From impact assessment to user-friendly risk management decision-making

In earlier cultures and societies, hazards and risks to human health were dealt with by methods derived from myth, metaphor and ritual. In modem society however, notions of hazard and risk have been transformed from the level of a folk discourse to that of an expert centred concept (Plough & Krimsky, 1987). With the professionalization of risk and hazard analysis came a preferred framework for decision making based on a range of 'technical' methodologies (Giere, 1991 ). This is especially true for decision processes relating to risk assessment and management, and impact assessment. Such approaches however, often entail narrow technical-based theoretical assumptions about human behaviour and the natural world, and the· methods used. They therefore carry 'in-built' error factors that contribute considerable uncertainty to the results.

Histories of user-generated content : between formal and informal media economies

Debates about user-generated content (UGC) often depend on a contrast with its normative opposite, the professionally produced content that is supported and sustained by commercial media businesses or public organisations. UGC is seen to appear within or in opposition to professional media, often as a disruptive, creative, change-making force. Our suggestion is to position UGC not in opposition to professional or "producer media", or in hybridised forms of subjective combination with it (the so-called "pro-sumer" or "pro-am" system), but in relation to different criteria, namely the formal and informal elements in media industries. In this article, we set out a framework for the comparative and historical analysis of UGC systems and their relations with other formal and informal media activity, illustrated with examples ranging from games to talkback radio. We also consider the policy implications that emerge from a historicised reading of UGC as a recurring dynamic within media industries, rather than a manifestation of consumer agency specific to digital cultures.

Aspect-based model of user experience

Traditional HCI design and evaluation methods merely focus on functional and usability aspects of a product. Although these aspects are important, they do not guarantee product’s success, especially the consumer product. Many consumer products are now part of user’s everyday activities – that support fun, pleasure, entertainment, etc. Secondly, in today’s consumer market many of the products have become similar in terms of their technology, functionality, price and quality. In response, many companies have started designing products with added emotional and experiential values. This has challenged designer’s to explore and visualize directions in product design field that could evoke intended and desired experiences amongst its users. Subjective product qualities such as fun, pleasure, entertainment, etc. are not the part of a product, but they are better thought of as the outcome of user’s interaction with the product...

Measuring Online user engagement : the limitations of Web analytics

The ability to identify and assess user engagement with transmedia productions is vital to the success of individual projects and the sustainability of this mode of media production as a whole. It is essential that industry players have access to tools and methodologies that offer the most complete and accurate picture of how audiences/users engage with their productions and which assets generate the most valuable returns of investment. Drawing upon research conducted with Hoodlum Entertainment, a Brisbane-based transmedia producer, this chapter outlines an initial assessment of the way engagement tends to be understood, why standard web analytics tools are ill-suited to measuring it, how a customised tool could offer solutions, and why this question of measuring engagement is so vital to the future of transmedia as a sustainable industry.

Strategic IMC : from abstract concept to marketing management tool

Although integrated marketing communication (IMC) has progressed towards midrange maturity level, its full-scale adoption has been impeded by a lack of consensus on its defining constructs. The purpose of this study is to move from abstraction to define the construct of strategic integration (SI) and develop this into a management tool, thus making an important contribution to both the theory and practice of IMC. Drawing from both IMC and strategic management literature, the construct of SI is operationalised into a number of key factors and a well-cited management model, Fuchs’ ‘integration valuator’ is explored as the starting point of a measurement tool for IMC. To do this, a Delphi study invites the scrutiny of an expert panel of world-leading IMC researchers and practitioners. The panel validated the model construction process,redefined overarching constructs and key factors with a high degree of consensus, supported a process measure, suggested a weighted evaluation measure and recognised the importance of developing such a measure. They delivered clear and consistent imperatives guiding model development. The result is a measure of SI that evaluates organisational proficiency and diagnoses the integration of IMC campaigns. It also advances theory by providing a better understanding of the construct of SI.

Towards the development of 1-to-n human machine interfaces for unmanned aerial vehicles

Multi-touch interfaces across a wide range of hardware platforms are becoming pervasive. This is due to the adoption of smart phones and tablets in both the consumer and corporate market place. This paper proposes a human-machine interface to interact with unmanned aerial systems based on the philosophy of multi-touch hardware-independent high-level interaction with multiple systems simultaneously. Our approach incorporates emerging development methods for multi-touch interfaces on mobile platforms. A framework is defined for supporting multiple protocols. An open source solution is presented that demonstrates: architecture supporting different communications hardware; an extensible approach for supporting multiple protocols; and the ability to monitor and interact with multiple UAVs from multiple clients simultaneously. Validation tests were conducted to assess the performance, scalability and impact on packet latency under different client configurations.

MiniOrb : a sensor interaction platform for indoor climate preferences [Extended Abstract]

We introduce the MiniOrb platform, a combined sensor and interaction platform built to understand and encourage the gathering of data around personal indoor climate preferences in office environments. The platform consists of a sensor device, gathering localised environmental data and an attached tangible interaction and ambient display device. This device allows users to understand their local environment and record preferences with regards to their preferred level of office comfort. In addition to the tangible device we built a web-based mobile application that allowed users to record comfort preferences through a different interface. This paper describes the design goals and technical setup of the MiniOrb platform.

