Evoking gesture in interactive art

In this paper, we describe an interactive artwork that uses large body gestures as its primary interactive mode. The artist intends the work to provoke active reflection in the audience by way of gesture and content. The technology is not the focus, rather the aim is to provoke memory, to elicit feelings of connective human experiences in a required-to-participate audience. We find the work provokes a diverse and contradictory set of responses. The methods used to understand this include qualitative methods common to evaluating interactive art works, as well as in-depth discussions with the artist herself. This paper is relevant to the Human - Centered Computing track because in all stages of the design of the work - as well as the evaluation - the focus is on the human aspect; the computing is designed to enable all-too-human responses.

Talk2Me : engaging interactive installation environments

In this research I explore what elements there may be in common between tangible interactive-technology works that successfully engage their participants. An exploration of existing methods for obtaining useful evaluations for non-use and ambiguous environments forms a part of the discussion.

Talk2Me : the art of augmenting conversations

This paper describes an interactive installation work set in a large dome space. The installation is an audio and physical re-rendition of an interactive writing work. In the original work, the user interacted via keyboard and screen while online. This rendition of the work retains the online interaction, but also places the interaction within a physical space, where the main 'conversation' takes place by the participant-audience speaking through microphones and listening through headphones. The work now also includes voice and SMS input, using speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion technologies, and audio and displayed text for output. These additions allow the participant-audience to co-author the work while they participate in audible conversation with keyword-triggering characters (bots). Communication in the space can be person-to-computer via microphone, keyboard, and phone; person-to-person via machine and within the physical space; computer-to- computer; and computer-to-person via audio and projected text.

Artefact and iteration : circular entanglements

In this workshop proposal I discuss a case study physical computing environment named Talk2Me. This work was exhibited in February 2006 at The Block, Brisbane as an interactive installation in the early stages of its development. The major artefact in this work is a 10 metre wide X 3 metre high light-permeable white dome. There are other technologies and artefacts contained within the dome that make up this interactive environment. The dome artefact has impacted heavily on the design process, including shaping the types of interactions involved, the kinds of technologies employed, and the choice of other artefacts. In this workshop paper, I chart some of the various iterations Talk2Me has undergone in the design process.

The interactive PRP for diversifying document rankings

The assumptions underlying the Probability Ranking Principle (PRP) have led to a number of alternative approaches that cater or compensate for the PRP's limitations. In this poster we focus on the Interactive PRP (iPRP), which rejects the assumption of independence between documents made by the PRP. Although the theoretical framework of the iPRP is appealing, no instantiation has been proposed and investigated. In this poster, we propose a possible instantiation of the principle, performing the first empirical comparison of the iPRP against the PRP. For document diversification, our results show that the iPRP is significantly better than the PRP, and comparable to or better than other methods such as Modern Portfolio Theory.

Creative practices in the design studio culture : collaboration and communication

For the purpose of developing collaborative support in design studio environments, we have carried out ethnographic fieldwork in professional and academic product design studios. Our intention was to understand design practices beyond the productivity point of view and take into account the experiential, inspirational and aesthetical aspects of design practices. Using examples from our fieldwork, we develop our results around three broad themes by which design professionals support communication and collaboration: (1) use of artefacts, (2) use of space and (3) designerly practices. We use the results of our fieldwork for drawing implications for designing technologies for the design studio culture.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and percetions of health risk communication : a case study

This case study was conducted to explore the perceptions of health risk messages sent by the Japanese Government following the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. The content of health risk messages from the Japanese Government and the Japanese national broadcaster (NHK) were analysed and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of Tokyo residents. Initially, participants trusted these messages but as the crisis unfolded they became sceptical about the messages. Participants felt the messages did not communicate health risk information effectively because the messages were; not supported by evidence, inconsistent, delayed and changed over time. Despite widespread access to the internet, social media and mobile telephones, most participants relied on television news for information about the health risks. The Japanese Government urgently needs to re-build trust by engaging the community in the planning and development phases of health risk communication strategies.

