Motor Variability in Complex Gesture Learning: Effects of Movement Sonification and Musical Background

With the increasing interest in movement sonification and expressive gesture-based interaction, it is important to understand which factors contribute to movement learning and how. We explore the effects of movement sonification and users’ musical background on motor variability in complex gesture learning. We contribute an empirical study in which musicians and non-musicians learn two gesture sequences over three days, with and without movement sonification. Results show the interlaced interaction effects of these factors and how they unfold in the three-day learning process. For gesture 1, which is fast and dynamic with a direct “action-sound” sonification, movement sonification induces higher variability for both musicians and non-musicians on day 1. While musicians reduce this variability to a similar level as no auditory feedback condition on day 2 and day 3, non-musicians remain to have significantly higher variability. Across three days, musicians also have significantly lower variability than non-musicians. For gesture 2, which is slow and smooth with an “action-music” metaphor, there are virtually no effects. Based on these findings, we recommend future studies to take into account participants’ musical background, consider longitudinal study to examine these effects on complex gestures, and use awareness when interpreting the results given a specific design of gesture and sound.

Gamification Design Principles and Mechanics to Improve Retention

The design and guidelines for gamification offer designers a range of solutions to provide empowerment and engagement to assist with retention within education. This chapter addresses a knowledge gap around the effective use while improving retention. With gaming mechanics as a driving point, specific design considerations were explored: badges, leader boards, points and levels, and challenges. The educator must think from the learner's perspective and find new ways of creating challenges and motivation techniques to provide value. Gamification, when applied to different disciplines, has the potential to facilitate the individual within learner-centricity. Current research indicates that gaming mechanics can encourage and motivate the learner while enriching their experience when applied to education.

“Zhong De Ban” (German–Chinese class): training in psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy at the Shanghai Mental Health Center

German psychoanalysts have played a special role in the spread of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in China. This article describes the history of the training programme anchored at the Shanghai Mental Health Center, its specific design, the cooperation with Chinese colleagues, and the importance of self-experience in groups. It reflects on the sociocultural background of the involvement of German psychoanalysts and the promotion of the project by German institutions. Conscious and unconscious aspects of group dynamics on both the German and Chinese sides are presented and discussed.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Augmented Reality Game Promoting Environmental Action

While public awareness of climate change has grown over the years, many people still have misconceptions regarding effective individual environmental action. In this paper, we present a serious game called PEAR, developed using elements of geolocation and augmented reality (AR), aimed at increasing players’ awareness of climate change issues and propensity for effective sustainable behaviours. We conducted a study with participants who played the game, gauging their knowledge of and attitudes towards climate change issues before and after playing the game. Our results show that the game significantly improved participants’ knowledge on sustainability and climate-change-related issues, and that it also significantly improved their attitudes towards these topics, thus proving that serious games have the potential to impart knowledge and promote sustainable behaviours. Additionally, our results address the lack of empirical studies on the knowledge base of serious sustainability games by introducing methods of quantitatively analysing the effects of serious sustainability games while additionally providing more knowledge about the effectiveness of the specific design elements of our game.

ANCHOR WINDLASSES: A DESIGN PROPOSAL TO STANDARDISE REGULATIONS

Shipbuilding is an increasingly competitive field. As the key players in this activity, shipyard managers have to make their counterparts in related industries aware of two conflicting needs. On the one hand, they must produce high quality components that are technologically advanced. On the other, they need equipment that lets them build vessels at a reasonable price. With this second aim in mind, it would be useful to standardise both design and manufacturing processes. At the same time, ship owners always impose regulations. The manufacturers of deck equipment must therefore adapt their product designs to comply with these regulations, some of which have aspects in common. However, guidelines also differ on many points. This makes it difficult to reach desirable levels of standardisation in equipment design. The situation can be summed up in a phrase: for each vessel, a specific design. This article will first provide a comparative overview of current legislation. A proposal for anchor windlass design is then presented in an attempt to make the various regulations more cohesive. The objective here is to reach an acceptable degree of standardisation and, consequently, lower costs by applying economies of scale.

