An ontology co-design method for the co-creation of a continuous care ontology

Ontology engineering methodologies tend to emphasize the role of the knowledge engineer or require a very active role of domain experts. In this paper, a participatory ontology engineering method is described that holds the middle ground between these two 'extremes'. After thorough ethnographic research, an interdisciplinary group of domain experts closely interacted with ontology engineers and social scientists in a series of workshops. Once a preliminary ontology was developed, a dynamic care request system was built using the ontology. Additional workshops were organized involving a broader group of domain experts to ensure the applicability of the ontology across continuous care settings. The proposed method successfully actively engaged domain experts in constructing the ontology, without overburdening them. Its applicability is illustrated by presenting the co-created continuous care ontology. The lessons learned during the design and execution of the approach are also presented

Participatory design of a continuous care ontology : towards a user-driven ontology engineering methodology

The patient room of the future would be able to sense the needs and preferences of the patients and nurses and adapt itself accordingly by combining all the heterogeneous data offered by the different technologies. This goal can be achieved by developing a context-aware framework, which exploits and integrates the heterogeneous data by utilizing a continuous care ontology. The existing ontology engineering methodologies are rather extreme in their choices to include domain experts. On the one hand, there are methodologies that only discuss the scope, use and requirements of the ontology with the domain experts. On the other hand, there are approaches in which the ontology is completely constructed by the domain experts by providing them with user-friendly and collaborative tools. In this paper, a participatory ontology engineering methodology is presented that finds a middle ground between these two extremes. The methodology actively involves social scientists, ontology engineers and stakeholders. The stakeholders participate in each step of the ontology life cycle without having to construct the ontology themselves or attribute a large amount of their time. The applicability of the methodology is illustrated by presenting the co-created continuous care ontology

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A Semiotic Analysis of Multi-Touch Interface Design: The MuTable Case Study

Although multi-touch applications and user interfaces have become increasingly common in the last few years, there is no agreed-upon multi-touch user interface language yet. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the design of multi-touch user interfaces, this paper presents semiotic analysis of multi-touch applications as an interesting approach to gain deeper understanding of the way users use and understand multi-touch interfaces. In a case study example, user tests of a multi-touch tabletop application platform called MuTable are analysed with the Communicability Evaluation Method to evaluate to what extent users understand the intended messages (e.g., cues about interaction and functionality) the MuTable platform communicates. The semiotic analysis of this case study shows that although multi-touch interfaces can facilitate user exploration, the lack of well-known standards in multi-touch interface design and in the use of gestures makes the user interface difficult to use and interpret. This conclusion points to the importance of the elusive balance between letting users explore multi-touch systems on their own on one hand, and guiding users, explaining how to use and interpret the user interface, on the other.status: publishe

Low-Fidelity Prototyping for Multi-Touch Surfaces

This paper presents two low-fidelity prototyping methods for multi-touch tabletop applications. The prototypes, only consisting of basic 'physical'materials such as paper, cardboard, markers, scissors, etc. were designed to evaluate distinct aspects of the same multi-touch platform. One prototype allowed observing tabletop interaction in general: how users interact with each other and the surface they work on. The second prototype allowed the design team to test how users react to new, innovative multi-touch controls. Introducing these prototyping methods, this paper describes a way to iterate and test designs at an early stage in the development cycle.status: publishe

Are you a gamer? A qualititive study on the parameters for categorizing casual and hardcore gamers

This article examines the parameters for categorizing gamers as hardcore or casual players and the relation between these parameters with special attention to gender differences. To investigate this, a qualitative persona-based focus group approach was employed, using a sample of 21 participants aged 18 to 37 years. Dependent on their average time spent on gaming, these gamers participated in a discussion on hardcore or casual gamers’ behaviour and attitudes. More particularly, the following topics were dealt with: time investment versus available time for gaming and game related activities, budget spent on gaming, game genre preferences, opinion and self-identification with the typical image of a hardcore/casual gamer. Attitude towards challenge, competition, sociality, story and violent content in gaming was also taken into account. The main findings reveal remarkable gender differences both between and within the casual and hardcore gamers. It is therefore concluded that the categorization of gamers as hardcore or casual is not as straightforward as often assumed in large-scale quantitative studies. More research is needed to arrive at a categorization of gamers based on a combination of relevant parameters, accounting for the existing gender differences and the time spent on gaming relative to the gamer’s available time.status: publishe

Videogames in therapy: a therapist's perspective

This paper describes a user and task analysis that was conducted in order to examine the role of therapists in the use of video games in therapy. The results show that video games were used often, but improvements could be made to make them more effective for the therapist. From these results recommendations for video game design were derived. Recommendations include that a therapeutic video game should be easy to startup and configure, should allow the therapist to support a patient during play, and should support the therapist in tracking a patient's performance.status: publishe

Comparing user interaction with low and high fidelity prototypes of tabletop surfaces

This paper describes a comparative study between the usage of low-fidelity and a high-fidelity prototyping for the creation of multi-user multi-touch interfaces. The multitouch interface presented in this paper allows users to collaboratively search for existing multimedia content, create new compositions with this content, and finally integrate it in a layout for presenting it. The study we conducted consists of a series of parallel user tests using both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes to inform the design of the multi-touch interface. Based on a comparison of the two test sessions, we found that one should be cautious in generalising high-level user interactions from a low towards a high-fidelity prototype. However, the lowfidelity prototype approach presented proved to be very valuable to generate design ideas concerning both high and low-level user interactions on a multi-touch tabletop