Adapting an argumentation framework for online discourse analysis : a knowledge building approach

The use of online tools to support teaching and learning is now commonplace within educational institutions, with many of these institutions mandating or strongly encouraging the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning. Consequently, these institutions generally adopt a learning management system (LMS), with a fixed set of collaborative tools, in the belief that effective teaching and learning approaches will be used, to allow students to build knowledge. While some studies into the use of an LMS’s still identify continued didactic approaches to teaching and learning, the focus of this paper is on the ability of collaborative tools such as discussion forums, to build knowledge. In the context of science education, argumentation is touted as playing an important role in this process of knowledge building. However, there is limited research into argumentation in other domains using online discussion and a blended learning approach. This paper describes a study, using design research, which adapts a framework for argumentation that can be applied to other domains. In particular it will focus on an adapted social argumentation schema to identify argument in a discussion forum of N=16 participants in a secondary High School.

Videogame reward types

This research has been conducted to ascertain the validity of existing videogame reward categorisations. An overview of current videogame reward types is provided and the need for further research in the area of videogame reward systems is identified. Possible limitations of the primary existing reward taxonomy are identified. We propose a definition of videogame rewards and present initial findings on a partially validated videogame reward taxonomy. Future games and gamified applications stand to benefit from a categorisation of videogame rewards, as videogame rewards play a pivotal role in player motivation.

A sustainable tourism development in Alacati, Turkey: (Re) invention of public space with clean energy

Although there is an increasing recognition of the impacts of climate change on communities, residents often resist changing their lifestyle to reduce the effects of the problem. By using a landscape architectural design medium, this paper argues that public space, when designed as an ecological system, has the capacity to create social and environmental change and to increase the quality of the human environment. At the same time, this ecological system can engage residents, enrich the local economy, and increase the social network. Through methods of design, research and case study analysis, an alternative master plan is proposed for a sustainable tourism development in Alacati, Turkey. Our master plan uses local geographical, economic and social information within a sustainable landscape architectural design scheme that addresses the key issues of ecology, employment, public space and community cohesion. A preliminary community empowerment model (CEM) is proposed to manage the designs. The designs address: the coexistence of local agricultural and sustainable energy generation; state of the art water management; and the functional and sustainable social and economic interrelationship of inhabitants, NGOs, and local government.

QUT Architecture Film Studio (Aus)

Research Statement: An urban film produced by Luke Harrison Mitchell Benham, Sharlene Anderson, Tristan Clark. RIVE NOIR explores the film noir tradition, shot on location in a dark urban space between high-rises and the river, sheltered by a highway. With an original score and striking cinematography, Rive Noir radically transforms the abandoned river’s edge through the production of an amplified reality ordinarily unseen in the Northbank. The work produced under my supervision was selected to appear in the Expanded Architecture Research Group’s International Architecture Film Festival and Panel Discussion in Sydney: The University of Sydney and Carriageworks Performance Space, 06 November 2011. QUT School of Design research submission was selected alongside exhibits by AA School of Architecture, London; The Bartlett School of Architecture, London; University of The Arts, London; Arrhaus School of Architecture, Denmark; Dublin as a Cinematic City, Ireland; Design Lab Screen Studio, Australia; and Sona Cinecity, The University of Melbourne. The exhibit included not only the screening of the film but the design project that derived from and extended the aesthetics of the urban film. The urban proposal and architectural intervention that followed the film was subsequently published in the Brisbane Times, after the urban proposal won first place in The Future of Brisbane architecture competition, which demonstrates the impact of the research project as a whole. EXPANDED ARCHITECTURE 2011 - 6th November Architecture Film Night + Panel Discussion @ Performance Space CarriageWorks was Sydney's first International Architectural Film Festival. With over 40 architectural films by local and international artists, film makers and architects. It was followed by Panel Discussion of esteemed academics and artists working in the field of architectural film.

The chef as designer : classifying the techniques that chefs use in creating innovative dishes

This qualitative study explores the methods that chefs use to create innovative marketable product and compares these findings to other design tools. This study is based on a series of interviews with locally recognised chefs in Minnesota and observations of them in their kitchens in order to understand the details of how they conceive and develop dishes from preliminary concept to final plating and user consumption. This paper focuses on idea generation and discusses two key findings: first, the variety of idea generation techniques presented by the chefs can be classified into the creativity tool SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify/magnify, put to other use, eliminate, reverse/rearrange); second, chefs evoke the theory of MAYA or Most Advanced Yet Acceptable when innovating new dishes, which implies making novel changes while remaining relatable to the consumer. Other reoccurring topics in the interview discussion of food innovation include play, surprise, and humour.

