Hungry 24/7? HCI design for sustainable food culture workshop

This workshop proposes to explore new approaches to cultivate and support sustainable food culture in urban environments via human computer interaction design and ubiquitous technologies. Food is a challenging issue in urban contexts: while food consumption decisions are made many times a day, most food interaction for urbanites occurs based on convenience and habitual practices. This situation is contrasting to the fact that food is at the centre of global environment, health, and social issues that are becoming increasingly immanent and imminent. As such, it is timely and crucial to ask: what are feasible, effective, and innovative ways to improve human-food-interaction through human-computer-interaction in order to contribute to environmental, health, and social sustainability in urban environments? This workshop brings together insights across disciplines to discuss this question, and plan and promote individual, local, and global change for sustainable food culture.

Building an effective trade practices commission : the role of Professor Robert Baxt AO

Bob Baxt, the third Chairman of the Trade Practices Commission, served for a single three year term from 1988 to 1991. He followed Bob McComas, who had deliberately adopted a non-litigious approach to preserving the competitive process, believing that he understood business as an insider and that much of what it did was not anti-competitive, when correctly viewed. Baxt was far more pro-active in his approach, and more closely aligned with that of the first Chairman, Ron Bannerman. Baxt sought to push the frontiers of investigation and precedent, and perhaps, more significantly, sought to influence his Ministers, the government, public servants and public opinion about the need to expand the coverage of the Trade Practices Act, increase penalties and properly resource the Commission so that it could perform its assigned roles. This article examines Baxt’s early and on-going role in teaching Australian students and professionals through his interdisciplinary Trade Practices Workshops, the political context of Baxt’s tenure, including his relations with the Attorney-General ,Michael Duffy, and his skilful handling of the Queensland Wire case.

Customer satisfaction survey of the facilities provided by office building “X” in Surabaya

Many high-rise office buildings have been built in Surabaya. The investors have provided complimentary facilities to satisfy their tenants. However, not all given facilities has satisfied the tenants. The purpose of this study is to find out the level of tenant satisfaction in office “X” to the existing facilities and to suggest additional required facilities. Although office “X” is offered the highest rental rate and has known as a prestigious place in Surabaya, only location and public transport have satisfied the Indonesian tenants. Meanwhile, the multi National companies have not satisfied for any existing facilities. Additional ATM facilities and presentable cafeteria, improvement of service and the security system are required by tenants.

Measuring building quality of shopping centres in Surabaya by Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

Quality has been an important factor for shopping centers in competitive conditions. However, quality measurement has no standard. In Surabaya, only two regional shopping centers will be measured in this research. The objective is assessing quality of shopping centers building using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and calculating the Building Quality Index. An overall ranking of Hierarchy priorities of quality criteria founded as a result from AHP analysis. Access and Circulation became the highest priority in affecting quality of shopping centers building according to respondents’ perception of quality. Weightened value as a result from comparison between two shopping centers as follows: Tunjungan Plaza get 0,732 point and Surabaya Plaza get 0,268 point. The first shopping center got higher weight than the second shopping center. The BQI for Tunjungan Plaza is 66% and for Surabaya Plaza is 64%.

The use of high dynamic range luminance mapping in the assessment, understanding and defining of visual issues in post occupancy building assessment

The international focus on embracing daylighting for energy efficient lighting purposes and the corporate sector’s indulgence in the perception of workplace and work practice “transparency” has spurned an increase in highly glazed commercial buildings. This in turn has renewed issues of visual comfort and daylight-derived glare for occupants. In order to ascertain evidence, or predict risk, of these events; appraisals of these complex visual environments require detailed information on the luminances present in an occupant’s field of view. Conventional luminance meters are an expensive and time consuming method of achieving these results. To create a luminance map of an occupant’s visual field using such a meter requires too many individual measurements to be a practical measurement technique. The application of digital cameras as luminance measurement devices has solved this problem. With high dynamic range imaging, a single digital image can be created to provide luminances on a pixel-by-pixel level within the broad field of view afforded by a fish-eye lens: virtually replicating an occupant’s visual field and providing rapid yet detailed luminance information for the entire scene. With proper calibration, relatively inexpensive digital cameras can be successfully applied to the task of luminance measurements, placing them in the realm of tools that any lighting professional should own. This paper discusses how a digital camera can become a luminance measurement device and then presents an analysis of results obtained from post occupancy measurements from building assessments conducted by the Mobile Architecture Built Environment Laboratory (MABEL) project. This discussion leads to the important realisation that the placement of such tools in the hands of lighting professionals internationally will provide new opportunities for the lighting community in terms of research on critical issues in lighting such as daylight glare and visual quality and comfort.

