Representation of Socio-historical Context to Support the Authoring and Presentation of Multimodal Narratives: The Mingei Online Platform

In this article, the Mingei Online Platform is presented as an authoring platform for the representation of social and historic context encompassing a focal topic of interest. The proposed representation is employed in the contextualised presentation of a given topic, through documented narratives that support its presentation to diverse audiences. Using the obtained representation, the documentation and digital preservation of social and historical dimensions of Cultural Heritage are demonstrated. The implementation follows the Human-Centred Design approach and has been conducted under an iterative design and evaluation approach involving both usability and domain experts.

An Iterative Design Method from Products to Product Service Systems—Combining Acceptability and Sustainability for Manufacturing SMEs

Manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in the economic development and resource consumption of most regions. Conceptually, a product-service system (PSS) can be an effective way to improve the sustainability of manufacturing SMEs. However, the construction of PSSs requires enterprises to integrate a large number of product and service resources. Moreover, current PSS design methods mostly construct a new set of highly service-oriented PSS solutions based on customer needs while seldom considering the combination of acceptability and sustainability for manufacturing SMEs at the initial stage of design, which may lead to the difficulties in applying PSS solutions beyond enterprise integration capacity or result in the waste of existing product resources. Instead of constructing a new PSS solution, this paper proposes the treatment of existing product modules as the original system. The PSS solution is iteratively constructed with the upgrade of the original system in a gradual way, which is driven by systematic performance (this process can be suspended and repeated). Phased iterative design solutions can be applied by manufacturing SMEs according to their development needs. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Lean Design-for-X (LDfX), design structure matrix (DSM), and Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) are combined in an iterative design process from customer needs and system performances to PSS solutions. The feasibility of the proposed method is verified through the iterative design case from electric pallet trucks to warehousing systems. It is proved that this method is more sustainable and easier to be accepted by manufacturing SMEs than existing PSS design methods through in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs.

A Multidisciplinary Survey and Framework for Design and Evaluation of Explainable AI Systems

The need for interpretable and accountable intelligent systems grows along with the prevalence of artificial intelligence ( AI ) applications used in everyday life. Explainable AI ( XAI ) systems are intended to self-explain the reasoning behind system decisions and predictions. Researchers from different disciplines work together to define, design, and evaluate explainable systems. However, scholars from different disciplines focus on different objectives and fairly independent topics of XAI research, which poses challenges for identifying appropriate design and evaluation methodology and consolidating knowledge across efforts. To this end, this article presents a survey and framework intended to share knowledge and experiences of XAI design and evaluation methods across multiple disciplines. Aiming to support diverse design goals and evaluation methods in XAI research, after a thorough review of XAI related papers in the fields of machine learning, visualization, and human-computer interaction, we present a categorization of XAI design goals and evaluation methods. Our categorization presents the mapping between design goals for different XAI user groups and their evaluation methods. From our findings, we develop a framework with step-by-step design guidelines paired with evaluation methods to close the iterative design and evaluation cycles in multidisciplinary XAI teams. Further, we provide summarized ready-to-use tables of evaluation methods and recommendations for different goals in XAI research.

CGRA-EAM—Rapid Energy and Area Estimation for Coarse-grained Reconfigurable Architectures

Reconfigurable architectures are quickly gaining in popularity due to their flexibility and ability to provide high energy efficiency. However, reconfigurable systems allow for a huge design space. Iterative design space exploration (DSE) is often required to achieve good Pareto points with respect to some combination of performance, area, and/or energy. DSE tools depend on information about hardware characteristics in these aspects. These characteristics can be obtained from hardware synthesis and net-list simulation, but this is very time-consuming. Therefore, architecture models are common. This work introduces CGRA-EAM (Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture - Energy & Area Model), a model for energy and area estimation framework for coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures. The model is evaluated for the Blocks CGRA. The results demonstrate that the mean absolute percentage error is 15.5% and 2.1% for energy and area, respectively, while the model achieves a speedup of close to three orders of magnitude compared to synthesis.

SkinKit

The emergence of on-skin interfaces has created an opportunity for seamless, always-available on-body interactions. However, developing a new fabrication process for on-skin interfaces can be time-consuming, challenging to incorporate new features, and not available for quick form-factor preview through prototyping. We introduce SkinKit, the first construction toolkit for on-skin interfaces, which enables fast, low-fidelity prototyping with a slim form factor directly applicable to the skin. SkinKit comprises modules consisting of skin-conformable base substrates and reusable Flexible Printed Circuits Board (FPCB) blocks. They are easy to attach and remove under tangible plug-and-play construction but still offer robust conductive connections in a slim form. Further, SkinKit aims to lower the barrier to entry in building on-skin interfaces without demanding technical expertise. It leverages a variety of preprogrammed modules connected in unique sequences to achieve various function customizations. We describe our iterative design and development process of SkinKit, comparing materials, connection mechanisms, and modules reflecting on its capability. We report results from single- and multi- session workshops with 34 maker participants spanning STEM and design backgrounds. Our findings reveal how diverse maker populations engage in on-skin interface design, what types of applications they choose to build, and what challenges they faced.