A participatory framework for researching and evaluating communication for development and social change

The growing dominance of project planning cycles and results-based management in development over the past 20 years has significant implications for the effective evaluation of communication for development and social change and the sustainability of these processes. These approaches to development and evaluation usually give priority to the linear, logical framework (or log frame) approach promoted by many development institutions. This tends to emphasize upward accountability approaches to development and its evaluation, so that development is driven by exogenous rather than endogenous models of development and social change. Such approaches are underpinned by ideas of preplanning, and predetermination of what successful out -comes look like. In this way, outcomes of complex interventions tend to be reduced to simple, cause-effect processes and the categorization of things, including people (Chambers and Pettit 2004; Eyben 2011). This runs counter to communication for development approaches, which prioritize engagement, relationships, empowerment and dialogue as important components for positive social change.

Lattice-based completely non-malleable PKE in the standard model

This paper presents ongoing work toward constructing efficient completely non-malleable public-key encryption scheme based on lattices in the standard (common reference string) model. An encryption scheme is completely non-malleable if it requires attackers to have negligible advantage, even if they are allowed to transform the public key under which the related message is encrypted. Ventre and Visconti proposed two inefficient constructions of completely non-malleable schemes, one in the common reference string model using non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs, and another using interactive encryption schemes. Recently, two efficient public-key encryption schemes have been proposed, both of them are based on pairing identity-based encryption.

Crowdsourcing interactions : using crowdsourcing for evaluating interactive information retrieval systems

In the field of information retrieval (IR), researchers and practitioners are often faced with a demand for valid approaches to evaluate the performance of retrieval systems. The Cranfield experiment paradigm has been dominant for the in-vitro evaluation of IR systems. Alternative to this paradigm, laboratory-based user studies have been widely used to evaluate interactive information retrieval (IIR) systems, and at the same time investigate users’ information searching behaviours. Major drawbacks of laboratory-based user studies for evaluating IIR systems include the high monetary and temporal costs involved in setting up and running those experiments, the lack of heterogeneity amongst the user population and the limited scale of the experiments, which usually involve a relatively restricted set of users. In this paper, we propose an alternative experimental methodology to laboratory-based user studies. Our novel experimental methodology uses a crowdsourcing platform as a means of engaging study participants. Through crowdsourcing, our experimental methodology can capture user interactions and searching behaviours at a lower cost, with more data, and within a shorter period than traditional laboratory-based user studies, and therefore can be used to assess the performances of IIR systems. In this article, we show the characteristic differences of our approach with respect to traditional IIR experimental and evaluation procedures. We also perform a use case study comparing crowdsourcing-based evaluation with laboratory-based evaluation of IIR systems, which can serve as a tutorial for setting up crowdsourcing-based IIR evaluations.

Vote with your feet : local community polling on urban screens

Falling prices have led to an ongoing spread of public displays in urban areas. Still, they mostly show passive content such as commercials and digital signage. At the same time, technological advances have enabled the creation of interactive displays potentially increasing their attractiveness for the audience, e.g. through providing a platform for civic discourse. This poses considerable challenges, since displays need to communicate the opportunity to engage, motivate the audience to do so, and be easy to use. In this paper we present Vote With Your Feet, a hyperlocal public polling tool for urban screens allowing users to express their opinions. Similar to vox populi interviews on TV or polls on news websites, the tool is meant to reflect the mindset of the community on topics such as current affairs, cultural identity and local matters. It is novel in that it focuses on a situated civic discourse and provides a tangible user interface, tackling the mentioned challenges. It shows one Yes/No question at a time and enables users to vote by stepping on one of two tangible buttons on the ground. This user interface was introduced to attract people’s attention and to lower participation barriers. Our field study showed that Vote With Your Feet is perceived as inviting and that it can spark discussions among co-located people.

On power minimisation and SNR maximisation of distributed beamforming in cooperative communication systems

A comparison of relay power minimisation subject to received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver and SNR maximisation subject to the total transmitted power of relays for a typical wireless network with distributed beamforming is presented. It is desirable to maximise receiver quality-of-service (QoS) and also to minimise the cost of transmission in terms of power. Hence, these two optimisation problems are very common and have been addressed separately in the literature. It is shown that SNR maximisation subject to power constraint and power minimisation subject to SNR constraint yield the same results for a typical wireless network. It proves that either one of the optimisation approaches is sufficient.