas definidas para a sua prossecução

Designing a video library for senior users of iTV

The adoption rate of technologies by older adults is dependent on several factors, such as the identified potential benefits in the users’ perspective. Designing and creating technology-based products since their beginning with potential end users, will help to guarantee a high rate use of these type of solutions, as verified in literature. In the scope of +TV4E project, which aims to deliver information regarding public and social services to older people through an interactive television (iTV) platform, this study analyses the best approach to implement a video library. This functionality allows the user to access a list of produced videos in the last days, categorized as "seen" and "unseen". Therefore, this article explores the process carried out to define the best approach to present a video library. For this, the research team presented to a sample of 4 seniors, three video library proposals developed concerning the design guidelines for iTV applications for elderly, supported on literature review. The data collection was followed by a cognitive walkthrough and a focus group session. Aspects as using different combinations to present the layouts and ensure that participants were not influenced, allowed to obtain results free of bias

A Web-based Platform for Quality Management of Elderly Care: Usability Evaluation of Ankira®

AbstractThe use of web-based platform for data storage and data analysis in the context quality for elderly care is improving. This work reports the usability evaluation of Ankira® Platform based in a comprehensive methodology of testing in real contexts. The participants were recruited from elderly care institutions and completed different pre-established tasks. Observation, Critical Incident Records and Scales were used to collect data. The results shown a high level of usability for the platform and indicators of reliability of the methodology are discussed

Procedures of user-centered usability assessment for digital solutions: scoping review of reviews reporting on digital solutions relevant for older adults

The assessment of usability is a complex process that involves several steps and procedures. It is important to standardize the evaluation and reporting of usability procedures across studies to guide researchers, facilitate comparisons across studies, and promote high-quality usability studies. The first step to standardizing is to have an overview of how usability study procedures are reported across the literature.publishe