Do pictures ‘tell’ a thousand words in lectures?: how lecturers vocalise photographs in their presentations

This article explores how 145 photographs collected from 20 PowerPoint lectures in undergraduate psychology at 16 UK universities were integrated with lecturers’ speech. Little is currently known about how lecturers refer to the distinct types of photographs included in their presentations. Findings show that only 48 photographs (33%) included in presentation slides were referred to explicitly by exploring their features to make a point related to the lecture content, with only 14 of these used to invite student questioning. Most photographs (97 or 67%) represent a case of ‘unprobed representations’, that is, either ‘embedded’ in the talk as ‘illustrations’ of the speech topic or not referred to at all. A taxonomy of uses that lecturers made of the photographs in their slideshows was created through adapting a Peircean semiotic analysis of the photograph–speech interaction. The implications in terms of lecturer and student engagement with the photographic material are discussed, arguing the case for more Critical Semiotic Exploration of photographs in HE practice

Persona-Scenarios in Game Development: Communication Tensions Between Hearing Aid Users and Communication Partners

The 3D Tune-In project developed serious/leisure game applications to educate hearing aid (HA) users about how HA functionalities could improve hearing in different sound environments. The application development team had little prior experience catering for end-users with hearing loss. HA users and their communication partner were consulted regarding their communication difficulties and communication strategies in different environments. Participants reported many hearing problems; affective issues; problems with their HA; tensions in their relationship caused by hearing issues; and they noted a need for training in how best to use HAs. Persona-scenarios were created outlining user needs and goals and a user-requirements table detailed how end-users might interact with proposed applications, both of which were presented to developers during the initial application design period. Game developers identified that these resources positively influenced the development of their application. They were able to produce a useful and useable application for their new target user

Deriving Personas to Inform HMI Design for Future Autonomous Taxis: A Case Study on User- Requirement Elicitation

Automated, Mobility-as-a-Service Vehicles (AV-MaaSs) – Autonomous Taxis - are expected to offer an inexpensive, mobility-on-demand service supporting greater sustainable transportation systems, including ‘last mile’ solutions. However, to date little is understood about how different people - whose needs and requirements may vary considerably - will best be supported to use these vehicles when there is no human driver/operative present to mediate or support them. Aiming to capture users’ experiences from existing taxi services and apply these in the context of an AV-MaaS, we conducted a series of interviews with 35 taxi users, with different usability/accessibility needs. This was enriched by relevant literature. The information gathered from both activities informed the creation of eight unique “personas”, illustrating potential end-users of the service, and thirteen unique “scenarios”, depicting and encompassing current taxi usage. The personas and scenarios were subsequently used to highlight potential Human Machine Interface (HMI) issues which need to be considered for a driverless mobility service, which then informed the development of key user-requirements for HMI design and service type models. Specific user-requirements were elicited and categorised using a requirements template. This paper presents an overview of personas and scenarios, and the process by which they were derived, and provides a case study of how key user-requirements and service types were subsequently elicited from these persona-scenarios. The work is important to ensure that AV-MaaSs successfully meet the as-yet unknown needs of end-users and offer usability for all