Evaluating the use of ambient and tangible interaction approaches for personal indoor climate preferences [Extended Abstract]

In this paper we describe the preliminary results of a field study which evaluated the use of MiniOrb, a system that employs ambient and tangible interaction mechanisms to allow inhabitants of office environments to report on subjectively perceived office comfort levels. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of ubiquitous computing in the individual control of indoor climate and specifically answer the question to what extent ambient and tangible interaction mechanisms are suited for the task of capturing individual comfort preferences in a non-obtrusive manner. We outline the preliminary results of an in-situ trial of the system.

Improvement of a dynamic accumulator at ICICS 07 and its application in multi-user keyword-based retrieval on encrypted data

A dynamic accumulator is an algorithm, which merges a large set of elements into a constant-size value such that for an element accumulated, there is a witness confirming that the element was included into the value, with a property that accumulated elements can be dynamically added and deleted into/from the original set. Recently Wang et al. presented a dynamic accumulator for batch updates at ICICS 2007. However, their construction suffers from two serious problems. We analyze them and propose a way to repair their scheme. We use the accumulator to construct a new scheme for common secure indices with conjunctive keyword-based retrieval.

Controlling current and voltage type interfaces in power-hardware-in-the-loop simulations

The usual practice to study a large power system is through digital computer simulation. However, the impact of large scale use of small distributed generators on a power network cannot be evaluated strictly by simulation since many of these components cannot be accurately modelled. Moreover, the network complexity makes the task of practical testing on a physical network nearly impossible. This study discusses the paradigm of interfacing a real-time simulation of a power system to real-life hardware devices. This type of splitting a network into two parts and running a real-time simulation with a physical system in parallel is usually termed as power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) simulation. The hardware part is driven by a voltage source converter that amplifies the signals of the simulator. In this paper, the effects of suitable control strategy on the performance of PHIL and the associated stability aspects are analysed in detail. The analyses are validated through several experimental tests using an real-time digital simulator.

Effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on user-generated content

User-generated content where content is created and shared among consumers is of key importance to marketers. This study investigates consumer intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to understand why people create user-generated branded video content. Specifically, we examine the role of altruism (individual difference – intrinsic motivation), social benefits (extrinsic reward), and economic incentives (extrinsic reward) on intentions to create user-generated content. Results show that extrinsic rewards (economic incentives) result in more positive intentions to create user-generated content than intrinsic motivations. However, an effect for altruism is also evident revealing that high altruism consumers are more likely to create positive user-generated content. The implication of these findings is that marketers wanting to encourage user-generated content about their brands should target high altruism consumers and offer economic incentives for content creation.

Detection of dynamic primary user with cooperative spectrum sensing

In this paper we demonstrate that existing cooperative spectrum sensing formulated for static primary users cannot accurately detect dynamic primary users regardless of the information fusion method. Performance error occurs as the sensing parameters calculated by the conventional detector result in sensing performance that violates the sensing requirements. Furthermore, the error is accumulated and compounded by the number of cooperating nodes. To address this limitation, we design and implement the duty cycle detection model for the context of cooperative spectrum sensing to accurately calculate the sensing parameters that satisfy the sensing requirements. We show that longer sensing duration is required to compensate for dynamic primary user traffic.

The drive towards user-centred engineering in automotive design

Falling sales in Europe and increasing global competition is forcing automotive manufacturers to develop a customer-based approach to differentiate themselves from the similarly technologically-optimised crowd. In spite of this new approach, automotive firms are still firmly entrenched in their reliance upon technology-driven innovation, to design, develop and manufacture their products, placing customer focus on a downstream sales role. However the time-honoured technology-driven approach to vehicle design and manufacture is coming into question, with the increasing importance of accounting for consumer needs pushing automotive engineers to include the user in their designs. The following paper examines the challenges and opportunities for a single global automotive manufacturer that arise in seeking to adopt a user-centred approach to vehicle design amongst technical employees. As part of an embedded case study, engineers from this manufacturer were interviewed in order to gauge the challenges, barriers and opportunities for the adoption of user-centred design tools within the engineering design process. The analysis of these interviews led to the proposal of the need for a new role within automotive manufacturers, the “designeer”, to bridge the divide between designers and engineers and allow the engineering process to transition from a technology-driven to a user- centred approach.

User-led innovation in call center knowledge work

So called “knowledge work” is seen as integral to post-industrial society and, for some, information and communications technologies (ICTs) are critical enablers of the associated practices. Many still propose the technologically deterministic route of rolling out ICTs and expecting that users will, and indeed can, “download” what they know into a system that can then be used in a number of ways. This approach is usually underpinned by the predominant assumption that the system will be developed by one group (developers) and used by another group (users). In this paper, we report on an exploratory case study of the enactment of ICT supported knowledge work in a human resources contact center which illustrates the negotiable boundary between the developer and user in local level innovation processes. Drawing upon ideas from the social shaping of technology, we examine how discussions regarding producer-user relations in innovation processes require a degree of greater sophistication as we show how users often develop (or produce) technologies and work practices in situ—in this case, to enable knowledge work practices and contribute to the project of constructing the knowledge component of professional identity. Much has been made of contextualizing the user; further work is required to contextualize the developer as a user and understand the social actors in ICT innovation environments who straddle both domains