91 research outputs found

    POSIWID and determinism in design for behaviour change

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    Copyright @ 2012 Social Services Research GroupWhen designing to influence behaviour for social or environmental benefit, does designers' intent matter? Or are the effects on behaviour more important, regardless of the intent involved? This brief paper explores -- in the context of design for behaviour change -- some treatments of design, intentionality, purpose and responsibility from a variety of fields, including Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" and Maurice Broady's perspective on determinism. The paper attempts to extract useful implications for designers working on behaviour-related problems, in terms of analytical or reflective questions to ask during the design process

    Making the user more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour

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    User behaviour is a significant determinant of a product’s environmental impact; while engineering advances permit increased efficiency of product operation, the user’s decisions and habits ultimately have a major effect on the energy or other resources used by the product. There is thus a need to change users’ behaviour. A range of design techniques developed in diverse contexts suggest opportunities for engineers, designers and other stakeholders working in the field of sustainable innovation to affect users’ behaviour at the point of interaction with the product or system, in effect ‘making the user more efficient’. Approaches to changing users’ behaviour from a number of fields are reviewed and discussed, including: strategic design of affordances and behaviour-shaping constraints to control or affect energyor other resource-using interactions; the use of different kinds of feedback and persuasive technology techniques to encourage or guide users to reduce their environmental impact; and context-based systems which use feedback to adjust their behaviour to run at optimum efficiency and reduce the opportunity for user-affected inefficiency. Example implementations in the sustainable engineering and ecodesign field are suggested and discussed

    Affordances, constraints and information flows as ‘leverage points’ in design for sustainable behaviour

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    Copyright @ 2012 Social Science Electronic PublishingTwo of Donella Meadows' 'leverage points' for intervening in systems (1999) seem particularly pertinent to design for sustainable behaviour, in the sense that designers may have the scope to implement them in (re-)designing everyday products and services. The 'rules of the system' -- interpreted here to refer to affordances and constraints -- and the structure of information flows both offer a range of opportunities for design interventions to in fluence behaviour change, and in this paper, some of the implications and possibilities are discussed with reference to parallel concepts from within design, HCI and relevant areas of psychology

    Levels of Mycoplasma genitalium antimicrobial resistance differ by both region and gender in the state of Queensland, Australia: implications for treatment guidelines

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    is frequently associated with urogenital and rectal infections, with the number of cases of macrolide resistant and quinolone resistant continuing to increase. In this study, we examined the levels of antibiotic resistance to these two common antibiotic treatments in geographically distinct locations in Queensland, Australia. Samples were screened for macrolide resistance-associated mutations using a commercially available kit (ResistancePlus™ MG; SpeeDx) and quinolone resistance-associated mutations were identified by PCR and DNA sequencing. Comparisons between antibiotic resistance mutations and location/gender were performed. Levels of macrolide resistance were high across both locations (62%). Quinolone resistance mutations were found in ∼10% of all samples, with a number of samples harboring mutations conferring resistance to both macrolides and quinolones. Quinolone resistance was higher in Southeast Queensland, compared to North Queensland and this was consistent in both males and females ( = 0.007). Rectal samples from males harbored high levels of macrolide (75.9%) and quinolone (19%) resistance, with 15.5% harboring resistance to both classes of antibiotics. Overall the lowest observed level of resistance was for quinolones in females from North Queensland (1.6%). These data highlight the high levels of antibiotic resistance in within Queensland and the challenges faced by STI clinicians in managing these infections. The data do however show that levels of antibiotic resistance may differ between populations within the same state, which has implications for clinical management and treatment guidelines. These findings also support the need for ongoing antibiotic resistance surveillance and tailored treatment

    Design for Behaviour Change as a Driver for Sustainable Innovation: Challenges and Opportunities for Implementation in the Private and Public Sectors

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    Over the last decade, design for behaviour change has become increasingly recognised as a strategy for enabling social change. Despite this, we are far from understanding its implementation, especially through the private and public sectors. This study has surveyed private and public sector stakeholders with regard to their current knowledge of, and approach to, design for behaviour change. The aim was to identify the challenges for professional stakeholders in understanding, accessing and implementing design for behaviour change. Underpinned by a literature review of design for behaviour change theories and approaches, an online survey and two focus groups with private and public sector stakeholders were conducted with particular focus on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The results identified that there is a significant disconnect between available theoretical knowledge of design for behaviour change and its practical implementation. Reasons for this include a lack of awareness and common language, of evidence based examples, and of evaluation methods and inter-sector collaborations. In response, a set of recommendations has been developed to propose ways forward for the wider understanding and application of design for behaviour change

    Architectures of control in consumer product design

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    Copyright @ 2005 Social Services Research GroupThe idea of architectures of control is introduced through examples ranging from urban planning to digital rights management, and the intentions behind their use in consumer products are examined, with reference to case studies of printer cartridges and proposed 'optimum lifetime products.' The reactions of the technical community and consumers themselves are also explored, along with some wider implications for society

