Navigation and interaction in a real-scale digital mock-up using natural language and user gesture

This paper tries to demonstrate a very new real-scale 3D system and sum up some firsthand and cutting edge results concerning multi-modal navigation and interaction interfaces. This work is part of the CALLISTO-SARI collaborative project. It aims at constructing an immersive room, developing a set of software tools and some navigation/interaction interfaces. Two sets of interfaces will be introduced here: 1) interaction devices, 2) natural language (speech processing) and user gesture. The survey on this system using subjective observation (Simulator Sickness Questionnaire, SSQ) and objective measurements (Center of Gravity, COG) shows that using natural languages and gesture-based interfaces induced less cyber-sickness comparing to device-based interfaces. Therefore, gesture-based is more efficient than device-based interfaces.FUI CALLISTO-SAR

U.S. public and private venture capital markets, 1998-2001: A fundamental information analysis

Systematic analysis of U.S. capital markets reveals important empirical facts that analytical modeling or empirical research seeking to explain the 1998-2001 movements needs to recognize. There is no single "bubble point" at which U.S. capital markets had an epiphany that valuations required a sharp downward re-evaluation. Rather, different sectors had different points after which ex post sustained declines occurred. For the NASDAQ/NYSE/AMEX public capital markets, the sustained ex post declines occurred starting in March 2000 for the computer software industry and in September 2000 for the computer hardware industry. Private venture capital investment in new ventures peaked in the March 2000 quarter for software and in the September 2000 quarter for hardware and communications. Four sectors exhibiting extreme price movements are identified - computer hardware, computer software, telecommunications, and biotech/pharmaceuticals. These sectors had observable characteristics prior to 1998 that implied higher risk - they had higher relative risk (CAPM beta), higher standard deviation of security returns, more extreme revenue growth increases (decreases) in the upper (lower) tails, and a higher propensity for negative net income. During the 1998-2001 period, companies in these sectors had abnormally high revenue growth rates. An Internet sample of companies exhibits even higher abnormal revenue growth rates relative to either prior periods or other companies in the 1998-2001 period. The large relative increases and decreases in the market capitalization of U.S. capital markets in 1998-2001 may well have more grounding in risk-reward asset pricing theory than many commentators have recognized.capital markets; stock prices; Internet stocks; stock market bubble;

Adoption and motivational factors for online grocery shopping in the UK

Following upon the results of previous qualitative research (Authors, 2005), the objective of this paper is to confirm the role of situational variables in the adoption process of online grocery shopping. Situational variables and life events in particular (e.g. having a baby, health problems) emerge as the trigger for starting online grocery shopping for two clusters. However, the adoption of e-grocery shopping seems to be re-evaluated frequently and consequently post-adoption evaluation appears crucial to the decision of whether to continue with or to drop internet grocery shopping

Online and store patronage : a typology of grocery shoppers

Purpose Grounded on approach/avoidance behaviour theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop a typology of grocery shoppers based on the concomitant perceived advantages and disadvantages of shopping online and in store for a single cohort of consumers who buy groceries in both channels. Design/methodology/approach A survey design was employed using a sample of 871 UK shoppers who had purchased groceries online and offline. The survey instrument contained items that measured the perceived advantages and disadvantages of grocery shopping online, and items relating to the perceived advantages and disadvantages of grocery shopping in traditional supermarkets. Items were selected from the extant literature and subjected to content and face validity checks. Cluster analysis was used to develop typologies of online and offline grocery shoppers. The inter-relation between the two typology sets was then examined. Findings The results of the research provide several insights into the characteristics, perceptions and channel patronage preferences of grocery shoppers. In particular, profiling e-grocery shoppers on the basis of their concomitant perceptions of shopping online and in store suggests that the choice of whether to shop online or in store may be driven not by the perceived advantages of one channel vs the other, but by the desire to avoid the greater disadvantages of the alternative. These perceptions differ somewhat between different consumer groups. Originality/value This study makes a noteworthy contribution to the internet and general shopping literature by providing a profile of grocery shoppers based on their concomitant and often conflicting perceived advantages and disadvantages of shopping online and their perceived advantages and disadvantages of shopping in traditional supermarkets. The use of a single cohort of consumers overcomes the bias in previous studies that employ separate cohorts of online and offline shoppers and reveal important insights into the complex perceptions and behaviours of multichannel grocery shoppers. </jats:sec

Finding Common Ground: Interdisciplinary Workshops for Interaction Design Education

Interaction Design is a fast-growing and still evolving field which blurs the boundaries between creative disciplines. Practitioners employ a broad range of approaches and techniques, often working in ad hoc multidisciplinary teams for a given project. In this paper we examine some of the approaches to Interaction Design practice and education, and discuss our experience of running a series of open, interdisciplinary workshops for students and practitioners in Croatia and Slovenia

The Power of 8: Encouraging Collaborative DIY Futures

"The Power of 8" was an experimental futures project, collaboratively driven by an ad hoc team of eight people from different walks of life. The aim was to explore new pathways for creating democratic futures by building a public discourse around the aspirations of ordinary people. The team of eight comprised a Designer/Speculator, an Educator, an Interaction Designer, a Permaculturist, a Policy Researcher, an Urbanist, a retired Civil Servant, and a Biomedical Scientist. Through a series of three intensive workshops, and later a wider public engagement phase, we adopted a narrative approach to building a collective view, representing possible futures of Brentford in London, England. This paper describes the strategies we used – including maps, montage and storytelling – to develop concepts, visualise proposals and materialise ‘future artefacts’ during the project

Bayesian modeling of recombination events in bacterial populations

Background: We consider the discovery of recombinant segments jointly with their origins within multilocus DNA sequences from bacteria representing heterogeneous populations of fairly closely related species. The currently available methods for recombination detection capable of probabilistic characterization of uncertainty have a limited applicability in practice as the number of strains in a data set increases. Results: We introduce a Bayesian spatial structural model representing the continuum of origins over sites within the observed sequences, including a probabilistic characterization of uncertainty related to the origin of any particular site. To enable a statistically accurate and practically feasible approach to the analysis of large-scale data sets representing a single genus, we have developed a novel software tool (BRAT, Bayesian Recombination Tracker) implementing the model and the corresponding learning algorithm, which is capable of identifying the posterior optimal structure and to estimate the marginal posterior probabilities of putative origins over the sites. Conclusion: A multitude of challenging simulation scenarios and an analysis of real data from seven housekeeping genes of 120 strains of genus Burkholderia are used to illustrate the possibilities offered by our approach. The software is freely available for download at URL http://web.abo.fi/fak/ mnf//mate/jc/software/brat.html