Empowerment of women through an innovative e-mentoring community platform: implications and lessons learned

This article presents an overview of an e-mentoring community platform that intends to promote women’s empowerment. Women face the so-called glass ceiling effect, the barrier that keeps them from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. We aim to eliminate the stereotypical profile of women as excluded from economic, political, and professional life and promote women’s empowerment, equality, and social coherence. To this aim, we aspire to develop Womenpower, an innovative e-mentoring community platform that intends to link women mentors and mentees in the areas of academia, business, and healthcare. Given the nature of this endeavor, there is a need to approach the development of the e-mentoring platform as a horizontal process and democratize the design, allowing for different perspectives of stakeholders to be heard and determine the design decisions. This article delineates the approach adopted for democratizing the design process and maximizing intended users’ involvement in the development process. Finally, we conclude with implications for researchers and practitioners in Community Informatics and recommendations for promoting the participation of women in the fields of academia, business, and healthcare

Empowerment of women through an innovative e-mentoring community platform: implications and lessons learned

This article presents an overview of an e-mentoring community platform that intends to promote women’s empowerment. Women face the so-called glass ceiling effect, the barrier that keeps them from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. We aim to eliminate the stereotypical profile of women as excluded from economic, political, and professional life and promote women’s empowerment, equality, and social coherence. To this aim, we aspire to develop Womenpower, an innovative e-mentoring community platform that intends to link women mentors and mentees in the areas of academia, business, and healthcare. Given the nature of this endeavor, there is a need to approach the development of the e-mentoring platform as a horizontal process and democratize the design, allowing for different perspectives of stakeholders to be heard and determine the design decisions. This article delineates the approach adopted for democratizing the design process and maximizing intended users’ involvement in the development process. Finally, we conclude with implications for researchers and practitioners in Community Informatics and recommendations for promoting the participation of women in the fields of academia, business, and healthcare

Spomenik Kvinta Valerija iz Hardomilja kod Ljubuškoga

U radu je opisan rimski nadgrobni spomenik iz Hardomilja kod Ljubuškoga. Veteran Kvinto Valerije iz Ikonija bio je pripadnik Vii. legije, koja je na području Ljubuškoga ostavila 11 spomenika. Imena s natpisa: Q. Valerius Q. f., Q. Portorius i Q. Valerius Anteros, vjerojatno su maloazijski domoroci koji nose romanizirana imena. I ostali pripadnici vii. legije, koji se imali imanja na području Ljubuškoga, bili su unovačeni u M. Aziji: Milijada, Pesinunt, Konana i Sevastopolj. Sedma legija vjerojatno je došla 6. – 9. po. Kr. u provinciju Dalmaciju, a 56. – 57. otišla je u Meziju. Spomenik Kvinta Valerija spada u monumentalne vojničke stele, slične onima u Tiluriju, Saloni i Aseriji, koje su u gornjem dijelu imale zabat i friz s vojničkim oru‘jem, u sredini natpis u edikuli, a u donjem dijelu prikaz vrata

Ideas mapping, surface computing and user experience

This paper reports work regarding the design, development and evaluation of a surface computing application to support collaborative decision making.. The domain- independent application, so called Ideas Mapping, builds on the principle of Affinity Diagramming to allow participants to analyze a problem and brainstorm around possible solutions while they actively construct a consensus artifact - - a taxonomy of their ideas. During idea generation, Ideas Mapping replicates physical post-it notes on a multi-touch tabletop. Additional functionality supports student collaboration and interaction around the organization of ideas into thematic categories associated with the problem at hand. We report on the functionality and user experience while interacting with the application which was designed and developed using a user-centered approach. We also report initial findings regarding the affordances of surface computing for collaborative decision making

Tree-Based versus Hybrid Graphical-Textual Model Editors:An Empirical Study of Testing Specifications

Tree-based model editors and hybrid graphical-textual model editors have advantages and limitations when editing domain models. Data is displayed hierarchically in tree-based model editors, whereas hybrid graphical-textual model editors capture high-level domain concepts graphically and low-level domain details textually. We conducted an empirical user study with 22 participants to evaluate the implicit assumption of system modellers that hybrid notations are superior, and to investigate the tradeoffs between the default EMF-based tree model editor and a Sirius/Xtext-based hybrid model editor. The results of the user study indicate that users largely prefer the hybrid editor and are more confident with hybrid notations for understanding the meaning of conditions. Furthermore, we found that the tree editor provided superior performance for analysing ordered lists of model elements, whereas activities requiring the comprehension or modelling of complex conditions were carried out faster through the hybrid editor

