‘Subtle’ Technology: Design for Facilitating Face-to-Face Interaction for Socially Anxious People

PhD thesisShy people have a desire for social interaction but fear being scrutinised and rejected. This conflict results in attention deficits during face-to-face situations. It can cause the social atmosphere to become ‘frozen’ and shy persons to appear reticent. Many of them avoid such challenges, taking up the ‘electronic extroversion’ route and experiencing real-world social isolation. This research is aimed at improving the social skills and experience of shy people. It establishes conceptual frameworks and guidelines for designing computer-mediated tools to amplify shy users’ social cognition while extending conversational resources. Drawing on the theories of Social Objects, ‘natural’ HCI and unobtrusive Ubiquitous Computing, it proposes the Icebreaker Cognitive-Behavioural Model for applying user psychology to the systems’ features and functioning behaviour. Two initial design approaches were developed in forms of Wearable Computer and evaluated in a separate user-centred study. One emphasised the users’ privacy concerns in the form of a direct but covert display of the Vibrosign Armband. Another focused on low-attention demand and low-key interaction preferences – rendered through a peripheral but overt visual display of the Icebreaker T-shirt, triggered by the users’ handshake and disguised in the system’s subtle operation. Quantitative feedback by vibrotactile experts indicated the armband effective in signalling various types of abstract information. However, it added to the mental load and needed a disproportionate of training time. In contrast, qualitative-based feedback from shy users revealed unexpected benefits of the information display made public on the shirt front. It encouraged immediate and fluid interaction by providing a mutual ‘ticket to talk’ and an interpretative gap in the users’ relationship, although the rapid prototype compromised the technology’s subtle characteristics and impeded the users’ social experience. An iterative design extended the Icebreaker approach through a systematic refinement and resulted in the Subtle Design Principle implemented in the Icebreaker Jacket. Its subtle interaction and display modalities were compared to those of a focal-demand social aid, using a mixed-method evaluation. Inferential analysis results indicated the subtle technology more engaging with users’ social aspirations and facilitating a higher degree of unobtrusive experience. Through the Icebreaker model and Subtle Design Principle, together with the exploratory research framework and study outcome, this thesis demonstrates the advantages of using subtle technology to help shy users cope with the challenges of face-to-face interaction and improve their social experience.RCUK under the Digital Economy Doctoral Training scheme, through MAT programme, EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre EP/G03723X/1

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

固相反応によるスメクタイト層間における錯体の生成

制度:新 ; 文部省報告番号:甲1626号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2002-03-07 ; 早大学位記番号:新3307 ; 理工学図書館請求番号:2675早稲田大

Modélisation d'ordre non entier des effets de fréquence dans les barres rotoriques d'une machine asynchrone

Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une modélisation d'ordre non entier des effets de fréquence dans les barres rotoriques d'une machine asynchrone à cage. La modélisation est d'abord conduite sur une barre rectangulaire puis appliquée à d'autres formes de barre. Les modèles sont validés en utilisant la méthode d'optimisation de Levenberg-Marquardt dans le domaine fréquentiel. Le critère est le critère quadratique logarithmique modifié en gain et phase. Le modèle de référence est un modèle de simulation par éléments finis. Nous appliquons enfin cette modélisation à une machine asynchrone représentée par son schéma équivalent diphasé.TOULOUSE-ENSEEIHT (315552331) / SudocSudocFranceF

Designing Unobtrusive Interfaces to Increase Naturaof First Time Face-To-Face Interaction

Social Proximity Applications (SPAs) have facilitated social networking in the real world. However, most applications are deployed in mobile devices (i.e. smartphone, PDA, tablet) restricted to traditional input and output (I/O) interfaces i.e. button, keyboard and screen. For people with low interpersonal skills, the requirements imposed by traditional interfaces can make their problems worse. In contrast, this paper describes the Icebreaker T-shirt, designed with natural interfaces to ease face-to-face communication when meeting new people. We discuss its design concept, technical requirements and user experience based on an experiment conducted with shy users in which 73% reported that the shirt was helpful to their meetings with strangers