Using scenarios to explore the social aspects of design led innovations

Emerging technologies have redefined the way people go about everyday life. An increasing array of online and on-the-go solutions supporting remote work, entertainment on demand, information sharing, social communication, telehealth and beyond, are now available at the touch of a screen. This paper discusses concept of scenarios as a design tool that can be successfully employed by organisations as an innovative design led approach to: (i) understand people’s everyday practices in current social contexts in order to identify opportunities and emerging markets, and (ii) reveal stakeholder relationships existing in the provision of services within current everyday practices. To illustrate this approach, two case studies will be presented: the first focusing on a real industry project exploring opportunities for the development of future health care services, the second focusing on people’s access to services as part of a transport journey experience. This paper aims to demonstrate the use of scenarios as part of a design led innovation approach to understand the social aspects and their complexities of new designs in an increasing everyday technological driven context.

The Global Financial Crisis : Neo-Liberalism, Social Democracy, and Criminology

This chapter begins with a discussion of the economic, political, and social context of the recent global financial crisis, which casts into relief current boundaries of criminology, permeated and made fluid in criminology's recent cultural turn. This cultural turn has reinvigorated criminology, providing new objects of analysis and rich and thick descriptions of the relationship between criminal justice and the conditions of life in ‘late modernity’. Yet in comparison with certain older traditions that sought to articulate criminal justice issues with a wider politics of contestation around political economies and social welfare policies of different polities, many of the current leading culturalist accounts tend in their globalized convergences to produce a strangely decontextualized picture in which we are all subject to the zeitgeist of a unitary ‘late modernity’ which does not differ between, for example, social democratic and neo-liberal polities, let alone allow for the widespread persistence of the pre-modern. It is argued that that contrary to this globalizing trend there are signs within criminology that life is being breathed back into social democratic and penal welfare concerns, habitus, and practices. The chapter discusses three of these signs: the emergence of neo-liberalism as a subject of criminology; a developing comparative penology which recognizes differences in the political economies of capitalist states and evinces a renewed interest in inequality; and a nascent revolt against the ‘generative grammar’, ‘pathological disciplinarities’, and ‘imaginary penalities’ of neoliberal managerialism.

‘The health-location connection’: using GIS and social media on smartphones to track engagement with the Local urban environment for work, recreation, and physical activity

A technologically innovative study was undertaken across two suburbs in Brisbane, Australia, to assess socioeconomic differences in women's use of the local environment for work, recreation, and physical activity. Mothers from high and low socioeconomic suburbs were instructed to continue with usual daily routines, and to use mobile phone applications (Facebook Places, Twitter, and Foursquare) on their mobile phones to ‘check-in’ at each location and destination they reached during a one-week period. These smartphone applications are able to track travel logistics via built-in geographical information systems (GIS), which record participants’ points of latitude and longitude at each destination they reach. Location data were downloaded to Google Earth and excel for analysis. Women provided additional qualitative data via text regarding the reasons and social contexts of their travel. We analysed 2183 ‘check-ins’ for 54 women in this pilot study to gain quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data on human-environment interactions. Data was gathered on distances travelled, mode of transport, reason for travel, social context of travel, and categorised in terms of physical activity type – walking, running, sports, gym, cycling, or playing in the park. We found that the women in both suburbs had similar daily routines with the exception of physical activity. We identified 15% of ‘check-ins’ in the lower socioeconomic group as qualifying for the physical activity category, compared with 23% in the higher socioeconomic group. This was explained by more daily walking for transport (1.7kms to 0.2kms) and less car travel each week (28.km to 48.4kms) in the higher socioeconomic suburb. We ascertained insights regarding the socio-cultural influences on these differences via additional qualitative data. We discuss the benefits and limitations of using new technologies and Google Earth with implications for informing future physical and social aspects of urban design, and health promotion in socioeconomically diverse cities.

Social media, data analytics and videogames development : Halfbrick case study

Social media platforms are of interest to interactive entertainment companies for a number of reasons. They can operate as a platform for deploying games, as a tool for communicating with customers and potential customers, and can provide analytics on how players utilize the; game providing immediate feedback on design decisions and changes. However, as ongoing research with Australian developer Halfbrick, creators of $2 , demonstrates, the use of these platforms is not universally seen as a positive. The incorporation of Big Data into already innovative development practices has the potential to cause tension between designers, whilst the platform also challenges the traditional business model, relying on micro-transactions rather than an up-front payment and a substantial shift in design philosophy to take advantage of the social aspects of platforms such as Facebook.