Knowledge representation for culturally competent personal robots: requirements, design principles, implementation, and assessment

Culture, intended as the set of beliefs, values, ideas, language, norms and customs which compose a person’s life, is an essential element to know by any robot for personal assistance. Culture, intended as that person’s background, can be an invaluable source of information to drive and speed up the process of discovering and adapting to the person’s habits, preferences and needs. This article discusses the requirements posed by cultural competence on the knowledge management system of a robot. We propose a framework for cultural knowledge representation that relies on (i) a three layer ontology for storing concepts of relevance, culture specific information and statistics, person-specific information and preferences; (ii) an algorithm for the acquisition of person-specific knowledge, which uses culture specific knowledge to drive the search; (iii) a Bayesian Network for speeding up the adaptation to the person by propagating the effects of acquiring one specific information onto interconnected concepts. We have conducted a preliminary evaluation of the framework involving 159 Italian and German volunteers and considering 122 among habits, attitudes and social norms

INTERACT 2015 Adjunct Proceedings. 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 14-18 September 2015, Bamberg, Germany

INTERACT is among the world’s top conferences in Human-Computer Interaction. Starting with the first INTERACT conference in 1990, this conference series has been organised under the aegis of the Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction of the UNESCO International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). This committee aims at developing the science and technology of the interaction between humans and computing devices. The 15th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2015 took place from 14 to 18 September 2015 in Bamberg, Germany. The theme of INTERACT 2015 was "Connection.Tradition.Innovation". This volume presents the Adjunct Proceedings - it contains the position papers for the students of the Doctoral Consortium as well as the position papers of the participants of the various workshops

Collaborative Learning In An Artifact Ecology

This work aims to extend our understanding of how groups of learners collaborate in a learning environment rich in technologies, namely an artifact ecology. For the purpose of this investigation we enriched a postgraduate HCI course with four identical technology rich settings that aimed to support student collaborative activities around a design problem. Following an ethnographic approach, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected in HCI courses over three years resulting in a rich dataset for analysis. Initial studies helped us understand the domain knowledge, context, and learners' needs and experiences. Then, using Distributed Cognition (DC) as a conceptual framework to guide analysis and interpretation of findings we worked toward understanding the interdependencies of learners, tasks, and technologies in the environment and highlighting aspects for redesign. The findings of these individual studies were then combined in order to provide a holistic understanding of the collaborative activities in an artifact ecology

A distributed cognition perspective for collaboration and coordination: Artifact ecologies in design studies

A distributed cognition perspective for collaboration and coordination: Artifact ecologies in design studies user is spread across devices, across physical or digital spaces or in-between face-to face sessions, building up to the necessity to consider the collection of devices as a whole interactive space. The design of “micro-interactions” remains important, but there is a bigger issue we need to consider. How can interaction designers construct efficient artifact ecologies for collaborative activities? To this aim we need to acquire an in-depth understanding of the complex interactions and interdependencies between collaborators and information technologies. Through a multi-phase design approach, this dissertation focused on understanding within-group interactions during collaborative learning activities in an artifact ecology. This dissertation consists of four phases, three sequential phases to collect and analyse data, and one integration phase. The first phase explored the use of physical and digital tools in an HCI course and the role of an artifact ecology in supporting collaboration and coordination around design tasks. The second phase aimed to transfer and apply the DiCoT methodological framework into a classroom setting towards building an understanding of collaboration and coordination in terms of physical arrangements, communication channels and mediating artifacts. The third phase addressed the social and evolutionary aspects of the artifact ecology and proposed an expansion for two models of the DiCoT framework. Finally, the fourth phase integrated findings from previous phases to provide design implications on how to construct classroom artifact ecologies and to address how DiCoT can be used as a methodological toolkit in classroom artifact ecologies. The dissertation concludes with practical guidelines and implications for practitioners and researchers on designing technological tools and set ups for the support of collaborative design activities in classroom settings.Complete