Suomenlinna, enjoy with care: Designing for visitor guidance service with behavioural insights

Suomenlinna has seen a steady rise in visitor numbers and is one of the most popular visitor destinations in Finland. Despite the benefits of increased tourism to this UNESCO World Heritage Site, it has also brought some additional challenges. Commissioned by the Governing Body of Suomenlinna, this practice-based thesis began with exploring the issue of visitor safety through motivation and signage. Using service design as the main approach and informed by behavioural insights, early exploration into visitor safety concerns revealed that these concerns were part of a wider systemic issue stemming from visitor behaviours. These behaviours, such as walking in areas that are not recommended by the Governing Body, affect not only the visitors’ own safety but also have an effect on the privacy of Suomenlinna residents and conservation efforts. This thesis further identifies that these behaviours result from a combination of the misaligned perceptions visitors have about Suomenlinna and its ineffectual visitor guidance service. In this thesis, the findings and insights from primary research, which consisted of a workshop, field observations, interviews, and shadowing, formed the basis of discovering the underlying issue and reframing the design brief. Theoretical frameworks in the fields of service design, behavioural studies and tourism were researched during the literature review in order to shed light on the possible cause of the underlying issue and strategies to tackle the issue. This thesis suggests that by addressing both the conscious and unconscious sides of visitor behaviours, an effective means of shifting behaviours could be achieved. In order to create practical and implementable solutions, the thesis develops a design proposal consisting of an awareness campaign and on-site interventions. The awareness campaign focuses on addressing the conscious minds of visitors with the aim of re-aligning perceptions to be more in line with the historical value of Suomenlinna. Improvements in the visitor guidance interventions on-site focus on the unconscious minds of visitors to address momentary lapses in areas where impulsive behaviours can overtake the judgement of visitors. The design proposal was prototyped and tested in the field, gathering feedback and results. The thesis concludes with a discussion on future steps for pilot implementation, limitations, and future research to ensure meaningful behavioural changes for Suomenlinna. This thesis demonstrates that service design informed by behavioural insights can be an effective catalyst for guiding the behaviour of visitors to ensure that the integrity of Suomenlinna and its future tourism can coexist.Kim, Jinn

Design of e-Teaching Portfolio System Framework for e-Tutor Competency Management

In e-learning, tutors support learners through their understanding of e-learning environments as well as their knowledge of the subjects under their charge, and also play the role of preventing the dropout of learners. Therefore, measures to manage efficient competency of tutors are necessary. Whereas e-portfolios are made from the viewpoint of learner's learning, e-teaching portfolios are made from the viewpoint of the activities of teachers including tutors. Although there have been discussions about the roles and competency of tutors, thus far, the presentation of concrete items to be managed in the system is insufficient, and discussions about e-teaching portfolio systems are insufficient. In this study, attempts were made to define the items of tutor competency necessary for systematic management of tutors’ competency in e-teaching portfolio systems. In results, tutor information, tutors’ personal history, and tutor competency were presented as areas that constitute e-teaching portfolios. The competencies that must be possessed by tutors in e-learning were also presented from the viewpoints of knowledge (e.g., e-learning, teaching-learning, etc.), skills (e.g., ICT literacy, LMS, etc.), and attitudes (e.g., responsibility, positive attitudes, etc.). The results of the present study will provide implications when e-teaching portfolio systems are designed for tutor competency management in e-learning

Anomalous response in the vicinity of spontaneous symmetry breaking

We propose a mechanism to induce negative AC permittivity in the vicinity of a ferroelectric phase transition involved with spontaneous symmetry breaking. This mechanism makes use of responses at low frequency, yielding a high gain and a large phase delay, when the system jumps over the free-energy barrier with the aid of external fields. We illustrate the mechanism by analytically studying spin models with the Glauber-typed dynamics under periodic perturbations. Then, we show that the scenario is supported by numerical simulations of mean-field as well as two-dimensional spin systems.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Differencial Effect of E-Banking Services Determinants

This study proposes and empirically tests a research model regarding the use of electronic financial services based on the e-service acceptance model. The current study categorizes electronic financial services provided by banks into transaction-oriented services (TOS) and communication-oriented services (COS), in order to investigate the co-value creation phenomenon through customer participation. It is assumed that the antecedent variables in the previous studies may exert differential effects on the use behaviour of electronic services. The proposed model includes three Technology Readiness dimensions (discomfort, optimism, and insecurity), and two Technology acceptance constructs (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness), as the antecedents to use of e-banking services. The proposed research model was tested against the data collected through a survey of service users who have experience with both TOS use and COS use. The key result is that the use behaviour of the different types of e-banking services is affected by different sets of factors: the use of TOS is found to be affected by perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and insecurity; whereas the use of COS is affected only by perceived ease of use

Characterization of human papillomavirus type 16 pseudovirus containing histones

Lymphoproliferative responses following four immunizations with HPV16 PsVs from fraction I, II, or III. The mice were immunized four times with 50 ng of PsVs per dose at 2-week intervals. Mouse splenocytes were obtained 5 days after the fourth immunization. Mouse splenocytes were labeled with carboxyfluorescein succinimidyl ester (CFSE), stimulated with purified HPV16 L1 VLPs, and cultured for 4 days. The splenocytes were stained with allophycocyanin (APC)-conjugated anti-CD4 antibody (eBioscience, USA) and examined with a FACSCalibur flow cytometer (BD Bioscience, USA). To count CD4+ cells, the cells were gated according to forward and side scatter, and the upper-left segment of each graph was counted on FITC and APC scatter plots. Panel A shows the flow cytometry results for three individual mice. The value in panel B represents the mean ± SEM (n = 3). (DOCX 171 kb