Blogs, wikis and podcasts : collaborative knowledge building tools in a design and technology course

Design and Technology has become an important part of the school curriculum. In Queensland, Australia, Technology (which encompasses Design) is one of the Key Learning Areas (KLAs) for students in the first ten years of schooling. This KLA adopts a student-centred, hands-on constructivist approach to teaching and learning. The ability to conceptualise and implement appropriate learning experiences, however, has been a challenge for some early career teachers. This paper describes how Design and Technology is being taught to pre-service primary teachers at an Australian University through their involvement in a range of authentic problem-solving activities supported by social learning tools such as wikis and blogs. An interview with a sample from this group (N=5) provides an insight into how these social software tools enhanced their knowledge and learning. This paper will describe how these social learning tools impact on the agency of learning.

Europe and the Media: Building a new kind of Europe; is mass media the key?

The book is a joint effort of eight academics and journalists, Europe specialists from six countries (Australia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States). They give sometimes divergent views on the future of the so-called “European Project”, for building a common European economy and society, but agree that cultural changes, especially changes experienced through mass media, are rapidly taking place. One of the central interests of the book is the operation of the large media centre located at the European Commission in Brussels – the world’s largest gallery of permanently accredited correspondents. Jacket notes: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 is the latest success of the European Union’s drive to restructure and expand; yet questions persist about how democratic this new Europe might be. Will Brussels’ promotion of the “European idea” produce a common European culture and society? The authors consider it might, as a culture of everyday shared experience, though old ways are cherished, citizens forever thinking twice about committing to an uncertain future. The book focuses on mass media , as a prime agent of change, sometimes used deliberately to promote a “European project”; sometimes acting more naturally as a medium for new agendas. It looks at proposed media models for Europe, ranging from not very successful pan-European television, to the potentials of media systems based on national markets, and new media based on digital formats. It also studies the Brussels media service, the centre operated by the European Commission, which is the world’s largest concentration of journalists; and ways that dominant national media may come to serve the interests of communities now extending across frontiers. Europe and the Media notes change especially as encountered by new EU member countries of central and eastern Europe.

Fashion manufacturing in New Zealand : can design contribute to a sustainable fashion Industry?

In the late 1990s New Zealand fashion gained some international recognition for its dark edginess and intellectual connection due to its colonial past (Molloy, 2004). In the years since, this momentum seems to have dissipated as local fashion companies have followed a global trend towards inexpensive off shore manufacturing. The transfer of the making of garments to overseas workers appears to have resulted in a local fashion scene where many garments look the same in style, colour, cut and fit. The excitement of the past, where the majority of fashion designers established their own individuality through the cut and shape of the garments that they produced, may have been inadvertently lost. Consequently a sustainable New Zealand fashion and manufacturing industry, with design integrity, seems further out of reach. The first question posed by this research project is, ‘can the design and manufacture of a fashion garment, bearing in mind certain economic and practical restrictions at its inception, result in the development of a distinctive ‘look’ or ‘handwriting’?’ Second, through development of a collection of prototypes, can potential garments be created to be sustainably manufactured in New Zealand?

Building the toolkit of quality monitoring clinical outcomes as a means of assessing quality in residential care

Residential aged care in Australia does not have a system of quality assessment related to clinical outcomes, creating a significant gap in quality monitoring. Clinical outcomes represent the results of all inputs into care, thus providing an indication of the success of those inputs. To fill this gap, an assessment tool based on resident outcomes (the ResCareQA) was developed and evaluated in collaboration with residential care providers. A useful output of the ResCareQA is a profile of resident clinical status, and this paper will use such outputs to present a snapshot of nine residential facilities. Such comprehensive data has not yet been available within Australia, so this will provide an important insight. ResCareQA data was collected from all residents (N=498) of nine aged care facilities from two major aged care providers. For each facility, numerator–denominator data were calculated to assess the degree of potential clinical problems. Results varied across clinical areas and across facilities, and rank-ordered facility results for selected clinical areas are reviewed and discussed. Use of the ResCareQA to generate clinical outcome data provides a concrete means of monitoring care quality within residential facilities; regular use of the ResCareQA could thus contribute to improved care outcomes within residential aged care.

