| A Constructive Approach to Organizational Learning in a Tactical Operations Centre | | BIBAK | PDF | 7-22 | |
| Stuart G. Grant | |||
| Defence organizations conduct experiments to generate new concepts for
fielding and employing military capabilities. These events typically involve
people with different sets of expertise working collectively on complex
real-world problems with the intent of generating new working methods. It is
argued that constructivist learning theories are well-suited to conceptualizing
defence experiments and that a constructivist approach provides useful insights
to the conduct of defence experimentation. A defence experiment on the
introduction of new airspace control software into a tactical operations centre
is described and used to illustrate the application and benefits of a
constructivist perspective. During the course of the six day long experiment,
19 military personnel operated a tactical control centre providing fire support
to a simulated battle group. During the experiment the participants adapted
their handling of unscheduled missions, their use of software features, and
their briefing methods. Argote's (2002) Intra-Organizational Learning Framework
was used to identify the newly generated knowledge pertaining to the skill
requirements of the personnel, the functionality of the command and control
software, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures employed in the
operations centre. The practicality, responsiveness, and efficiency of the
constructivist approach to defence experimentation are discussed along with its
limitations. Keywords: command and control teams; learning; training; experimentation | |||
| The Design of Web Sites Adaptable to Emotion-related Aspects | | BIBAK | PDF | 23-38 | |
| Giuditta Gugliotta; Fabio Paternò | |||
| In this paper, we discuss an approach to designing Web sites, which can be
adapted to emotion-related aspects. We present a set of design criteria that
have been identified for this purpose and show how they have been applied to a
specific case study: an adaptable Web site for e-readings. The Web site has
been designed for supporting four versions of users interfaces, which
correspond to different emotions in order to better support user experience. We
also report on the user tests that have been carried out for this work. Keywords: User Experience Guidelines, Web Sites, User Interface Adaptation | |||
| Virtual Meeting Analyzer: A Web application to visualize and analyze social networks emerging in group meetings | | BIBAK | PDF | 39-51 | |
| Alessandro Giuseppe Privitera; Francesco Martino; Luciano Gamberini | |||
| The possibility to analyze the social network emerging from the relations
between people participating in a meeting could improve the effectiveness and
satisfaction of the communication that occurs during the meeting. However, it
requires accurate recording of direction, source and addressee(s) of all verbal
exchanges in a format that allows the application of algorithms to extract and
visualize social network indices. Virtual Meeting Analyzer is a Web application
developed to overcome any complexity in this process. By using a simple
interface and an intuitive input modality, VMA allows users without any
specific skill in Social Network Analysis or informatics to track social
network relations in small meetings and extract indices either during or after
the meeting. The application is divided into four modules: meeting creation,
configuration, recording and temporal analysis. This paper describes VMA and
the results of a test carried out to evaluate its ease of use. Keywords: Virtual Meeting Analyzer, Graph Theory, Social Network Analysis,
Visualization | |||
| Creating Cool Technologies | | BIBA | PDF | 60-61 | |
| Janet C. Read; Matthew Horton; Daniel Fitton; Gavin Sim; Linda Little | |||
| In collating together the papers for this special edition on cool, the underlying question is one of motivation. How does, and in what ways does an understanding cool contribute to the research agendas of psychologists and technologists? Why should interaction designers worry about, or even think about, cool? To what extent does cool matter to designers of interactive products. Is it just a cool thing to be doing or is there something deeper and more meaningful hidden below its glossy surface? | |||
| Who actually wants to use 'the killer app'? Perceptions of Location Based Services in the Young and Old | | BIBAK | PDF | 63-71 | |
| Lisa Thomas | |||
| This paper describes the results of two qualitative case studies that
assessed the perceptions of Location Based Services (LBS) with two UK user
groups: a family with a behaviour-disordered teenager, and a group of older
adults. The family (n=2) and older adults (n=13) were interviewed individually
after experiencing LBS. The data from the interviews were thematically analysed
with the aid of Nvivo software, and organised into themes to better understand
attitudes towards LBS technology. Whilst both groups had the opportunity to
use, adapt to and experience LBS, perceptions of 'cool' and 'trendiness'
affected judgments of it, and their subsequent usage intentions. The family
adopted the LBS system fully, with the device aiding navigation, and ultimately
developing trust. Their teenage son also embraced the technology, aided in part
by the unobtrusive and 'trendy' nature of the mobile phone the LBS was deployed
on. In contrast, the older adults felt that LBS could not assist them in any
way, and were concerned about the potential for invasions of privacy. This work
highlights clear generational differences in the acceptance of LBS, and
suggests consideration is needed for the future design of LBS to ensure
suitability for the user. Keywords: Location Based Services; Technology use; Design; Cool | |||
| Too Cool at School -- Understanding Cool Teenagers | | BIBAK | PDF | 73-91 | |
| Matthew Horton; Janet C. Read; Daniel Fitton; Nicola Toth; Linda Little | |||
| Cool can be thought about on three levels; the having of cool things, the
doing of cool stuff and the being of cool. Whilst there is some understanding
of cool products, the concept, of being cool is much more elusive to designers
and developers of systems. This study examines this space by using a set of
pre-prepared teenage personas as probes with a set of teenagers with the aim of
better understanding what is, and isn't cool about teenage behaviours. The
study confirmed that teenagers are able to rank personas in order of cool and
that the process of using personas can provide valuable insights around the
