Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood

This article presents a practice-led investigation by a cross-disciplinary team of artists and computer scientists into the potential for mobile and digital communications technologies to engage visitors to London’s Hampstead Heath with the histories of its veteran urban trees. Focusing on the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within the arboreal environment for the digital poetic walk, The Listening Wood, it considers the reciprocal impact of ‘tree time’ on the development of ‘slow tech’

Heart versus Head: Differential Bodily Feedback Causally Alters Economic Decision-making

Metaphorically, altruistic acts, such as monetary donations, are said to be driven by the heart, whereas sound financial investments are guided by reason, embodied by the head. In a unique experiment, we tested the effects of these bodily metaphors using biofeedback and an incentivized economic decision-making paradigm. Participants played a repeated investment game with a simulated partner, alternating between tactical investor and altruistic investee. When making decisions, participants received counterbalanced visual feedback from their own or a simulated partner’s heart or head, as well as no feedback. As investor, participants transferred a greater proportion of their endowments when exposed to visual feedback from their own head than to feedback from their own heart or no feedback at all. These effects were not observed when the source of the feedback was the simulated partner. As investee, heart feedback predicted greater altruistic returns than head or no feedback, but this effect did not differ based on source (own vs partner). Consistent with a dual-process framework, we suggest that people may be encouraged to invest more or be more altruistic when receiving bodily feedback from conceptually diametric sources

Internet of Things of Trees - Conversational objects via SMS protocols

The paper describes a ‘work in progress’ to develop a system to enable users to engage with the historical and environmental story behind veteran trees in Hampstead Heath in the spirit of the Internet of Things. Unlike other ‘Internet of Trees’ projects, this study focuses on story telling rather than sensor networks. Building on previous work, conversational agents (‘chatbots’) are used as proxies for the trees to enable a two-way narrative exchange between the user and the ‘tree’. Two interaction pathways are proposed (direct SMS and web-based geofencing) and the technical development of both approaches is described, as well as ethnographic studies undertaken on Hampstead Heath to elicit engaging content for the chatbot. An initial deployment of the SMS-based interaction at Tate Exchange, a project space within Tate Modern, London is discussed and a preliminary evaluation presented

214 Gene-specific effect of beta-adrenergic blockade on QT duration in the Long QT syndrome

BackgroundIn the long QT syndrome (LQTS) the clinical efficacy of beta-blocker treatment differs according to the genotype. We aimed to asses the effect of beta-blocker treatment in LQT1 and LQT2 patients.Patients and methods24-hour Holter ECG were recorded before and after beta-blocking therapy initiation in genotyped LQT1 (n=30, 8 males, mean age 21±17) and LQT2 patients (n=16, 8 males, mean age 19±15). QT duration was measured on consecutive 1-minute averaged QRS-T complexes leading to up to 1440 QT-RR pairs for each recording. Then, we computed subject- and condition-specific log/log QT/RR relationships which were used to calculate QT interval duration at RR=1000ms (QT1000=1000*).ResultsBefore treatment, coefficients were higher in LQT2 than in LQT1 patients (0.53±0.10 vs. 0.40±0.11, p<0.001) and QT1000 was longer in LQT2 than in LQT1 patients (521±38 vs. 481±39ms, p<0.01).Beta-blockers significantly prolonged the mean RR interval (RR = 827 ± 161 ms before treatment and 939±197ms on beta-blocker, p<0.0001). The coefficients were not significantly modified by beta-blockers (0.41±0.9 in LQT1 patients and 0.52±0.12 LQT2 patients). Beta-blocker treatment was associated with a prolongation of the QT1000 interval (from 481±39 to 498±43ms, p<0.01) in LQT1 patients but with a shortening in LQT2 patients (from 521±38 to 503±32ms, p<0.01).ConclusionsOur results confirm the elevated coefficient of the QT/RR relationship in LQTS patients. LQT2 patients showed higher coefficient and longer QT1000 when compared to LQT1 patients. The effect of beta-adrenergic blockade on QT1000 duration was gene-specific. Given the demonstrated efficacy of beta-blockers in LQT1 and 2 patients, our data suggest that QT1000 might be a poor predictor of outcome under anti-adrenergic therapy

Showing mutual support through digital empathy badges

Charity badges and empathy (awareness) ribbons are common tokens of support for charities and other worthy causes. In this paper we revisit the concept of smart badges with the aim of developing digital equivalents of the charity badge/empathy ribbon. We describe the design of prototype low–cost digital empathy badges based around infra-red transceiver technology, that light up and play a ringtone in the presence of other badges and we present the findings of a small pilot study involving a dozen badge wearers

Supporting empathy through embodiment in the design of interactive systems

Whilst empathy is considered an essential component of what it means to be human, it is arguably absent as a design objective when creating modern communication systems. This paper presents an approach to designing for, as opposed to with, empathy using the example of two design interventions to create embodied rituals reflecting prayers and worries of individuals within a church community. The aim of these interventions is to facilitate conversation and support within the community, thus generating empathy between community members, and inciting prosocial behaviour through embodied cognition

Designing for empathy in a church community

Whilst empathy is considered an essential component of our humanity, it is arguably absent as a design consideration when creating modern communications, where the focus is often one of speed and efficiency. However, as with all design attempts to promote a particular emotion, the inherent subjectivity means that it is best explored through practice based approaches. As such, this paper presents a research through design approach to designing for empathy, as a means of identifying some of the design sensibilities required to address such a challenge. We consider how design interventions to two currently personal rituals for reflecting upon prayers and worries within a church community in London may be extended and augmented in order to allow those prayers and worries to be shared more widely within the church community. It is expected that these interventions will promote conversation and support within the community, thus generating empathy between community members. From these designs we expect to be able to draw more general understandings about designing systems for empathy

An internet of old things as an augmented memory system

The interdisciplinary Tales of Things and electronic Memory (TOTeM) project investigates new contexts for augmenting things with stories in the emerging culture of the Internet of Things (IoT). Tales of Things is a tagging system which, based on two-dimensional barcodes (also called Quick Response or QR codes) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, enables the capturing and sharing of object stories and the physical linking to objects via read and writable tags. Within the context of our study, it has functioned as a technology probe which we employed with the aim to stimulate discussion and identify desire lines that point to novel design opportunities for the engagement with personal and social memories linked to everyday objects. In this paper, we discuss results from fieldwork with different community groups in the course of which seemingly any object could form the basis of a meaningful story and act as entry point into rich inherent 'networks of meaning'. Such networks of meaning are often solely accessible for the owner of an object and are at risk of getting lost as time goes by. We discuss the different discourses that are inherent in these object stories and provide avenues for making these memories and meaning networks accessible and shareable. This paper critically reflects on Tales of Things as an example of an augmented memory system and discusses possible wider implications for the design of related systems. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited