Where the actions are : bring reality into virtual reality

This paper describes a work-in-progress on developing design environments that combine wireless and mobile technologies with augmented reality to facilitate bringing context from the physical environment to the virtual models for design work. One of the challenges for designers in a variety of end-user-oriented design disciplines such as architecture and industrial design has been capturing and replaying the contextual information of the intended domain of the artifact being designed. Either the technology is decidedly low-tech, such as charcoal drawings in a sketchbook, out-of-reach, such as immersive virtual reality CAVEs, or a “make-do” with existing technologies, such as a collage of digital photos. This paper describes a novel combination of “off-the-shelf” technologies that may allow designers more capability to create models using standard computer-aided design applications and augmented reality to combine the current, physical context with the projected, digital context. We demonstrate this approach in the building design domain to address a common problem in building construction, construction defect resolution.

Cipher cities

Cipher Cities was a practice-led research project developed in 3 stages between 2005 and 2007 resulting in the creation of a unique online community, ‘Cipher Cities’, that provides simple authoring tools and processes for individuals and groups to create their own mobile events and event journals, build community profile and participate in other online community activities. Cipher Cities was created to revitalise peoples relationship to everyday places by giving them the opportunity and motivation to create and share complex digital stories in simple and engaging ways. To do so we developed new design processes and methods for both the research team and the end user to appropriate web and mobile technologies. To do so we collaborated with ethnographers, designers and ICT researchers and developers. In teams we ran a series of workshops in a wide variety of cities in Australia to refine an engagement process and to test a series of iteratively developed prototypes to refine the systems that supported community motivation and collaboration. The result of the research is 2 fold: 1. a sophisticated prototype for researchers and designers to further experiment with community engagement methodologies using existing and emerging communications technologies. 2. A ‘human dimensions matrix’. This matrix assists in the identification and modification of place based interventions in the social, technical, spatial, cultural, pedagogical conditions of any given community. This matrix has now become an essential part of a number of subsequent projects and assists design collaborators to successfully conceptualise, generate and evaluate interactive experiences. the research team employed practice-led action research methodologies that involved a collaborative effort across the fields of interaction design and social science, in particular ethnography, in order to: 1. seek, contest, refine a design methodology that would maximise the successful application of a dynamic system to create new kinds of interactions between people, places and artefacts’. 2. To design and deploy an application that intervenes in place-based and mobile technologies and offers people simple interfaces to create and share digital stories. Cipher Cities was awarded 3 separate CRC competitive grants (over $270,000 in total) to assist 3 stages of research covering the development of the Ethnographic Design Methodologies, the development of the tools, and the testing and refinement of both the engagement models and technologies. The resulting methodologies and tools are in the process of being commercialised by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design.

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.

MiLK. Mobile Learning Kit

The Mobile Learning Kit is a new digital learning application that allows students and teachers to compose, publish, discuss and evaluate their own mobile learning games and events. The research field was interaction design in the context of mobile learning. The research methodology was primarily design-based supported by collaboration between participating disciplines of game design, education and information technology. As such, the resulting MiLK application is a synthesis of current pedagogical models and experimental interaction design techniques and technologies. MiLK is a dynamic learning resource for incorporating both formal and informal teaching and learning practices while exploiting mobile phones and contemporary digital social tools in innovative ways. MiLK explicitly addresses other predominant themes in educational scholarship that relate to current education innovation and reform such as personalised learning, life-long learning and new learning spaces. The success of this project is indicated through rigorous trials and actual uptake of MiLK by international participants in Australia, UK, US and South Africa. MiLK was awarded for excellence in the use of emerging technologies for improved learning and teaching as a finalist (top 3) in the Handheld Learning and Innovation Awards in the UK in 2008. MiLK was awarded funding from the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design in 2008 to prepare the MiLK application for development. MiLK has been awarded over $230,000 from ACID since 2006. The resulting application and research materials are now being commercialised by a new company, ‘ACID Services’.

Dramatic character development personas to tailor apartment designs for different residential lifestyles

This chapter reports on research work that aims to overcome some limitations of conventional community engagement for urban planning. Adaptive and human-centred design approaches that are well established in human-computer interaction (such as personas and design scenarios) as well as creative writing and dramatic character development methods (such as the Stanislavsky System and the Meisner Technique) are yet largely unexplored in the rather conservative and long-term design context of urban planning. Based on these approaches, we have been trialling a set of performance based workshop activities to gain insights into participants’ desires and requirements that may inform the future design of apartments and apartment buildings in inner city Brisbane. The focus of these workshops is to analyse the behaviour and lifestyle of apartment dwellers and generate residential personas that become boundary objects in the cross-disciplinary discussions of urban design and planning teams. Dramatisation and embodied interaction of use cases form part of the strategies we employed to engage participants and elicit community feedback.