SCAPE sustainable urban design simulation

SCAPE is an interactive simulation that allows teachers and students to experiment with sustainable urban design. The project is based on the Kelvin Grove Urban Village, Brisbane. Groups of students role play as political, retail, elderly, student, council and builder characters to negotiate on game decisions around land use, density, housing types and transport in order to design a sustainable urban community. As they do so, the 3D simulation reacts in real time to illustrate what the village would look like as well as provide statistical information about the community they are creating. SCAPE brings together education, urban professional and technology expertise, helping it achieve educational outcomes, reflect real-world scenarios and include sophisticated logic and decision making processes and effects.---------- The research methodology was primarily practice led underpinned by action research methods resulting in innovative approaches and techniques in adapting digital games and simulation technologies to create dynamic and engaging experiences in pedagogical contexts. It also illustrates the possibilities for urban designers to engage a variety of communities in the processes, complexities and possibilities of urban development and sustainability.

Building resilience to prevent mental health problems in young people : The resourceful adolescent programme (RAP)

This chapter describes an evidence-based programme called the Resourceful Adolescent Program (RAP), which has been successful in building resilience in young people to prevent depressive symptoms developing.The programme adopts a strengths-focused approach. It aims to build a range of coping resources that foster teenagers’ abilities to maintain a positive sense of self and regulate emotions in the face of the vicissitudes of everyday struggles and difficult life events.This groupbased programme can be implemented routinely in schools or by counselling professionals as an early intervention or prevention programme. While there is no universal definition, ‘resilience’ generally means the process of avoiding the negative trajectories associated with exposure to risk factors (Fergus and Zimmerman, 2005). Current models of resilience are also very clear that there ‘are many pathways to resilience’ (Bonanno, 2004) and there is no

Building eResearch Services, Capabilities and Capacity

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is known for several flagship eResearch centres. It also has a number of mature, centralised research support services that address a several of areas of eResearch. The university has openly stated its aspiration to be an institution with a strongly embedded eResearch capability and to this end it has expressed the desire to establish a university-wide eResearch support service. However, articulating this desire is much easier than realising it. During 2008 QUT undertook a major review into eResearch that made recommendations on the development of university-wide eResearch support service and the building of eResearch capabilities and capacity throughout the university. The results of this review were reported last year at this conference. In 2009, QUT is progressing a second, follow-on project – Building eResearch Support Capability and Capacity. It has been designed to build upon existing strengths in HPC, repositories, data management, and the delivery of integrated skills for eresearch. The purpose of this presentation is to give an update on QUT’s journey, one year on from its first major report into eResearch. It will outline how the university is approaching this challenge, the current work being carried out and the strategies being employed. We will also discuss the lessons learned.

Indoor environment sustainability of residential industrial housing in Malaysia

The importance of sustainable development has been internationally recognized and the principles have been widely used as an impetus for promoting housing sustainability. In the situation of mixed-use urban development in close proximity to heavy industrial areas in Malaysia, rising incomes are developing hand in hand with higher expectations for better and more sustainable housing designs. Negative environmental impacts due current deficiency in Malaysia’s approach to the implementation of sustainable development principles can be seen in this case study of the Pasir Gudang Industrial Area in Malaysia. This study aimed to highlight the level of residents’ satisfaction with living near the industrial area, and to relate their awareness of the relevance of sustainable principles with indoor environmental conditions, which found that the residents’ has limited understanding of the environmental problems in their indoor living conditions and in their neighborhoods. This study has suggested that proactive and integrated involvement by housing authorities from all levels of government in Malaysia should be encouraged in order to rationalise the approaches to develop better planning solutions for such mixed-used urban developments. This initiative should then encourage housing vendors to provide innovative ‘smart’ technological changes to their projects and so, to achieve a new direction in sustainable housing development.

Milk : students building mobile learning games in everyday places

This paper explores how mobile games can transform everyday places into dynamic learning spaces filled with information and inspiration. It discusses the motivation inherent in playing games and creating games for others, and how this stimulates an iterative process of creation and reflection and evokes a natural desire to engage in learning. The use of MiLK at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens is offered as a case in point. MiLK is an authoring tool that allows students and teachers to create and share SMS games for mobile phones. A group of South Australian high school students used MiLK to play a game, create their own games and play each other’s games during a day at the gardens. This paper details the learning processes involved in these activities and how the students reflected on their learning, conducted peer assessment, and engaged in a two-way discussion with their teacher about new technologies and their implications for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the needs and requirements of 21st Century learners and how MiLK can support constructivist and connectivist teaching methods that engage learners and may produce an appropriately skilled future workforce.