Designing an API-Based Protocol for the Interoperability of Textual Resources

Designing a protocol for the interoperability of digital textual resources—or, more simply, a “IIIF for texts”—remains a challenge, as such a protocol must cater to their vastly heterogenous formats, structures, languages, text encodings and metadata. There have been many attempts to propose a standard for textual resource interoperability, from the ubiquitous Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) format to more recent proposals like the Distributed Text Services (DTS) protocol. In this paper, we introduce our proposal called SHINE, which prioritizes instead the ease for software developers to represent and exchange textual resources and their associated metadata. We do so by combining a hierarchical model of textual structure with a flexible metadata scheme in SHINE, and we continue to define and develop it based on user-centered and iterative design principles. Therefore, we argue that SHINE is a protocol for textual interoperability that successfully balances flexibility of resource representation, consistency across resource representation, and overall simplicity of implementation.RésuméConcevoir un protocole pour l’interopérabilité des ressources textuelles numériques – c’est-à-dire, un IIIF pour des textes – demeure un défi, puisqu’un tel protocole doit correspondre à leurs formats considérablement hétérogènes, ainsi qu’à leurs structures, langues, encodages textuels et métadonnées. Il existe déjà plusieurs tentatives de proposer des standards pour l’interopérabilité des ressources textuelles, tel que l’ubiquiste Text Encoding Initiative (TEI – Initiative d’encodage textuel) ou des propositions plus récentes comme le protocole de Distributed Text Services (DTS – Services de texte distribuées). Dans cet article, nous présenterons une proposition que nous appelons SHINE, qui priorise la facilité de la représentation et de l’échange des ressources textuelles et des métadonnées associées pour les développeurs de logiciel. Nous le ferons en combinant un modèle de structure textuelle hiérarchique avec un schéma de métadonnées flexible dans SHINE et nous le définirons et le développerons selon des principes axés sur l’utilisateur et selon des principes de conceptions itératifs. Par conséquent, nous avançons que SHINE est un protocole pour l’interopérabilité textuelle qui équilibre systématiquement la flexibilité de la représentation de ressources, ainsi que la simplicité globale de l’implémentation, pour toute représentation de ressources.Mots-clés: format d’échange; modélisation de documents; métadonnées; infrastructure numériques; interopérabilité

Rigid–Soft Interactive Design of a Lobster-Inspired Finger Surface for Enhanced Grasping Underwater

Bio-inspirations from soft-bodied animals provide a rich design source for soft robots, yet limited literature explored the potential enhancement from rigid-bodied ones. This paper draws inspiration from the tooth profiles of the rigid claws of the Boston Lobster, aiming at an enhanced soft finger surface for underwater grasping using an iterative design process. The lobsters distinguish themselves from other marine animals with a pair of claws capable of dexterous object manipulation both on land and underwater. We proposed a 3-stage design iteration process that involves raw imitation, design parametric exploration, and bionic parametric exploitation on the original tooth profiles on the claws of the Boston Lobster. Eventually, 7 finger surface designs were generated and fabricated with soft silicone. We validated each design stage through many vision-based robotic grasping attempts against selected objects from the Evolved Grasping Analysis Dataset (EGAD). Over 14,000 grasp attempts were accumulated on land (71.4%) and underwater (28.6%), where we selected the optimal design through an on-land experiment and further tested its capability underwater. As a result, we observed an 18.2% improvement in grasping success rate at most from a resultant bionic finger surface design, compared with those without the surface, and a 10.4% improvement at most compared with the validation design from the previous literature. Results from this paper are relevant and consistent with the bioresearch earlier in 1911, showing the value of bionics. The results indicate the capability and competence of the optimal bionic finger surface design in an amphibious environment, which can contribute to future research in enhanced underwater grasping using soft robots.

Factors Affecting Conversation Design for Digital Political Personae

<p>Digital political personae are common on social media, representing a potential avenue to inform and engage citizens in political conversation. While personae that function as a digital extension of politicians and commentators are clearly identifiable, large numbers of automated personae of limited sophistication also engage in political exchanges in online spaces. Despite their prevalence, little prior work has addressed conversation design approaches to maximise the effectiveness of digital political personae in their interactions with users. A review of the literature highlighted a range of approaches for effective use of digital tools in political contexts, including strategies for conveying information, sustaining engagement and employing and responding to emotive language on polarising topics. Examination of interactions with existing political personae on social media revealed that many of these approaches were limited or absent from the current conversational paradigm. Chatbot software was used to explore methods that would address the issues identified with existing digital political personae through an iterative design process. A layered interaction scenario was developed that supports branching political conversation on a central topic, with a base of secondary topics to enhance the utility of the persona. The conversation design developed incorporates lessons from the literature on use of effective digital tools for political conversation, and has the potential to engage and inform large numbers of participants, as well as gather information from them for analysis.</p>

Future Work: Exploring the Future of Work Spaces in the Context of Wellington

<p>This research analyses the forces that have led to the design of contemporary offices, examining how these forces are likely to change; with the goal of exploring what the future of workspaces might be. Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence are changing the world of work at a rapid rate, threatening to greatly increase effects of automation. Social changes in the way people work are also taking place, seen in the recent explosion in coworking. This gives rise to the question of what the implications of this are on the design of workspaces. This research uses the local context of Wellington as a vehicle to explore what the future of workspaces could be for the city, as well as wider New Zealand. A process of design led research is utilised, as the topic of work in general is vast, encompassing many different areas. This research also reviews how other designers and architects are responding to current workplace design issues, utilising these different approaches in the iterative design phase. The implications of this research relate directly to the city of Wellington, giving an idea of what the future of the office could be. The broad nature of the initial investigation also allows some conclusions to be applied internationally, as work in general is greatly examined.</p>