Complementing backyard-bedroom recording studios with a mobile app

Research on township hip-hop musicians in South Africa suggests that media producers in developing countries may increasingly be combining use of mobile phones with other digital technology. This demonstrates the need for M4D designers to conceptualise apps which fit such cross-device digital media ecologies. We describe the co-design methods used to support such hybrid township hip-hop digital media ecologies. These designs emerged from an interdisciplinary collaboration, where the ethnographic work of a media studies student and her access to participants were used as a basis for a computer science student in setting up a participatory design project. Such collaboration has been fostered for some time at the ICT4D lab at our university and may provide a model for postgraduate mobile app design collaboration. The mobile application developed supports hip-hop production. We argue for the importance of such creative digital tools in M4D, as they may facilitate voice and capability in marginalised communitie

An Investigation on the Effects of Mediation in a Storytelling Virtual Environment

This paper presents a study that explores the use of mediation in virtual environments (VEs) used for cultural storytelling. A VE was created in which a traditional San story was told. Two forms of mediation were used: visual mediation and audio mediation. Four versions of the VE were implemented, differentiated by the type and amount of mediation included. 77 subjects were tested, each experiencing only one of the versions. Measurements of presence, story involvement and enjoyment of each user were taken. A factorial analysis of variance, with a between-subjects design was used. Audio mediation was found to have an effect on presence(F = 138.8, p < 0.002). Visual mediation was found to increase story involvement (F = 9.49, p < 0.003). Both the interaction between the mediations, and audio mediation increased enjoyment (F = 5.87, p < 0.02 and F = 4.01, p < 0.05 respectively). Therefore, the use of subtle mediation that appears natural in the VE setting was shown to be effective. The effects of audio mediation on presence suggests that it is an important addition to any VE. And, in the context of virtual storytelling, visual mediation is valuable in conveying a narrative more successfully

Using Visualizations to Support Design and Debugging in Virtual Reality

We present a visualization system that helps designers conceptualise interactions in a virtual environment (VE). We use event-condition-action triads (triggersets) for specifying interactions, and provide multiple visualizations: sequence diagrams, floorplans and timelines. We present a two part study: sequencing VE interactions accurately and debugging mistakes. Subjects were divided into two groups: one received visualizations and triggersets and the other (a control group) received triggersets only. The visualization group described 72.5% of the sequence correctly on average, compared to 56.4% by the non-visualization group. The visualization group also detected more than twice as many errors as the control group. The visualization group worked well with multiple, linked windows to create an understanding of the design. Floorplans were most useful for an overview, timelines for understanding specific sequences and sequence diagrams for sequencing and finding mistakes

Experiences in Designing a User-Oriented Tool for Building and Understanding Interactions in Virtual Environments

Designing a virtual environment and its interactions is a difficult task because of the complexity of specifying non-deterministic relationships between multiple objects. We present a system to help novice designers create interactions in a virtual environment. Our system uses triggersets (event-condition-action triads) for entering interactions. It provides multiple visualizations of the virtual environment and its interactions: a sequence diagram for narrative sequencing, a floorplan for spatial sequencing and a timeline for time sequencing. We conducted an exploratory study with 11 subjects, where some received visualizations and triggersets of a VE and others only received the triggersets. The study had two parts: to assess whether subjects could sequence triggersets accurately and to assess how they managed to debug mistakes in a different set of triggersets. The visualization group described 72.5% of the sequence correct on average, compared to 56.4% by the non-visualization group. For debugging, the visualization group detected more than twice as many errors as the non-visualization group

Mobile Scaffolding Application to Support Novice Learners of Computer Programming

Support for novice learners of computer programming can be provided by scaffolding the construction of programs. The ubiquity of mobile phones allows us to support learners whenever they wish to work on a program outside the classroom. This paper describes the development of an application that scaffolds the construction of programs on a mobile phone. The application was designed based on a five-level scaffolding framework and implemented on the Android platform.The application scaffolds the construction of programs on a mobile device by: (i) representing a program in parts; (ii) restricting a learner to complete the program in a certain order; (iii) enabling construction of a program one part at a time; (iv) providing instructions, steps, default code to be edited, hints, and error prompts where appropriate; and (v) fading the scaffolds as the learner progresses from one successfully completed and compiled program, to the next.Experiments are currently ongoing to test and evaluate the mobile application

Age Determination of the Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, using Wing Pigmentation

A red pigment is contained in the wing veins of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae). This insect is the main vector of the plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa Wells (Xanthomonadales: Xanthomonadaceae), the causal agent of Pierce's disease of grapevines. Over the course of the H. vitripennis lifespan, the red pigment darkens and eventually becomes brown/black in color. These pigments are believed to be pheomelanin and eumelanin, respectively. The age of H. vitripennis can be determined by calculating the amount of red pigment found in the wings by analyzing high resolution wing photographs with image analysis software. In this study, a standard curve for the age determination of H. vitripennis was developed using laboratory—reared insects of known ages varying from 1 to 60 days. The impact of three environmental conditions on these readings was also investigated and found to have little effect on the age determination, and could be easily accounted for. Finally, field collected insects from several Central Texas vineyards were successfully analyzed for age determination suggesting that the annually reported influx of H. vitripennis was composed almost entirely of older insects

SignSupport: A Mobile Aid for Deaf People Learning Computer Literacy Skills

This paper discusses a prototype of a learning aid on a mobile phone to support Deaf people learning computer literacy skills. The aim is to allow Deaf people to learn at their own pace which in turn reduces the dependence on a teacher to allow weaker learners be assisted. We studied the classroom dynamics and teaching methods to extract how lesson content is delivered. This helped us develop an authoring tool to structure lesson content for the prototype. A prototype has been developed using South African Sign Language videos arranged according to the structure of pre-existing lessons. The technical goal was to implement the prototype on a mobile device and tie the resulting exported lesson content from the authoring tool to a series of signed language videos and images so that a Deaf person can teach him/herself computer literacy skills. Results from the user testing found the prototype successful in allowing Deaf users to learn at their own pace thereby reducing the dependence on the teacher

Codesigning with communities to support rural water management in Uganda

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in developing regions has gained momentum due to their increasing affordability, particularly in rural areas where other ICT infrastructures for information management are often non-existent. Giving potential technology users, the opportunity to actively engage and contribute to the design of an artefact increases adoption and sustainable use. In this paper, we illustrate our application of community-based codesign (CBCD) that led to the development of an ICT intervention to support water management in three rural communities in Uganda. The community-based system helps water managers to track water users, payments and expenditures in a bid to improve transparency, accountability and trust. We present research learnings of the method and how engagement with rural communities can be improved through the use of intermediaries and paying more attention to community values as well as exercising ethics of reciprocity in community-based ICT initiatives

Design Notations for Creating Virtual Environment

In this paper we propose a new design notation to improve communication in teams creating virtual environments (VEs). Our experience in creating VEs is that the programmers and designers have no common formalisms which results in ambiguity and misunderstanding in creating the final VE. After teaching a selection of specification techniques to design students, we realized that we needed to create our own formalism. This we used with designers who found the notation useful and intuitive. More importantly, the programmers were able to interpret the formalism more accurately and reduce the time required to create virtual environments