phenomenon of cool. The findings confirm that cool is indeed about having cool
things but in terms of behaviours cool can be a little bit, but not too,
naughty. Keywords: Design, Cool, Personas, Teenagers | |||
| Understanding Cool: An Analytic Exploration of Contributing Factors for Teens | | BIBAK | PDF | 93-102 | |
| D. Scott McCrickard; Jeremy Barksdale; Felicia Doswell | |||
| This paper explores the way that young people view the notion of cool, and
how designers can leverage that notion in their design activities. To
complement the many user studies about cool, this paper presents an analytic
evaluation of categories of cool, leveraging information from multiple expert
review sessions with a total of 38 participants. All of the participants, who
were in their late teens or twenties, were asked to reflect on aspects of cool
for young teens and tweens. The participants took part in our analysis because
of their knowledge of technology and their understanding of people in our
target teen demographic. Results of a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of
data from the sessions suggest that innovation is a driving factor attributed
to coolness for our target population, older males view monetary wealth and
authenticity as important for coolness among our target population, and younger
males view rebellious and anti-social technology as not cool for our target
population. These findings suggest the need for different user models focused
on demographics to capture the aspects of cool that are important in technology
design. Keywords: critical parameters, analytic evaluation, expert review, qualitative
comparative analysis (QCA), cool | |||
| Measuring the existence of cool using an extended Social Relations Model | | BIBAK | PDF | 103-115 | |
| J. P. Gerber; Carly Geiman | |||
| This paper presents a simple method to measure people's perceptions of the
coolness of other people in localized social networks. Folk concepts of cool
suggest that cool is real and yet elusive. Approaches to measuring cool that
are indebted to traditional personality theory are shown to be insufficient
because cool is a constantly changing construct. Instead, the tension between
the real and elusive sides of cool may be best characterized as a distributed
property of a network. This is measured with an extension of the social
relations model in order to give an estimate of the actual stability of cool,
instead of just vague folk concepts. 47 undergraduates completed a round-robin
rating of the personal and group level coolness of others. Preliminary results
suggest that about a third of ratings in cool are due to the actual coolness of
the targets, showing both the reality and elusiveness of cool itself. Keywords: Cool, interpersonal perception, social relations model, distributed networks | |||
| Situated Techno-Cools: factors that contribute to making technology cool in a given context of use | | BIBAK | PDF | 117-139 | |
| Alma Leora Culén; Andrea Alessandro Gasparini | |||
| The concept "cool", as it applies to technological products, is discussed in
this paper. We offer a model showing how different factors in situated use of
techno-cools affect the perception of coolness. The model is discussed using a
case of the iPad in educational use. The case is grounded in our experience
from four case studies related to introduction of the iPad as a cool
educational tool in two elementary schools, a high school, and a university.
The space between iPad's coolness as a device and factors influencing that
coolness in education, such as mastery, usefulness, added value,
self-presentation and identity, novelty and fun, was studied. The age of
participants was a determining factor for what subset of these was making the
iPads cool at school. Tween students considered self-presentation, fun and
novelty as the most important factors. For older students the important ones
were usefulness, added value and mastery. Keywords: Cool, situated cool, techno-cool model, iPad | |||
| Constructing the Cool Wall: A Tool to Explore Teen Meanings of Cool | | BIBAK | PDF | 141-162 | |
| Dan Fitton; Janet C. Read; Matthew Horton; Linda Little; Nicola Toth; Yukang Guo | |||
| This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to
assist in investigating 'cool' as it applies to the design of interactive
products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical
understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven
core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy
includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of
cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one
specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool
things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using
a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of three
studies. The first study was carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The
results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a
refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then
used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the
second study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything
they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the
current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the third study
teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool
Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected
and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable
insights. Keywords: Teenagers, cool, interaction design | |||
| Online violence: Not beautiful enough... not thin enough. Anorectic testimonials in the web | | BIBAK | PDF | 169-186 | |
| Teresa Sofia Castro; Antonio Osorio | |||
| Pro-anorexia is a social and harmful movement on the Web. These Websites are
popular among youth who wish to be thinner, because they represent neutral and
free judgemental spaces, where one can find support, express their feelings and
thoughts around the disturbing anorexic lifestyle. Considering this, during the
literature review concerning risky and easily available contents on the
Internet, the need arose for an in depth study of proanorexia websites, once
they appeal to extremely dangerous behaviours and beauty standards that can
endanger children's well-being. This qualitative exploratory content analysis
examined Portuguese speaking blogs written by adolescents (boys and girls)
between 13 and 19 years old, who use the Web in order to meet like-minded
peers, with whom they share diets, tips, tricks, thinspiration material, and
dangerous and harmful information about fasting, drugs, self-harm or suicide.
