Effects of environmental colour on mood: a wearable LifeColour capture device

Colour is everywhere in our daily lives and impacts things like our mood, yet we rarely take notice of it. One method of capturing and analysing the predominant colours that we encounter is through visual lifelogging devices such as the SenseCam. However an issue related to these devices is the privacy concerns of capturing image level detail. Therefore in this work we demonstrate a hardware prototype wearable camera that captures only one pixel - of the dominant colour prevelant in front of the user, thus circumnavigating the privacy concerns raised in relation to lifelogging. To simulate whether the capture of dominant colour would be sufficient we report on a simulation carried out on 1.2 million SenseCam images captured by a group of 20 individuals. We compare the dominant colours that different groups of people are exposed to and show that useful inferences can be made from this data. We believe our prototype may be valuable in future experiments to capture colour correlated associated with an individual's mood.Colour is everywhere in our daily lives and impacts things like our mood, yet we rarely take notice of it. One method of capturing and analysing the predominant colours that we encounter is through visual lifelogging devices such as the SenseCam. However an issue related to these devices is the privacy concerns of capturing image level detail. Therefore in this work we demonstrate a hardware prototype wearable camera that captures only one pixel - of the dominant colour prevelant in front of the user, thus circumnavigating the privacy concerns raised in relation to lifelogging. To simulate whether the capture of dominant colour would be sufficient we report on a simulation carried out on 1.2 million SenseCam images captured by a group of 20 individuals. We compare the dominant colours that different groups of people are exposed to and show that useful inferences can be made from this data. We believe our prototype may be valuable in future experiments to capture colour correlated associated with an individual's mood.

Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games

There has recently been a great deal of interest in the potential of computer games to function as innovative educational tools. However, there is very little evidence of games fulfilling that potential. Indeed, the process of merging the disparate goals of education and games design appears problematic, and there are currently no practical guidelines for how to do so in a coherent manner. In this paper, we describe the successful, empirically validated teaching methods developed by behavioural psychologists and point out how they are uniquely suited to take advantage of the benefits that games offer to education. We conclude by proposing some practical steps for designing educational games, based on the techniques of Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is intended that this paper can both focus educational games designers on the features of games that are genuinely useful for education, and also introduce a successful form of teaching that this audience may not yet be familiar with.