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.

Human interfaces to structured documents

This research investigates some of the reasons for the reported difficulties experienced by writers when using editing software designed for structured documents. The overall objective was to determine if there are aspects of the software interfaces which militate against optimal document construction by writers who are not computer experts, and to suggest possible remedies. Studies were undertaken to explore the nature and extent of the difficulties, and to identify which components of the software interfaces are involved. A model of a revised user interface was tested, and some possible adaptations to the interface are proposed which may help overcome the difficulties. The methodology comprised: 1. identification and description of the nature of a ‘structured document’ and what distinguishes it from other types of document used on computers; 2. isolation of the requirements of users of such documents, and the construction a set of personas which describe them; 3. evaluation of other work on the interaction between humans and computers, specifically in software for creating and editing structured documents; 4. estimation of the levels of adoption of the available software for editing structured documents and the reactions of existing users to it, with specific reference to difficulties encountered in using it; 5. examination of the software and identification of any mismatches between the expectations of users and the facilities provided by the software; 6. assessment of any physical or psychological factors in the reported difficulties experienced, and to determine what (if any) changes to the software might affect these. The conclusions are that seven of the twelve modifications tested could contribute to an improvement in usability, effectiveness, and efficiency when writing structured text (new document selection; adding new sections and new lists; identifying key information typographically; the creation of cross-references and bibliographic references; and the inclusion of parts of other documents). The remaining five were seen as more applicable to editing existing material than authoring new text (adding new elements; splitting and joining elements [before and after]; and moving block text).