Developing an evaluation framework for hospital disaster resilience : tertiary hospitals of Shandong Province, China

This thesis provided a definition and conceptual framework for hospital disaster resilience; it used a mixed-method, including an empirical study in tertiary hospitals of Shandong Province in China, to devise an assessment instrument for measuring hospital resilience. The instrument is the first of its type and will allow hospitals to measure their resilience levels. The concept of disaster resilience has gained prominence in the light of the increased impact of various disasters. The notion of resilience encompasses the qualities that enable the organisation or community to resist, respond to, and recover from the impact of disasters. Hospital resilience is essential as it provides 'lifeline' services which minimize disaster impact. This thesis has provided a framework and instrument to evaluate the level of hospital resilience. Such an instrument could be used to better understand hospital resilience, and also as a decision-support tool for its promoting strategies and policies.

Incidence and fatality of serious suicide attempts in a predominantly rural population in Shandong, China : a public health surveillance study

Objectives To estimate the incidence of serious suicide attempts (SSAs, defined as suicide attempts resulting in either death or hospitalisation) and to examine factors associated with fatality among these attempters. Design A surveillance study of incidence and mortality. Linked data from two public health surveillance systems were analysed. Setting Three selected counties in Shandong, China. Participants All residents in the three selected counties. Outcome measures Incidence rate ( per 100 000 person-years) and case fatality rate (%). Methods Records of suicide deaths and hospitalisations that occurred among residents in selected counties during 2009–2011 (5 623 323 person-years) were extracted from electronic databases of the Disease Surveillance Points (DSP) system and the Injury Surveillance System (ISS) and were linked by name, sex, residence and time of suicide attempt. A multiple logistic regression model was developed to examine the factors associated with a higher or lower fatality rate. Results The incidence of SSAs was estimated to be 46 (95% CI 44 to 48) per 100 000 person-years, which was 1.5 times higher in rural versus urban areas, slightly higher among females, and increased with age. Among all SSAs, 51% were hospitalised and survived, 9% were hospitalised but later died and 40% died with no hospitalisation. Most suicide deaths (81%) were not hospitalised and most hospitalised SSAs (85%) survived. The fatality rate was 49% overall, but was significantly higher among attempters living in rural areas, who were male, older, with lower education or with a farming occupation. With regard to the method of suicide, fatality was lowest for non-pesticide poisons (7%) and highest for hanging (97%). Conclusions The incidence of serious suicide attempts is substantially higher in rural areas than in urban areas of China. The risk of death is influenced by the attempter’s sex, age, education level, occupation, method used and season of year.

Practices and knowledge levels of prehospital doctors in traumatic brain injury management in Hubei, China

This thesis is a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of pre-hospital doctors' knowledge and practice of managing traumatic brain injury in two major cities of Hubei province, China. This study provides evidence for future research on improving the quality of pre-hospital management in China.

Social NUI: Social perspectives in natural user interfaces

Natural User Interfaces (NUI) offer rich ways for interacting with the digital world that make innovative use of existing human capabilities. They include and often combine different input modalities such as voice, gesture, eye gaze, body interactions, touch and touchless interactions. However much of the focus of NUI research and development has been on enhancing the experience of individuals interacting with technology. Effective NUIs must also acknowledge our innately social characteristics, and support how we communicate with each other, play together, learn together and collaboratively work together. This workshop concerns the social aspects of NUI. The workshop seeks to better understand the social uses and applications of these new NUI technologies -- how we design these technologies for new social practices and how we understand the use of these technologies in key social contexts.

Knowledge-Based Urban Development : Planning and Applications in the Information Era

In the globalizing world, knowledge and information (and the social and technological settings for their production and communication) are now seen as keys to economic prosperity. The economy of a knowledge city creates value-added products using research, technology, and brainpower. The social benefit of knowledge-based urban development (KBUD); however, extends beyond aggregate economic growth.