Ray's Night Out

Research Background: The proliferation of technologically-based interventions and mHealth in particular have led to a need for innovative, relevant and engaging ways of presenting health messages to young people using technology. ‘Ray’s Night Out’ is a mobile health application co-designed with young people by an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Queensland University of Technology. Research Questions: The design, research, development and evaluation of ‘Ray’s Night Out’ addressed a number of research questions from across the fields of Psychology and Interactive and Visual Design. The specific design research questions addressed were: How can a mobile intervention be best designed to promote young people’s safety and wellbeing and minimise harm when consuming alcohol on a typical night out? Specifically, how can principles of interactive and visual design be effectively applied to develop innovative digital health communication solutions that empower young people as active participants in improving their health and wellbeing? Research Contribution: Innovation The mobile app, as a digital artifact, represents a new way of engaging young people in the issue of alcohol consumption and the pacing and self-care behaviours through unique interaction, visual and interface designs which resulted from the participant-led and iterative design research process. The design of the specific interactive and visual features of the app informed by participatory design data and by health research present a novel approach to preventing young people in crossing the ‘stupid line’ on a typical night out. Research Significance: The significance of the design research component within the larger interdisciplinary practices that have informed ‘Ray’s Night Out’ (e.g. field of psychology, reported through journal articles and other related outcomes), is the unique visual and interactive presentation of participant data and health concepts within the app interface and interaction design which improves and increases young people’s engagement with the health messages it contains. The global quality standard is further demonstrated by the launch on Apple iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rays-night-out/id978589497?mt=8 This demonstrates the application meets the high professional requirements for global release and international standards set by Apple AppStore.

'Music eScape': mHealth application

Research Background Young people’s avid use of mobile technologies in daily life has led to an increase in the design and research on mHealth (mobile health) interventions targeting young people. ‘Music eScape’ is a mobile based mood regulation app that uses an innovative approach to promoting young people’s wellbeing using music. Research Question The design, research, development and evaluation of ‘Music eScape’ addressed a number of research questions from across the fields of Psychology and Interactive and Visual Design. The specific design research question addressed was: How can interaction and visual design be utilized to promote and enable young people to effectively regulate their mood using music and how can the new design further promote their experience of empowerment, control and agency over actively directing their mood journey? Research Contribution Innovation and New Knowledge Through its unique visual interface design and interactivity, the application presents a novel approach to promoting young people’s wellbeing using music and a specific function that allows users to ‘draw’ their mood journey in order to generate a playlist. The mobile app is the first to contain a function that enables users to plan their mood journey and exercise a sense of agency, intentional choice and control over the mood shift and by extension, their wellbeing. The feature ‘drawing’ interface was designed by Oksana Zelenko using participatory design research and Russell’s circumplex model of affect (1980) to inform the key visual design concept and underpinning interaction design. Research Significance The significance of the design research component within the larger interdisciplinary practices that have informed ‘Music eScape’ (e.g. field of psychology, reported through journal articles and other related outcomes), is the unique visual and interactive presentation of participant data and music therapy research within the app interface and interaction design which improves and increases young people’s engagement with the health messages it contains. The industry quality standard is further demonstrated by the launch on Apple iTunes. This demonstrates the application meets the high professional requirements for national release and meets international standards. The app also creates a new benchmark for the quality of health apps on the market as it marks the industry release of a trialled evidence-based mHealth intervention co-designed with young people.

Examining intuitive navigation in airports

Airports accommodate passengers with a range of prior experience, from frequent flyers, to passengers who fly every couple of years, to those who have never flown before. Passengers with varying levels of prior experience may use different visual elements when navigating the airport. Ensuring all passengers can navigate to the processing activities intuitively is important for passengers, airports and airlines. This paper examines how participants with Low, Medium and High airport familiarity navigate through the departures area at an Australian international airport. Three navigation activities are investigated: (i) navigating to the check-in row, (ii) navigating through the Liquids, Aerosols and Gels (LAGs) preparation area before security screening, and; (iii) navigating to either the boarding gate first or to a discretionary activity first, after exiting customs. In the three activities, differences were observed between the familiarity groups. These differences include the use of different information to locate the check-in desk, different actions when navigating through the LAG preparation area, and evidence that Low familiarity passengers have a desire to locate the boarding gate as soon as possible once through customs. This research provides evidence based design reccomendations for airports to benefit from intuitive passenger navigation.

Connecting people to their resource consumption through real-time data visualisations

Combining human-computer interaction and urban informatics, this design research developed and tested novel interfaces offering users real-time feedback on their paper and energy consumption. Findings from deploying these interfaces in both domestic and office environments in Australia, the UK, and Ireland, will innovate future generations of resource monitoring technologies. The study draws conclusions with implications for government policy, the energy industry, and sustainability researchers.

Emergence and artistic visualisation

This research draws on theories of emergence to inform the creation of an artistic and direct visualization. This is an interactive artwork and drawing tool for creative participant experiences. As is discussed, emergence is characteristically creative. It is also debated across and within disciplines, resulting in a range of understandings as well as models. This paper shows how one field’s understanding of emergence (complexity theory) can be used to facilitate emergence in another domain (design research) and, importantly provide the opportunity for someone to act creatively. This paper begins with a brief review of some theories of emergence to show how they interrelate and can effect the perception of emergent structures in an observer, and, correspondingly, the design for creative experience. This is subsequently demonstrated in the second section of the paper where an interactive artwork and drawing application, Of me with me, is presented. This artwork by the author was created during collaboration with community artists from Cerebral Palsy League. The discussion covers the application of emergence theories to create this visualization in order facilitate the perception of structures and creative behaviours in a participant and to facilitate self-efficacy in the community artist user group.