Challenging industry conceptions with provotypes

Design researchers have an important role to play when engaged with user-driven design projects in industry. Design researchers can craft ethnographic material to facilitate transfers of user-knowledge to industry, and demonstrate how this material can be used in the design of new products and services. However, ethnographic findings can reveal issues that are in tension with conceptions of the project members from industry. Instead of brushing these tensions aside, we propose provotyping (provocative prototyping) as an approach to constructively build on them as a resource for change. Provotypes are ethnographically rooted, technically working, robust artefacts that deliberately challenge stakeholder conceptions by reifying and exposing tensions that surround a field of organisational interest. The daily and local experience of provotypes aims to stir dialectical processes of reflection on how conceptions currently are, and fuel the front end of a development process by speculating how conceptions could be different. In this article we start by making explicit the relation between provotypes, practices of critical design and organisational sense-making. We then illustrate, through a multi-stakeholder project concerning the field of indoor climate, how provotypes facilitate transfers of user knowledge to industry, and how they contribute to the development of new products and services. We end by framing the role of the design researcher and discuss the politics that are inherent to design provocations.

Indonesian LIS professionals’ understanding of Library 2.0 : a pilot study

The concept of Library 2.0 with its participatory and user-centred focus increasingly has been incorporated in library practice around the world. However, research on this topic is either limited or non-existent in developing countries which are often restricted by tight budgets and varying levels of technological infrastructure. This poster presents the findings of an ongoing pilot project which investigates Library 2.0 in the specific cultural context of Indonesia as well as strengthens the general evidence base in this research area. Data was collected through an online survey with library and information (LIS) professionals from across the information sector in Indonesia. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to explore their understanding of the concept of Library 2.0. The preliminary data collected from this study will be used to inform a more complex future research project. As well, findings are intended to aid in LIS curriculum development in Indonesia to support the education of LIS students.

Acceptability-based QoE models for mobile video

Quality of experience (QoE) measures the overall perceived quality of mobile video delivery from subjective user experience and objective system performance. Current QoE computing models have two main limitations: 1) insufficient consideration of the factors influencing QoE, and; 2) limited studies on QoE models for acceptability prediction. In this paper, a set of novel acceptability-based QoE models, denoted as A-QoE, is proposed based on the results of comprehensive user studies on subjective quality acceptance assessments. The models are able to predict users’ acceptability and pleasantness in various mobile video usage scenarios. Statistical regression analysis has been used to build the models with a group of influencing factors as independent predictors, including encoding parameters and bitrate, video content characteristics, and mobile device display resolution. The performance of the proposed A-QoE models has been compared with three well-known objective Video Quality Assessment metrics: PSNR, SSIM and VQM. The proposed A-QoE models have high prediction accuracy and usage flexibility. Future user-centred mobile video delivery systems can benefit from applying the proposed QoE-based management to optimize video coding and quality delivery decisions.

Designing mobile systems for social navigation in urban public places

This thesis presents social requirements and design considerations from a study evaluating interactive approaches to social navigation and user-generated information sharing in urban environments using mobile devices. It investigates innovative ways to leverage mobile information and communication technology in order to provide a social navigation platform for residents and visitors in and for public urban places. Through a design case study this work presents CityFlocks, a mobile information system that offers an easy way for information-seeking new residents or visitors to access tacit knowledge from local people about their new community. It is intended to enable visitors and new residents in a city to tap into the knowledge and experiences of local residents in order to gather information about their new environment. Its design specifically aims to lower existing barriers of access and facilitate social navigation in urban places. In various user tests it evaluates two general user interaction alternatives – direct and indirect social navigation – and analyses which interaction method works better for people using a mobile device to socially navigate urban environments. The outcomes are relevant for the user interaction design of future mobile information systems that leverage the social navigation approach.

Developing a dashboard for real-time data stream composition and visualization

Technological advances have led to an influx of affordable hardware that supports sensing, computation and communication. This hardware is increasingly deployed in public and private spaces, tracking and aggregating a wealth of real-time environmental data. Although these technologies are the focus of several research areas, there is a lack of research dealing with the problem of making these capabilities accessible to everyday users. This thesis represents a first step towards developing systems that will allow users to leverage the available infrastructure and create custom tailored solutions. It explores how this notion can be utilized in the context of energy monitoring to improve conventional approaches. The project adopted a user-centered design process to inform the development of a flexible system for real-time data stream composition and visualization. This system features an extensible architecture and defines a unified API for heterogeneous data streams. Rather than displaying the data in a predetermined fashion, it makes this information available as building blocks that can be combined and shared. It is based on the insight that individual users have diverse information needs and presentation preferences. Therefore, it allows users to compose rich information displays, incorporating personally relevant data from an extensive information ecosystem. The prototype was evaluated in an exploratory study to observe its natural use in a real-world setting, gathering empirical usage statistics and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results show that a high degree of customization does not warrant sustained usage. Other factors were identified, yielding recommendations for increasing the impact on energy consumption.

