The social car : new interactive vehicular applications derived from social media and urban informatics

Digital information that is place- and time-specific, is increasingly becoming available on all aspects of the urban landscape. People (cf. the Social Web), places (cf. the Geo Web), and physical objects (cf. ubiquitous computing, the Internet of Things) are increasingly infused with sensors, actuators, and tagged with a wealth of digital information. Urban informatics research explores these emerging digital layers of the city at the intersection of people, place and technology. However, little is known about the challenges and new opportunities that these digital layers may offer to road users driving through today’s mega cities. We argue that this aspect is worth exploring in particular with regards to Auto-UI’s overarching goal of making cars both safer and more enjoyable. This paper presents the findings of a pilot study, which included 14 urban informatics research experts participating in a guided ideation (idea creation) workshop within a simulated environment. They were immersed into different driving scenarios to imagine novel urban informatics type of applications specific to the driving context.

Adaptation and empathy : intercultural communication in a choreographic project

The tricky terrain of intercultural communication within the pressure-cooker environment of creating new performance work is explored through the experiences of five Australians working with 55 artists in Hanoi, Vietnam on a project called Through the Eyes of the Phoenix. Key cultural communication issues such as the concept of ‘face’, identity, translation, adaptability, ambiguity tolerance, empathy, enmeshment and the development of shared understandings are examined in relation to theories of high and low context cultures and individualist collectivist frameworks. The experiences of both Australian and Vietnamese artists are foregrounded, revealing the importance of other intercultural communication modes such as visual, kinaesthetic and tactile languages as well as the languages of their art forms. Immersion in social activities and the importance of the emotional domain are also highlighted as essential factors to survive and thrive in intense creative collaborations across cultures. These dance perspectives, embedded in practice, provide alternative contributions to the messy complexities of intercultural communication.

Envisaging alternatives for practice : a study into the way concepts of sustain-ability can be explored within an interactive media arts practice

This practice-led study explores different ways the subject of sustain-ability can be addressed within an Interactive Media Arts practice. The exploration encompasses three creative projects, Charmed, Distracted and e. Menura superba. Grounded in an ecological philosophy inspired by vegetarianism and the critical design philosophy of defuturing, the work shows how such a philosophical position can guide the redirection of practice. The concern for sustain-ability within my practice, and more generally the question of Interactive Media Arts and sustain-ability, I refer to as a problématique. The objective of this study is not one of finding an answer or a truth to an instrumentally posed question, but to explore the complexities of the problématique through a program of practice and intellectual investigation. The aim being to redirect my practice and to find a renewed raison d’être for practice through a process of opening up, encountering, and discovering otherwise unknown possibilities for practice. In the context of sustain-ability, this opening up of possibilities can be considered a form of futuring. A futuring I argue is only possible if the things we take for granted as integral aspects of our being, practices and life worlds, are revealed in ways that estrange them, rendering them visible in ways that allow questioning and change.

Languages of Communication : Indigenous language and/or English?

My interest in producing this paper on Indigenous languages was borne out of conversations with and learnings from community members in the Torres Straits and those connected to the ‘Dream Circle’. Nakata (2003, p. 12) laments the situation whereby ‘teachers are transitionary and take their hard-earned knowledge with them when they leave’. I am thus responding to the call to add to the conversation in a productive albeit culturally loaded way. To re-iterate, I am neither Indigenous nor am I experienced in teaching and learning in these contexts. As problematic as these two points are, I am in many ways typical of the raft of inexperienced white Australian teachers assigned to positions in school contexts where Indigenous students are enrolled or in mainstream contexts with substantial populations of Indigenous students. By penning this article, it is neither my intention to contribute to the silencing of Indigenous educators or Indigenous communities. My intention is to articulate my teacherly reflections as they apply to the topic under discussion. The remainder of this paper is presented in three sections. The next section provides a brief overview of the number of Indigenous people and Indigenous languages in Australia and the role of English as a language of communication. The section which follows draws on theorisations from second/additional language acquisition to overview three different schools of thought about the consequences of English in the lives of Indigenous Australians. The paper concludes by considering the tensions for inexperienced white Australian teachers caught up in the fray.

Context-aware rate-adaptive beaconing for efficient and scalable vehicular safety communication

Vehicular safety applications, such as cooperative collision warning systems, rely on beaconing to provide situational awareness that is needed to predict and therefore to avoid possible collisions. Beaconing is the continual exchange of vehicle motion-state information, such as position, speed, and heading, which enables each vehicle to track its neighboring vehicles in real time. This work presents a context-aware adaptive beaconing scheme that dynamically adapts the beaconing repetition rate based on an estimated channel load and the danger severity of the interactions among vehicles. The safety, efficiency, and scalability of the new scheme is evaluated by simulating vehicle collisions caused by inattentive drivers under various road traffic densities. Simulation results show that the new scheme is more efficient and scalable, and is able to improve safety better than the existing non-adaptive and adaptive rate schemes.

Interactive product browsing and configuration using remote augmented reality sales services

Real-time remote sales assistance is an underdeveloped component of online sales services. Solutions involving web page text chat, telephony and video support prove problematic when seeking to remotely guide customers in their sales processes, especially with configurations of physically complex artefacts. Recently, there has been great interest in the application of virtual worlds and augmented reality to create synthetic environments for remote sales of physical artefacts. However, there is a lack of analysis and development of appropriate software services to support these processes. We extend our previous work with the detailed design of configuration context services to support the management of an interactive sales session using augmented reality. We detail the context and configuration services required, presenting a novel data service streaming configuration information to the vendor for business analytics. We expect that a fully implemented configuration management service, based on our design, will improve the remote sales experience for both customers and vendors alike via analysis of the streamed information.

