Designing a licence plate for memorability

Good memorability of licence plates is important in those cases where licence plates are viewed for a brief period of time and the information is essential for police investigations. The purpose of the current study was to design a new Dutch licence plate that could be remembered well. A memory experiment was conducted, in which 16 different character arrangements were presented for both 450 and 550 ms to 48 participants with ages varying between 20 and 57 years. Participants had to rehearse the stimuli for 6 s, after which they had to be written down. Based on literature on short-term memory for serial order, character arrangements differed on three dimensions: 1) number of alternations between letters and digits; 2) letter to digit ratio; and 3) equality of group size. Results showed that number of alternations between characters of different categories affected memory performance the most. Letter to digit ratio and equality of group size affected memory performance to a lesser, but still significant, extent. A significant interaction between the latter two factors indicates that equal groups only lead to fewer memory errors when more than three letters are used. With three or fewer letters, group size is not a significant factor any more. Based on these results, a new licence plate for Dutch vehicles was recommended, which was subsequently adopted.     

Cross‐talk acceptability in natural still images for different (auto)stereoscopic display technologies

Abstract— One of the most annoying distortions in (auto)stereoscopic displays is probably cross‐talk, visible as double edges, which is mainly caused by an imperfect separation of left‐ and right‐eye images. For different types of three‐dimensional (3‐D) displays, cross‐talk is caused by different origins, which could result in different levels of perceived image distortion. To evaluate the influence of (auto)stereoscopic display technology on cross‐talk perception, optical measurements and subjective assessments were performed with three different types of 3‐D displays. It is shown with natural still images that the 3‐D display technology with the lowest luminance and contrast level tolerates the highest level of cross‐talk, while still maintaining an acceptable image‐quality level.     

Task dynamics in self-organising task groups: expertise, motivational, and performance differences of specialists and generalists

Multi-agent simulation is applied to explore how different types of task variety cause workgroups to change their task allocation accordingly. We studied two groups, generalists and specialists. We hypothesised that the performance of the specialists would decrease when task variety increases. The generalists, on the other hand, would perform better in a high task variety condition. The results show that these hypotheses were only partly supported because both learning and motivational effects changed the task allocation process in a much more complex way. We conclude that although no task variety leads to specialisation and high task variety leads to generalisation, in general, performance is better when task variety is low. Further, in case of no task variety, specialists outperform generalists. In case of moderate variety the opposite is true. With high task variety, since there is no space for any expertise and motivational development, the behaviour of specialists and generalists becomes more similar, and, consequently also their performance.     

Move to get moved: a search for methods,tools and knowledge to design for expressive and rich movement-based interaction

The world is inherently meaningful for us, i.e. we perceive the world in terms of what we can do with it, and by physically interacting with it we access this meaning and express the meaning. We believe that this is the core reason and foundation for turning to movement-based interaction. ‘Interaction creates meaning’ does not only hold for users during interaction but also for designers when generating ideas and developing concepts. Therefore, we postulate that if one truly likes to design for movement-based interaction, one has to be or become an expert in movement, not just theoretically, by imagination or on paper, but by doing and experiencing while designing. In order to do so, we believe that designers need design tools, techniques, knowledge, awareness and skills that support their search for expressive, rich behaviour. Our search for this support resulted in several methods, tools and knowledge that help designers exploring, visualising and reflecting on interactions. Our developed methods and tools such as the Design Movement approach with its choreography of interaction, gestural design tools, interactive installations and interactive tangible sketching, have not only supported and inspired designers to design for movement-based interaction, but also resulted in surprising, fresh designs in comparison with the limited scope of rather uniform and traditional electronic consumer products. This paper discusses the possibilities and limitations of our approach.     

The Common Operational Picture as Collective Sensemaking

The common operational picture is used to overcome coordination and information management problems during emergency response. Increasingly, this approach is incorporated in more advanced information systems. This is rooted in an ‘information warehouse’ perspective, which implies information can be collected, sorted and exchanged in an accessible and univocal form. In practice, however, professionals interpret similar information differently. Therefore, we focus on how emergency responders develop collective sensemaking from information. We employ a ‘trading zone’ perspective, in which information is negotiated, to study information management in an ethnographic study of disaster exercises in the Netherlands. Our analysis shows how professionals attribute different meanings to information that distorts the coordination process. We end by stressing the importance of actionable knowledge and reflexivity.     

Positioning of goods in a cross-docking environment

Cross docking is one of the options to reduce lead times and inventories and to improve customer response time in supply chains. Cross-docking centres are dynamic environments where products arrive, are regrouped, and leave the same day. In this paper we focus on the process of short-term storage of unit-loads in a cross-docking environment. The goal is to determine temporary storage locations for incoming unit loads such that the travel distances of the forklift trucks with these unit loads are minimised. We model this problem as a novel application of the minimum cost flow problem and show the applicability of the model for different types of layouts and priorities. We demonstrate both the efficiency and effectiveness of the method in the operational and design phase at cross-docking environments by applying it to practice-oriented examples. Furthermore, we show that the approach is superior to a commonly used heuristic method.     

Disintegration of images moving at high velocities

This article investigates the effect of spatial disintegration in moving images at high object velocities: when the visual system interprets the same object in consecutive fields as different entities. For a 50-Hz display this effect is found to roughly occur in the velocity range of 20–45 degrees/s, and to depend marginally on the resolution level of the objects involved. A more important influence is that of the trajectory length of the object: the maximum velocity at which no disintegration occurs is found to depend on it in a linear fashion. A simple model is presented that describes the visual appearance of the disintegration effect as well as explains the data quantitatively. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness.

On the basis of fairness heuristic theory, it is argued in this article that people especially need fairness when they are reminded about aspects of their lives that make them uncertain. It is therefore proposed that thinking about uncertainty should make fairness a more important issue to people. The findings of 3 experiments support this line of reasoning: Asking (vs. not asking) participants 2 questions that solicited their thoughts and feelings of being uncertain led to stronger effects of perceived procedural fairness on participants' affective reactions toward the way they were treated. It is argued that these findings suggest that fairness matters to people especially when they are trying to deal with things that make them uncertain. An implication of the current findings therefore may be that fairness is important to people because it gives them an opportunity to manage uncertain aspects of their lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)