Adaptable interface model for intuitively learnable interfaces : an approach to address diversity in older users' capabilities

This study started with the aim to develop an approach that will help designers create interfaces that are more intuitive for older adults to use. Two objectives were set for this study: 1) to investigate one of the possible strategies for developing intuitive interfaces for older people, and; 2) to investigate factors that could interfere with intuitive use. This paper briefly presents the outcome of the two experiments and how it has lead to the development of an adaptable interface design model that will help designers develop interfaces that are intuitive to learn and, over time, intuitive to use for users with diverse technology prior experience and cognitive abilities.

Deconstructing expected passenger experience in airports

The effect of passenger satisfaction on airport profitability has been widely acknowledged in the aviation industry. As a result, there has been much attention directed towards developing a deeper understanding of the factors that influence the passenger experience. In this paper, we explore passenger experience from a novel perspective - that of the activities expected to be undertaken by passengers while in the airport terminal building. Using the Taxonomy of Passenger Experience (TOPA) as our framework, we look at the pre-travel interview data of 48 participants. The results of our analysis are used to construct an activity-centred account of the expected passenger experience for international departures. Our exploration of the expected passenger experienced revealed that not all of the TOPA activities have an equal impact on the passengers' expected experience. The processing, consumptive, preparatory and queuing activity groups featured most prominently in passengers' accounts of their upcoming airport experiences. Of these, the preparatory category was found to have the most direct impact on passenger satisfaction. Additionally, our analysis indicated that utilising queue time to prepare passengers for upcoming processing activities could have a positive effect on both satisfaction and processing efficiency. A further outcome of this research was the observation that "shopping" did not form a part of the expected experience of any of the interviewed participants. The outcomes of this study can be used by airports to assist in the management of passengers' expected experience in the terminal building. As passenger expectations and passenger satisfaction are intrinsically linked, understanding which activities have the most impact on satisfaction provides a basis from which alternate design choices can be evaluated when constructing, or fine-tuning, airport terminal designs.

Intuitive use of tangible toys

Interfaces for children have continued to evolve in terms of complexity, with toys ranging from traditional tangible interfaces to apps with digital interfaces and hybrid toys with mixed physical and digital interfaces. However, there is limited research done to investigate their potential for intuitive use. This research study compares a tangible toy and an equivalent toy in the digital world (app) for intuitive use. Non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test results showed that the tangible toy was more intuitive than the intangible counter part. Tangible systems are less complex to use and they require less time to encode and retrieve associated knowledge to use them intuitively. They are associated with low domain transfer distance and easily discoverable features. Intangible interfaces, on the other ha nd, require greater complexity and time to encode and retrieve associated experiential knowledge. Intangibles are associated with larger domain transfer distance and undiscoverable features which affects their intuitive use. Design implications and future work are discussed, emphasising the need for investigating aspects that make tangible systems intuitive to use.

Not so not-for-profit

To address the sub-theme of the journal: Artistic Practices in a Time of Crisis, the author discusses the context of economic cuts and recent international crises on his PhD interactive and visual design research project undertaken in Australia. Identifying an apparent root-cause of current global crises, the author in reply, has structured a research plan and created a suite of new media, interactive, technology artworks, and installation art. Notions of Zen Buddhism, and stillness through meditation, are applied in the research and context of the artworks to support awareness of wellbeing, in response to the root-cause condition. The discussion will focus on the overarching question: how can one obtain value through the arts during current times of economic reduction conditioning?

Urban informatics beyond data: Media architecture, placemaking, and citizen action

Since 2006, we have been conducting urban informatics research that we define as “the study, design, and practice of urban experiences across different urban contexts that are created by new opportunities of real-time, ubiquitous technology and the augmentation that mediates the physical and digital layers of people networks and urban infrastructures” [1]. Various new research initiatives under the label “urban informatics” have been started since then by universities (e.g., NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress) and industry (e.g., Arup, McKinsey) worldwide. Yet, many of these new initiatives are limited to what Townsend calls, “data-driven approaches to urban improvement” [2]. One of the key challenges is that any quantity of aggregated data does not easily translate directly into quality insights to better understand cities. In this talk, I will raise questions about the purpose of urban informatics research beyond data, and show examples of media architecture, participatory city making, and citizen activism. I argue for (1) broadening the disciplinary foundations that urban science approaches draw on; (2) maintaining a hybrid perspective that considers both the bird’s eye view as well as the citizen’s view, and; (3) employing design research to not be limited to just understanding, but to bring about actionable knowledge that will drive change for good.