FixVegas : facilitating multi-directional communication between government officials and citizens to support urban planning in the city of Brisbane

The goal of this project was to develop a mobile application for the iOS platform, that would support the partner of this project, the Brisbane City Council, in stronger engage citizens in participating in urban planning and development projects. The resulting application is an extended version of FixVegas, a system that allows citizens to report maintenance request to the Brisbane City Council through their smartphone. The new version of the system makes all incoming requests publicly available within the application, allows users to support, comment or disapprove of these. As an addition, the concept of the idea has been introduced. Citizens can submit suggestions for improving the city to the municipality, discuss them with other fellow citizens and, ideally, also with Council representatives. The city officials as well are provided with the ability of publishing development project as an idea and let citizens deliberate it. This way, bidirectional communication between these two parties is created. A web interface complements the iPhone application. The system has been developed after the principle of User Centered Design, by assessing user needs, creating and evaluating prototypes and conducting a user study. The study showed that FixVegas2 has been perceived as an enhancement compared to the previous version, and that the idea concept has been received on a positive note. Indepth questions, such as the influence the system could have on community dynamics or the public participation in urban planning projects could only hardly investigated. However, these findings can be achieved by the alternative study designs that have been proposed.

Technique for evaluating photo sharing interfaces with the early prototypes - group simulation

User evaluations using paper prototypes commonly lack social context. The Group simulation technique described in this paper offers a solution to this problem. The study introduces an early-phase participatory design technique targeted for small groups. The proposed technique is used for evaluating an interface, which enables group work in photo collection creation. Three groups of four users, 12 in total, took part in a simulation session where they tested a low-fidelity design concept that included their own personal photo content from an event that their group attended together. The users’ own content was used to evoke natural experiences. Our results indicate that the technique helped users to naturally engage with the prototype in the session. The technique is suggested to be suitable for evaluating other early-phase concepts and to guide design solutions, especially with the concepts that include users’ personal content and enable content sharing.

Information Experience : Approaches to Theory and Practice

"The German word for experience - Erlebnis - the experience of the life, to live through something - underpins this book: making visible scholarly opportunities for richer and deeper contextualizations and examinations of the lived-world experiences of people in everyday contexts as they be, do and become." (Ross Todd, Preface). Information experience is a burgeoning area of research and still unfolding as an explicit research and practice theme. This book is therefore very timely as it distils the reflections of researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, with interests ranging across information, knowledge, user experience, design and education. They cast a fresh analytical eye on information experience, whilst approaching the idea from diverse perspectives. Information Experience brings together current thinking about the idea of information experience to help form discourse around it and establish a conceptual foundation for taking the idea forward. It therefore "provides a number of theoretical lenses for examining people's information worlds in more holistic and dynamic ways." (Todd, Preface)

'Means to ends': Integration for stakeholder engagement.

In project management today, sustainability considerations are becoming increasingly necessary as an inclusion into project discovery, design and delivery phase methodologies. However, sustainability cannot always be tacked on to traditional project management approaches and still achieve the best project outcomes. Throw in the particular considerations for a culturally specific project, as for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and the traditional project management approach is at risk of not meeting the needs of stakeholders or their engagement. In this presentation, we will briefly demonstrate how from beginning with sustainability considerations and integrating both project management principles and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander va lu es that QUT's Oodgeroo Unit is actioning a 'means to ends' integration approach for stakeholder engagement in two national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander projects. The iterative discovery and design of the federally Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Social Marketing Strategy (Strategy) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Higher Education Portal (Portal) projects is being informed through a 'means' to 'ends' user- and design -led project management approach for inclusivity, visioning, and participation informing these projects for susta inable national deliverables. This approach draws upon the integration of Sustain ability Development Pillars and Project Management Pillars with the contextual lens of our proposed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Pillars as the underpinning methodology of the Strategy and Portal Project's Communication and Collaboration Plan and approach with stakeholders. These th ree Pillars are integrated further through participatory consideration and inclu sion of comparative models: Daly's Sustainability Triangle, Walker's Object Design, Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs, Olsen's Four Layers of Communication,Project Management In stitute's (PMI's) Integrated Framework for Organisational Project Management, with the Aborig inal and Torres Strait Islander six core research ethics values. This presentation invites participants to join us in envisioning the 'ultimate means' of Environment, Del ivery and Sovereignty, through Economy, Design and Self-determination to the 'ultimate ends' of Social, Discove ry and Cultural Safety principles through stakeholder engagement.