Supporting cooperative design through "living" artefacts

We present findings from a field trial of CAM (Cooperative Artefact Memory) -- a mobile-tagging based messaging system -- in a design studio environment. CAM allows individuals to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design artefacts, such as sketches, collages, story-boards, and physical mock-ups in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. We studied the use of CAM in three student design projects. We observed that CAM facilitated new ways of collaborating in joint design projects. The serendipitous and asynchronous nature of CAM facilitated expressions of design aesthetics, allowed designers to have playful interactions, supported exploration of new design ideas, and supported designers' reflective practices. In general, our results show how CAM transformed mundane design artefacts into "living" artefacts that made the creative and playful side of cooperative design visible.

Collaborative practices that support creativity in design

Design is a ubiquitous, collaborative and highly material activity. Because of the embodied nature of the design profession, designers apply certain collaborative practices to enhance creativity in their everyday work. Within the domain of industrial design, we studied two educational design departments over a period of eight months. Using examples from our fieldwork, we develop our results around three broad themes related to collaborative practices that support the creativity of design professionals: 1) externalization, 2) use of physical space, and; 3) use of bodies. We believe that these themes of collaborative practices could provide new insights into designing technologies for supporting a varied set of design activities. We describe two conceptual collaborative systems derived from the results of our study.

Experiential role of artefacts in cooperative design

The role of material artefacts in supporting distributed and co-located work practices has been well acknowledged within HCI and CSCW research. In this paper, we show that in addition to their ecological, coordinative and organizational support, artefacts also play an 'experiential' role. In this case, artefacts not only improve efficiency or have a purely functional role (e.g. allowing people to complete tasks quickly), but the materiality, use and manifestations of these artefacts bring quality and richness to people's performance and help them make better sense of their everyday lives. In a domain such as industrial design, such artefacts play an important role for supporting creativity and innovation. Based on our ethnographic fieldwork on understanding cooperative design practices of industrial design students and researchers, we describe several experiential practices that are supported by design-related artefacts such as sketches, drawings, physical models and explorative prototypes -- used and developed in designers' everyday work. Our main intention in carrying out this kind of research is to develop technologies to support designers' everyday practices. We believe that with the emergence of ubiquitous computing, there is a growing need to focus on the personal, social and creative side of people's everyday experiences. By focusing on the experiential practices of designers, we can provide a much broader view in the design of new interactive technologies.

Social Media Analytics : Ein interdisziplinärer Ansatz und seine Implikationen für die Wirtschaftsinformatik [Social Media Analytics - An Interdisciplinary Approach and Its Implications for Information Systems]

Social Media Analytics ist ein neuer Forschungsbereich, in dem interdisziplinäre Methoden kombiniert, erweitert und angepasst werden, um Social-Media-Daten auszuwerten. Neben der Beantwortung von Forschungsfragen ist es ebenfalls ein Ziel, Architekturentwürfe für die Entwicklung neuer Informationssysteme und Anwendungen bereitzustellen, die auf sozialen Medien basieren. Der Beitrag stellt die wichtigsten Aspekte des Bereichs Social Media Analytics vor und verweist auf die Notwendigkeit einer fächerübergreifenden Forschungsagenda, für deren Erstellung und Bearbeitung der Wirtschaftsinformatik eine wichtige Rolle zukommt.

Social media analytics: an interdisciplinary approach and its implications for information systems

Social Media Analytics is an emerging interdisciplinary research field that aims on combining, extending, and adapting methods for analysis of social media data. On the one hand it can support IS and other research disciplines to answer their research questions and on the other hand it helps to provide architectural designs as well as solution frameworks for new social media-based applications and information systems. The authors suggest that IS should contribute to this field and help to develop and process an interdisciplinary research agenda.

An intuitive multi-touch surface and gesture based interaction for video surveillance systems

This paper discusses the idea and demonstrates an early prototype of a novel method of interacting with security surveillance footage using natural user interfaces in place of traditional mouse and keyboard interaction. Current surveillance monitoring stations and systems provide the user with a vast array of video feeds from multiple locations on a video wall, relying on the user’s ability to distinguish locations of the live feeds from experience or list based key-value pair of location and camera IDs. During an incident, this current method of interaction may cause the user to spend increased amounts time obtaining situational and location awareness, which is counter-productive. The system proposed in this paper demonstrates how a multi-touch screen and natural interaction can enable the surveillance monitoring station users to quickly identify the location of a security camera and efficiently respond to an incident.