The proanorexia Weblogs work as a stimulus for starvation and weight loss among
youth who share pro-anorexic goals. Although data cannot be generalized,
evidence suggests that these blogs can have undesired and negative effects in
young children because they contribute to: i) the increasing of risky contents
on the Web; ii) the encouragement of disruptive eating behaviours; iii) the
maintenance of a already existing eating disordered behaviour; iv) children's
alienation from offline social ties; v) the growth of these communities among
young children. With this article we aim to raise awareness about this problem
and its impact among children. Nevertheless, further research is needed and
should extend to more Portuguese children and male bloggers. Keywords: pro-anorexia, anorexia, eating disorders, thinspiration, children,
teenagers, Internet, blog, family | |||
| The case of Digital Writing in Instant Messaging: When cyber written productions are closer to the oral code than the written code | | BIBAK | PDF | 187-214 | |
| Tonia Lanchantin; Aurélie Simoës-Perlant; Pierre Largy | |||
| The use of New Information and Communication Technologies, or NICTs, has
deeply changed the traditional reading and writing practices. It thus seems
necessary to provide a definition of Digital Writing in Instant Messaging
(DWIM) to better understand its grammatical, lexical and syntactic
characteristics (these two last components define the traditional
characteristics of both oral and written codes). Thirty-two French-speaking
students around the age of 13 who were enrolled in 8th grade produced one hour
of DWIM productions on an instant messaging website in groups of two. They were
able to use as many cyber languages as they wanted (we preferred the expression
digital writing). This corpus helped to understand that this written structure
is closer to the oral code than the written code (the studied population
developed their language skills in constant contact with the written in its
dual form). Indeed, we showed for instance that users of DWIM sometimes
produced repetitions (whereas it is forbidden in traditional writing), never
use subject-verb inversions in interrogative sentences, can replace punctuation
with emoticons, or used undefined deixises in their sentences. We have also
been able to show that having traditional reading and writing habits is not
sufficient to create a predisposition towards the use of the DWIM code. Keywords: Language, Written Production, Digital Writing, Instant Messaging,
Adolescents, New Information and Communication Technologies, Oral and Written
Codes Note: Paper selected in collaboration with InPact conference | |||
| Killing Non-Human Animals in Video Games: A Study on User Experience and Desensitization to Violence Aspects | | BIBAK | PDF | 215-243 | |
| Luca Chittaro; Riccardo Sioni | |||
| Violent video games are often associated to negative effects such as
desensitization to violence. However, while aggression can concern any living
being, experiments in the literature have especially focused on games that
require the player to aggress human (or anthropomorphic) beings. To extend the
investigation of violent video games, this paper considers a video game genre
(Whac-a-Mole) in which the victims of aggression belong to non-human animal
species. The study investigates User Experience aspects (in terms of players'
affect) as well as desensitization to violence aspects of a Whac-a-Mole game
and a non-violent version of the same game, using Affect Grids and
physiological measures (Facial EMG, SCL, HR, and BVPA). To obtain a high level
of control on confounding factors, the modified game for the non-violent
condition of the study replaces only the violent content of the original game
with non-violent content, leaving all other game features constant. Well-known
findings about desensitization to violence in violent video games were not
found in this study, and player's affect results also suggest that the violent
element of the Whac-a-Mole game cannot be straightforwardly replaced by a
non-violent one without possibly weakening the User Experience. The paper
discusses possible reasons for the obtained results and suggests additional
research steps to better clarify the role that the virtual victims' species
might play as a factor in violent video games studies. Keywords: Violent video games, User Experience, Physiological measures,
Desensitization to violence, Whac-a-Mole games | |||