Creative Design Approaches in Digital Mental Health Interventions: Exploratory Mapping Review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Digital mental health interventions show great potential to alleviate mental illness and increase access to care. However, these technologies face significant problems in terms of adoption. While it is suggested that this issue stems from a lack of user perspective in the development process, several creative design approaches have been developed over the years to consider this important aspect. Still, there have been few examples of creative design approaches and end users' involvement in the development of digital solutions in the field of mental health. OBJECTIVE The main objective of this literature review was to understand how design is considered in e-mental health intervention research. METHODS An exploratory mapping review was conducted among journals with an explicit scope covering mental health and technology. The creative design approaches reported and the core elements of a design activity (i.e., the object, the context, the design process and the actors involved) were examined among the eligible studies. RESULTS 30 studies met the inclusion criteria. 22 studies mentioned using creative design approaches or specific design methods in the development of an e-mental health solution. Approaches reported could be classified as participatory design (n=11), codesign (n=6), user-centered-design (n=5) or specific design methods (n=5). Just about half of the approaches mentioned (n=15/27) were supported by references. It was not possible to associate any creative design approaches with the description made of the main core elements (i.e., process, actors). End users were involved to some extent in all studies. For their part, designers were only involved in 8 studies, which was less than software development teams (n=14). That said, unlike the latter, their presence was noticed throughout the design process. CONCLUSIONS Results show that there are attempts to integrate creative design approaches into the development of e-mental health solutions. However, they rely very little on designers nor design research. Researchers and technology developers should know the underpinnings of creative design methods when choosing an approach over another. They should also consider involving designers to fully implement those methods and approaches.

A Wire-Line Secure Communication System Based on CCFD Self-Interference Cancellation

This paper presents a design scheme of wire-line telephone system using self-interference (SI) cancellation technology in co-frequency co-time full-duplex (CCFD) system to realize absolute secure communication at the physical layer. This scheme can hide the target signal by skillfully releasing the high-power artificial noise to the whole link at the receiving node, and then make use of the receiver’s knowledge of the SI signal to achieve high dB SI cancellation with the help of analog domain SI cancellation technology in CCFD domain, so that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) received by the eavesdropper at any position of the link is far lower than that of the legitimate receiver, so as to realize the absolutely secure communication in the sense of Wyner principle. This paper not only puts forward the specific design scheme of absolutely secure communication telephone, but also analyzes the calculation of security capacity under different eavesdropping positions, different SI cancellation capability and different system parameters according to Shannon theory.

Developing a morphomics framework to optimize implant site-specific design parameters for islet macroencapsulation devices

Delivering a clinically impactful cell number is a major design challenge for cell macroencapsulation devices for Type 1 diabetes. It is important to understand the transplant site anatomy to design a device that is practical and that can achieve a sufficient cell dose. We identify the posterior rectus sheath plane as a potential implant site as it is easily accessible, can facilitate longitudinal monitoring of transplants, and can provide nutritive support for cell survival. We have investigated this space using morphomics across a representative patient cohort (642 participants) and have analysed the data in terms of gender, age and BMI. We used a shape optimization process to maximize the volume and identified that elliptical devices achieve a clinically impactful cell dose while meeting device manufacture and delivery requirements. This morphomics framework has the potential to significantly influence the design of future macroencapsulation devices to better suit the needs of patients.

Effectiveness of different requirements checklists for novice designers

Working under constrained conditions can boost or kill creativity, depending on the nature of the constraints (organizational, personal or task-related). However, a design process without clearly identified constraints, which set the project objectives, could lead to inefficiencies and unfruitful iterations. Some of the most acknowledged procedures to support requirement definition are focused on the use of specific checklists. However, notwithstanding the importance of the task, little attention was dedicated to the verification of the effectiveness of these tools. In such a context, the paper presents an investigation aimed at assessing the performance of three checklists that exploit different strategies to elicit requirements. To that purpose, a sample of fifty engineering students was asked to use the checklists to define the requirements for a specific design case. The outcomes of the experiment were assessed according to well-acknowledged effectiveness metrics, i.e. quantity, operationality, validity, non-redundancy, and completeness. The result of the assessment highlights that checklists based on more general questions or abstract stimuli can better support novice designers in making explicit internally felt design constraints that can potentially lead to more innovative design.