Context-resonant systems perspectives in career theory

"The focus of this chapter is on context-resonant systems perspectives in career theory and their implications for practice in diverse cultural and contextual settings. For over two decades, the potential of systems theory to offer a context-resonant approach to career development has been acknowledged. Career development theory and practice, however, have been dominated for most of their history by more narrowly defined theories informed by a trait-and-factor tradition of matching the characteristics of individuals to occupations. In contrast, systems theory challenges this parts-in-isolation approach and offers a response that can accommodate the complexity of both the lives of individuals and the world of the 21st century by taking a more holistic approach that considers individuals in context. These differences in theory and practice may be attributed to the underlying philosophies that inform them. For example, the philosophy informing the trait-and-factor theoretical position, logical positivism, places value on: studying individuals in isolation from their environments; content over process; facts over feelings; objectivity over subjectivity; and views individual behavior as observable, measurable, and linear. In practice, this theory base manifests in expert-driven practices founded on the assessment of personal traits such as interests, personality, values, or beliefs which may be matched to particular occupations. The philosophy informing more recent theoretical positions, constructivism, places value on: studying individuals in their contexts; making meaning of experience through the use of subjective narrative accounts; and a belief in the capacity of individuals known as agency. In practice, this theory base manifests in practices founded on collaborative relationships with clients, narrative approaches, and a reduced emphasis on expert-driven linear processes. Thus, the tenets of constructivism which inform the systems perspectives in career theory are context-resonant. Systems theory stresses holism where the interconnectedness of all elements of a system is considered. Systems may be open or closed. Closed systems have no relationship with their external environment whereas open systems interact with their external environment and are open to external influence which is necessary for regeneration. Congruent with general systems theory, the systems perspectives emerging within career theory are based on open systems. Such systems are complex and dynamic and comprise many elements and subsystems which recursively interact with each other as well as with influences from the surrounding environment. As elements of a system should not be considered in isolation, a systems approach is holistic. Patterns of behavior are found in the relationships between the elements of dynamic systems. Because of the multiplicity of relationships within and between elements of subsystems, the possibility of linear causal explanations is reduced. Story is the mechanism through which the relationships and patterns within systems are recounted by individuals. Thus the career guidance practices emanating from theories informed by systems perspectives are inherently narrative in orientation. Narrative career counseling encourages career development to be understood from the subjective perspective of clients. The application of systemic thinking in practice takes greater account of context. In so doing, practices informed by systems theory may facilitate relevance to a diverse client group in diverse settings. In a world that has become increasingly global and diverse it seems that context-resonant systems perspectives in career theory are essential to ensure the future of career development. Translating context-resonant systems perspectives into practice offers important possibilities for methods and approaches that are respectful of diversity."--publisher website

Combining recommender and reputation systems to produce better online advice

Although recommender systems and reputation systems have quite different theoretical and technical bases, both types of systems have the purpose of providing advice for decision making in e-commerce and online service environments. The similarity in purpose makes it natural to integrate both types of systems in order to produce better online advice, but their difference in theory and implementation makes the integration challenging. In this paper, we propose to use mappings to subjective opinions from values produced by recommender systems as well as from scores produced by reputation systems, and to combine the resulting opinions within the framework of subjective logic.

Physicality and cooperative design

CSCW researchers have increasingly come to realize that the material work setting and its population of artefacts play a crucial part in coordination of distributed or co-located work. This paper uses the notion of physicality as a basis to understand cooperative work. Using examples from an ongoing fieldwork on cooperative design practices, it provides a conceptual understanding of physicality and shows that material settings and co-workers’ working practices play an important role in understanding the physicality of cooperative design.