Creative urban regions : harnessing urban technologies to support knowledge city initiatives

In the rapidly growing knowledge economy, the talent and creativity of those around us will be increasingly decisive in shaping economic opportunity. Creativity can be described as the ability to produce new and original ideas and things. In other words, it is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain or transforms an existing domain into a new one. From an economic perspective, creativity can be considered as the generation of new ideas that is the major source of innovation and new economic activities. As urban regions have become the localities of key knowledge precincts and knowledge clusters across the globe, the link between a range of new technologies and the development of ‘creative urban regions’ (CURs) has come to the fore. In this sense, creativity has become a buzz concept in knowledge-economy research and policy circles. It has spawned ‘creative milieus,’ ‘creative industries,’ ‘creative cities,’ ‘creative class,’ and ‘creative capital.’ Hence, creativity has become a key concept on the agenda of city managers, development agents, and planners as they search for new forms of urban and economic development. CURs provide vast opportunities for knowledge production and spillover, which lead to the formation of knowledge cities. Urban information and communication technology (ICT) developments support the transformation of cities into knowledge cities. This book, which is a companion volume to Knowledge-Based Urban Development: Planning and Applications in the Information Era (also published by IGI Global) focuses on some of these developments. The Forward and Afterword are written by senior respected academic researchers Robert Stimson of the University of Queensland, Australia, and Zorica Nedovic-Budic of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. The book is divided into four sections, each one dealing with selected aspects of information and communication technologies and creative urban regions.

New media policies

This chapter explores the influence of economic ideas on media policies, particularly the work of John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Marx. It critically appraises the development of new media policies, and arguments that neo-liberal principles have been the primary driver of such policies.

Indoor environments : design, productivity and health

In a typical large office block, by far the largest lifetime expense is the salaries of the workers - 84% for salaries compared with : office rent (14%), total energy (1%), and maintenance (1%). The key drive for business is therefore the maximisation of the productivity of the employees as this is the largest cost. Reducing total energy use by 50% will not produce the same financial return as 1% productivity improvement? The aim of the project which led to this review of the literature was to understand as far as possible the state of knowledge internationally about how the indoor environment of buildings does influence occupants and the impact this influence may have on the total cost of ownership of buildings. Therefore one of the main focus areas for the literature has been identifying whether there is a link between productivity and health of building occupants and the indoor environment. Productivity is both easy to define - the ratio of output to input - but at the same time very hard to measure in a relatively small environment where individual contributions can influence the results, in particular social interactions. Health impacts from a building environment are also difficult to measure well, as establishing casual links between the indoor environment and a particular health issue can be very difficult. All of those issues are canvassed in the literature reported here. Humans are surprisingly adaptive to different physical environments, but the workplace should not test the limits of human adaptability. Physiological models of stress, for example, accept that the body has a finite amount of adaptive energy available to cope with stress. The importance of, and this projects' focus on, the physical setting within the integrated system of high performance workplaces, means this literature survey explores research which has been undertaken on both physical and social aspects of the built environment. The literature has been largely classified in several different ways, according to the classification scheme shown below. There is still some inconsistency in the use of keywords, which is being addressed and greater uniformity will be developed for a CD version of this literature, enabling searching using this classification scheme.

Street computing workshop 2009

The Street Computing workshop, held in conjunction with OZCHI 2009, solicits papers discussing new research directions, early research results, works-in-progress and critical surveys of prior research work in the areas of ubiquitous computing and interaction design for urban environments. Urban spaces have unique characteristics. Typically, they are densely populated, buzzing with life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These traits afford many opportunities, but they also present many challenges: traffic jams, smog and pollution, stress placed on public services, and more. Computing technology, particularly the kind that can be placed in the hands of citizens, holds much promise in combating some of these challenges. Yet, computation is not merely a tool for overcoming challenges; rather, when embedded appropriately in our everyday lives, it becomes a tool of opportunity, for shaping how our cities evolve, for enabling us to interact with our city and its people in new ways, and for uncovering useful, but hidden relationships and correlations between elements of the city. The increasing availability of an urban computing infrastructure has lead to new and exciting ways inhabitants can interact with their city. This includes interaction with a wide range of services (e.g. public transport, public services), conceptual representations of the city (e.g. local weather and traffic conditions), the availability of a variety of shared and personal displays (e.g. public, ambient, mobile) and the use of different interaction modes (e.g. tangible, gesture-based, token-based). This workshop solicits papers that address the above themes in some way. We encourage researchers to submit work that deals with challenges and possibilities that the availability of urban computing infrastructure such as sensors and middleware for sensor networks pose. This includes new and innovative ways of interacting with and within urban environments; user experience design and participatory design approaches for urban environments; social aspects of urban computing; and other related areas.