Please take out your phones : on the spot solicitation of student feedback in class

The use of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets in classrooms has been met with mixed sentiments. Some instructors and teachers see them as a distraction and regularly ban their usage. Others who see their potential to enhance learning have started to explore ways to integrate them into their teaching in an attempt to improve student engagement. In this paper we report on a pilot study that forms part of a university-wide project reconceptualising its approach to the student evaluation of learning and teaching. In a progressive decision to embrace mobile technology, the university decided to trial a smart phone app designed for students to check-in to class and leave feedback on the spot. Our preliminary findings from trialling the app indicate that the application establishes a more immediate feedback loop between students and teachers. However, the app’s impact depends on how feedback is shared with students and how the teaching team responds.

Positive emotional experiences with portable interactive products

Positive emotions are central to human life and have implications to the overall quality of people's life (Fredrickson, 1998). This paper reports on positive experiences with two types of portable interactive devices (PIDs), specifically media/entertainment and medical/health devices. The study is based on a six-month longitudinal study exploring people's emotional experience and how PIDs mediate these experiences in everyday contexts. Previous findings by the authors (Gomez, Popovic & Blackler, 2011) presented four categories of activities including Feature, Functional, Mediation and Auxiliary activities and their relationship to emotional experience. The paper presents emotional experiences with specific activities reported with a focus on positive emotions. It concludes with a discussion of the findings on positive experiences and the implications for the future design of PIDs.

Detection of right-to-left Atrial communication using agitated saline contrast imaging : experience with 1162 patients and recommendations for echocardiography

Background: Right-to-left shunting via a patent foramen ovale (PFO) has a recognized association with embolic events in younger patients. The use of agitated saline contrast imaging (ASCi) for detecting atrial shunting is well documented, however optimal technique is not well described. The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy and safety of ASCi via TTE for assessment of right-to-left atrial communication in a large cohort of patients. Method: A retrospective review was undertaken of 1162 consecutive transthoracic (TTE) ASCi studies, of which 195 had also undergone clinically indicated transesophageal (TEE) echo. ASCi shunt results were compared with color flow imaging (CFI) and the role of provocative maneuvers (PM) assessed. Results: 403 TTE studies (35%) had paradoxical shunting seen during ASCi. Of these, 48% were positive with PM only. There was strong agreement between TTE ASCi and reported TEE findings (99% sensitivity, 85% specificity), with six false positive and two false negative results. In hindsight, the latter were likely due to suboptimal right atrial opacification, and the former due to transpulmonary shunting. TTE CFI was found to be insensitive (22%) for the detection of a PFO compared with TTE ASCi. Conclusions: TTE ASCi is minimally invasive and highly accurate for the detection of right-to-left atrial communication when PM are used. TTE CFI was found to be insensitive for PFO screening. It is recommended that TTE ASCi should be considered the initial diagnostic tool for the detection of PFO in clinical practice. A dedicated protocol should be followed to ensure adequate agitated saline contrast delivery and performance of provocative maneuvers.

Communication and organizational social networks : a simulation model

Recent management research has evidenced the significance of organizational social networks, and communication is believed to impact the interpersonal relationships. However, we have little knowledge on how communication affects organizational social networks. This paper studies the dynamics between organizational communication patterns and the growth of organizational social networks. We propose an organizational social network growth model, and then collect empirical data to test model validity. The simulation results agree well with the empirical data. The results of simulation experiments enrich our knowledge on communication with the findings that organizational management practices that discourage employees from communicating within and across group boundaries have disparate and significant negative effect on the social network’s density, scalar assortativity and discrete assortativity, each of which correlates with the organization’s performance. These findings also suggest concrete measures for management to construct and develop the organizational social network.

Resilience by design: A participatory approach to designing an interactive digital application for promoting children's resilience

The promotion of resilience (the capacity of an individual or community to bounce back and recover from adversity) has become an important area of public health. In recent years it has expanded into the digital domain, and many online applications have been developed to promote children's resilience. In this study, it is argued that the majority of existing applications are limited because they take a didactic approach, and conceive of interaction as providing navigational choices. Because they simply provide information about resilience or replicate offline, scenario-based strategies, the understanding of resilience they provide is confined to a few, predetermined factors. In this study I propose a new, experiential approach to promoting resilience digitally. I define resilience as an emergent, situated and context-specific phenomenon. Using a Participatory Design model in combination with a salutogenic (strength-based) health methodology, this project has involved approximately 50 children as co-designers and co-researchers over two years. The children have contributed to the design of a new set of interactive resilience tools, which facilitate resilience promotion through dialogic and experiential learning. The major outcomes of this study include a new methodology for developing digital resilience tools, a new set of tools that have been developed and evaluated in collaboration with children and a set of design principles to guide future development. Beyond these initial and tangible outcomes, this study has also established that the benefits of introducing Participatory Design into a health promoting model rests primarily in the change of the role of children from "users" of technology and education to co-designers, where they assume a leadership role in both designing the tools and in directing their resilience learning.

Say goodbye to the fries : graduate careers in media, cultural and communication studies

This article addresses the paucity of systematic data on graduate careers in the arts and humanities in the broader context of enduring public and policy debates about the benefits of education to society, the relation between public and private good that is derivable from education, and the specific disciplinary angle that can be brought to bear on these questions from media, cultural and communication studies. We report findings from a survey of ten years of graduates from Queensland University of Technology’s courses in media, cultural and communication studies which indicate very high employment levels and generally positive accounts of the relevance of courses to working life. A major insight that can be drawn from the research is that media, cultural and communication studies deliver capabilities, skills and orientations which are themselves strongly aligned with the kinds of transferable generic attributes which facilitate transition into the workplace.