    A landscape of design: interaction, interpretation and the development of experimental expressive interfaces

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    This paper presents the initial research insights of an ongoing research project that focuses upon understanding the role of landscape, its use as a resource for designing interfaces for musical expression, and as a tool for leveraging ethnographic understandings about space, place, design and musical expression. We briefly discuss the emerging research and reasoning behind our approach, the site that we are focusing on, our participatory methodology and conceptual designs. This innovative research is envisaged as something that can engage and interest the conference participants, encourage debate and act as an exploratory platform, which will in turn inform our research, practice and design

    Osvaldo and Isis retrotransposons as markers of the Drosophila buzzatii colonization in Australia

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    Background: Transposable elements (TEs) constitute an important source of genetic variability owing to their jumping and regulatory properties, and are considered to drive species evolution. Several factors that are able to induce TE transposition in genomes have been documented (for example environmental stress and inter- and intra-specific crosses) but in many instances the reasons for TE mobilisation have yet to be elucidated. Colonising populations constitute an ideal model for studying TE behaviour and distribution as they are exposed to different environmental and new demographic conditions. In this study, the distribution of two TEs, Osvaldo and Isis, was examined in two colonising populations of D. buzzatii from Australia. Comparing Osvaldo copy numbers between Australian and Old World (reported in previous studies) colonisations provides a valuable tool for elucidating the colonisation process and the effect of new conditions encountered by colonisers on TEs. Results: The chromosomal distributions of Osvaldo and Isis retrotransposons in two colonising populations of D. buzzatii from Australia revealed sites of high insertion frequency (>10%) and low frequency sites. Comparisons between Osvaldo insertion profiles in colonising populations from the Old World and Australia demonstrate a tendency towards a higher number of highly occupied sites with higher insertion frequency in the Old World than in Australian populations. Tests concerning selection against deleterious TE insertions indicate that Isis is more controlled by purifying selection than Osvaldo. The distribution of both elements on chromosomal arms follows a Poisson distribution and there are non-significant positive correlations between highly occupied sites and chromosomal inversions. Conclusions: The occupancy profile of Osvaldo and Isis retrotransposons is characterised by the existence of high and low insertion frequency sites in the populations. These results demonstrate that Australian D. buzzatii populations were subjected to a founder effect during the colonisation process. Moreover, there are more sites with high insertion frequency in the Old World colonisation than in the Australian colonisation, indicating a probable stronger bottleneck effect in Australia. The results suggest that selection does not seem to play a major role, compared to demography, in the distribution of transposable elements in the Australian populations

    Expansion and subfunctionalisation of flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylases in the grapevine lineage

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylases (F3'5'Hs) and flavonoid 3'-hydroxylases (F3'Hs) competitively control the synthesis of delphinidin and cyanidin, the precursors of blue and red anthocyanins. In most plants, <it>F3'5'H </it>genes are present in low-copy number, but in grapevine they are highly redundant.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The first increase in <it>F3'5'H </it>copy number occurred in the progenitor of the eudicot clade at the time of the γ triplication. Further proliferation of <it>F3'5'H</it>s has occurred in one of the paleologous loci after the separation of Vitaceae from other eurosids, giving rise to 15 paralogues within 650 kb. Twelve reside in 9 tandem blocks of ~35-55 kb that share 91-99% identity. The second paleologous <it>F3'5'H </it>has been maintained as an orphan gene in grapevines, and lacks orthologues in other plants. Duplicate <it>F3'5'H</it>s have spatially and temporally partitioned expression profiles in grapevine. The orphan <it>F3'5'H </it>copy is highly expressed in vegetative organs. More recent duplicate <it>F3'5'H</it>s are predominately expressed in berry skins. They differ only slightly in the coding region, but are distinguished in the structure of the promoter. Differences in <it>cis</it>-regulatory sequences of promoter regions are paralleled by temporal specialisation of gene transcription during fruit ripening. Variation in anthocyanin profiles consistently reflects changes in the <it>F3'5'H </it>mRNA pool across different cultivars. More <it>F3'5'H </it>copies are expressed at high levels in grapevine varieties with 93-94% of 3'5'-OH anthocyanins. In grapevines depleted in 3'5'-OH anthocyanins (15-45%), fewer <it>F3'5'H </it>copies are transcribed, and at lower levels. Conversely, only two copies of the gene encoding the competing F3'H enzyme are present in the grape genome; one copy is expressed in both vegetative and reproductive organs at comparable levels among cultivars, while the other is transcriptionally silent.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results suggest that expansion and subfunctionalisation of <it>F3'5'H</it>s have increased the complexity and diversification of the fruit colour phenotype among red grape varieties.</p
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