Designing awareness support for distributed cooperative design teams

Motivation Awareness is an integral part of remote collaborative work and has been an important theme within the CSCW research. Our project aims at understanding and mediating non-verbal cues between remote participants involved in a design project. Research approach Within the AMIDA project we focus on distributed 'cooperative design' teams. We especially focus on the 'material' signals - signals in which people communicate through material artefacts, locations and their embodied actions. We apply an ethnographic approach to understand the role of physical artefacts in co-located naturalistic design setting. Based on the results we will generate important implications to support remote design work. We plan to develop a mixed-reality interface supported by a shared awareness display. This awareness display will provide information about the activities happening in the design room to remotely located participants. Findings/Design Our preliminary investigation with real-world design teams suggests that both the materiality of designers' work settings and their social practices play an important role in understanding these material signals that are at play. Originality/Value Most research supporting computer mediated communication have focused on either face-to-face or linguistically oriented communication paradigms. Our research focuses on mediating the non-verbal, material cues for supporting collaborative activities without impoverishing what designers do in their day to day working lives. Take away message An ethnographic approach allows us to understand the naturalistic practices of design teams, which can lead to designing effective technologies to support group work. In that respect, the findings of our research will have a generic value beyond the application domain chosen (design teams).

Expressive encryption systems from lattices

In this survey, we review a number of the many “expressive” encryption systems that have recently appeared from lattices, and explore the innovative techniques that underpin them.

A Cyber-Physical System Simulator for risk-free transport studies

The article introduces a novel platform for conducting controlled and risk-free driving and traveling behavior studies, called Cyber-Physical System Simulator (CPSS). The key features of CPSS are: (1) simulation of multiuser immersive driving in a threedimensional (3D) virtual environment; (2) integration of traffic and communication simulators with human driving based on dedicated middleware; and (3) accessibility of multiuser driving simulator on popular software and hardware platforms. This combination of features allows us to easily collect large-scale data on interesting phenomena regarding the interaction between multiple user drivers, which is not possible with current single-user driving simulators. The core original contribution of this article is threefold: (1) we introduce a multiuser driving simulator based on DiVE, our original massively multiuser networked 3D virtual environment; (2) we introduce OpenV2X, a middleware for simulating vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communication; and (3) we present two experiments based on our CPSS platform. The first experiment investigates the “rubbernecking” phenomenon, where a platoon of four user drivers experiences an accident in the oncoming direction of traffic. Second, we report on a pilot study about the effectiveness of a Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems advisory system.

Using a public key registry for improved trust and scalability in national E-health systems

An increasing number of countries are faced with an aging population increasingly needing healthcare services. For any e-health information system, the need for increased trust by such clients with potentially little knowledge of any security scheme involved is paramount. In addition notable scalability of any system has become a critical aspect of system design, development and ongoing management. Meanwhile cryptographic systems provide the security provisions needed for confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. Cryptographic key management, however, must be secure, yet efficient and effective in developing an attitude of trust in system users. Digital certificate-based Public Key Infrastructure has long been the technology of choice or availability for information security/assurance; however, there appears to be a notable lack of successful implementations and deployments globally. Moreover, recent issues with associated Certificate Authority security have damaged trust in these schemes. This paper proposes the adoption of a centralised public key registry structure, a non-certificate based scheme, for large scale e-health information systems. The proposed structure removes complex certificate management, revocation and a complex certificate validation structure while maintaining overall system security. Moreover, the registry concept may be easier for both healthcare professionals and patients to understand and trust.

Blast response and safety evaluation of a composite column for use as key element in structural systems

This paper presents the blast response, damage mechanism and evaluation of residual load capacity of a concrete–steel composite (CSC) column using dynamic computer simulation techniques. This study is an integral part of a comprehensive research program which investigated the vulnerability of structural framing systems to catastrophic and progressive collapse under blast loading and is intended to provide design information on blast mitigation and safety evaluation of load bearing vulnerable columns that are key elements in a building. The performance of the CSC column is compared with that of a reinforced concrete (RC) column with the same dimensions and steel ratio. Results demonstrate the superior performance of the CSC column, compared to the RC column in terms of residual load carrying capacity, and its potential for use as a key element in structural systems. The procedure and results presented herein can be used in the design and safety evaluation of key elements of multi-storey buildings for mitigating the impact of blast loads.