Pop Up Play: a digital creative play space

This article discusses the research findings from a year-long investigation funded by a Digital R&D for the Arts grant. The overarching aims of this research project were to understand how arts and cultural organisations can access mixed-reality environments and digital technology for creative play and learning, and how they can enable children and young people to access meaningful digital realm engagement. The article starts by introducing the underlying philosophical and cognitive framework built from embodiment philosophy, gaming theory and digital pedagogy that helped the research team determine what was meant by meaningful engagement in mixed reality. This is woven into an analysis of the four action-research case studies, followed by a discussion on the potential future areas for investigation. The conclusion evaluates how the resultant Pop Up Play product (free software download, supporting materials and bespoke digital creative play framework http://thesparkarts.co.uk/popupplay/) can be considered an environment for communications skill development, innovative thinking and immersive exploration through experiential play.     

Water,image, gesture and sound: composing and performing an interactive audiovisual work

Performing and composing for interactive audiovisual system presents many challenges to the performer. Working with visual, sonic and gestural components requires new skills and new ways of thinking about performance. However, there are few studies that focus on performer experience with interactive systems. We present the work Blue Space for oboe and interactive audiovisual system, highlighting the evolving process of the collaborative development of the work. We consider how musical and technical demands interact in this process, and outline the challenges of performing with interactive systems. Using the development of Blue Space as a self-reflective case study, we examine the role of gestures in interactive audiovisual works and identify new modes of performance.     

A SAS(®) macro implementation of a multiple comparison post hoc test for a Kruskal-Wallis analysis

The Kruskal-Wallis (KW) nonparametric analysis of variance is often used instead of a standard one-way ANOVA when data are from a suspected non-normal population. The KW omnibus procedure tests for some differences between groups, but provides no specific post hoc pair wise comparisons. This paper provides a SAS^® macro implementation of a multiple comparison test based on significant Kruskal-Wallis results from the SAS NPAR1WAY procedure. The implementation is designed for up to 20 groups at a user-specified alpha significance level. A Monte-Carlo simulation compared this nonparametric procedure to commonly used parametric multiple comparison tests.     

Developing a dynamic project learning and cross‐project learning capability: synthesizing two perspectives

Driven by the complexity of new products and services, project work has become increasingly common in all types of organizations. However, research on project learning suggests that often project teams do not meet their stated objectives and, moreover, there is limited organizational learning from the experiences of project work. We use the dynamic capabilities framework to argue that building a dynamic project learning capability is useful for organizations that make extensive use of projects. We use both survey and interview data to discuss the key ways in which such a dynamic capability can be built. Our survey data demonstrate the importance of documenting project learning, but our interview data show that teams are often remiss at documenting their learning. The results from the two different approaches are synthesized using Boland & Tenkasi’s notions of perspective‐making and perspective‐taking. Importantly, combining the results from the two sets of data suggests that organizations need to emphasize the benefits from project reviews and documentation and explore ways in which the documents produced can be made more useful as boundary objects to encourage the sharing of learning across projects.     

Shadow attacks on users’ anonymity in pervasive computing environments

Privacy preserving technologies are likely to become an essential component of adaptive services in pervasive and mobile computing. Although privacy issues have been studied for a long time in computer science as well as in other fields, most studies are focused on the release of data from large repositories. Mobile and pervasive computing pose new challenges, requiring specific formal models for attacks and new privacy preserving techniques. This paper considers a specific pervasive computing scenario, and shows that the application of state-of-the-art techniques for the anonymization of service requests is insufficient to protect the privacy of users. A specific class of attacks, called shadow attacks, is formally defined and a defense technique is proposed. This defense is formally proved to be correct, and its effectiveness is validated by extensive experiments in a simulated environment.     

Evidence for an elders' advantage in the naive product usability judgments of older and younger adults

OBJECTIVE: To determine whose naive judgments of consumer product usability are more accurate--those of younger or older adults. Accuracy is here defined as judgments compatible with results from performance-based usability tests. BACKGROUND: Older adults may be better able to predict usability problems than younger adults, making them particularly good participants in studies contributing to the user-centered design of products. This advantage, if present, may stem from older adults' motivation for more usable products or from their experience adapting their own environments to meet their changing physical, cognitive, and sensory needs. METHOD: Sixty older participants (ages 65-75 years) and 60 younger ones (ages 18-22 years) evaluated illustrations of consumer products on specific criteria (e.g., readability, learnability, or error rates). They either rated a single design for each product or ranked six alternative designs. They also explained their choices, indicated which features were most critical for usability, and selected usability-enhancing modifications. RESULTS: Although there was no reliable age difference in the amount of usability information provided in the open-ended explanations, older adults were more accurate at ranking alternative designs, selecting the most usability-critical features, and selecting usability-enhancing modifications (all ps < .05). CONCLUSION: The usability judgments of older adults are more accurate than those of younger adults when these judgments are solicited in a fixed-alternative, but not open-ended, format. APPLICATION: Because older adults are more discerning about potential product usability problems, they may be particularly valuable as research participants in early-stage design research (prior to the availability of working prototypes).     

Information technology use and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology Project

This research examined relationships between children’s information technology (IT) use and their creativity. Four types of information technology were considered: computer use, Internet use, videogame playing and cell phone use. A multidimensional measure of creativity was developed based on  and  test of creative thinking. Participants were 491 12-year olds; 53% were female, 34% were African American and 66% were Caucasian American. Results indicated that videogame playing predicted of all measures of creativity. Regardless of gender or race, greater videogame playing was associated with greater creativity. Type of videogame (e.g., violent, interpersonal) was unrelated to videogame effects on creativity. Gender but not race differences were obtained in the amount and type of videogame playing, but not in creativity. Implications of the findings for future research to test the causal relationship between videogame playing and creativity and to identify mediator and moderator variables are discussed.     

Estimation in X-bar control charts: effects and corrections

This paper presents an approach for improving the control limits of $ \overline{X} $ control charts when the parameters of the process are estimated and the control chart is in operation. In these conditions, the observed average run length (ARL) may be very different from the planned ARL since the parameter estimates may have a larger error. To minimize this problem, the data collected in effective control (phase 2) will be used to re-estimate the parameters with a precision greater than that obtained in phase 1. Thus, we defined a minimum sample size of observations of phase 2, which is constituted of a mixture of two normal distributions that should be used to re-estimate the process parameters. The proposal is illustrated with numerical example.