Kevin Glover

Abstract This paper reports on a study of 4CG, a coop- erative enterprise located in rural Wales. 4CG operates for the good of the local economy and seeks to diversify its commercial portfolio through the creation of an online shop retailing goods and services from local suppliers. The paper compliments prior field studies focusing on rural enterprise and the challenges posed by this category of business for IT support. The current study is motivated by 4CG’s interest in setting up a local online shop and explicates the organisational issues that this venture turns upon and elaborates for broader sustainability agendas.

ABSTRACT Ethnographic studies have played a key part in informing the design and development of a multitude of ubiquitous systems, from control room systems to pervasive games. While other papers have often focused on systems developed for urban contexts, this paper presents the initial findings of a study that focuses on a rural produce market in West Wales as a site for ubiquitous multimedia system-based intervention, digital economic considerations and co-design. The findings relate to the initial ethnographic fieldwork, digital-economic considerations for the site, the evolution of a participatory design strategy for developing a Market Portal and - importantly -- the way that these are informing the design of the ubiquitous technologies relating to the Market Portal.

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a cross-media environmental campaign called Bicker Manor. We describe how the experience allowed players to participate using mobile phones by sending SMS and MMS messages, the web and interactive television. We describe how the experience used characters to playfully challenge players to complete missions with an environmental twist, before describing a generic, reusable mission framework and implementation with associated authoring and orchestration tools. Finally, we briefly describe the pilot of ...

ABSTRACT Our surroundings are becoming infused with sensors measuring a variety of data streams about the environment, people and objects. Such data can be used to make the spaces that we inhabit responsive and interactive. Personal data in its different forms are one important data stream that such spaces are designed to respond to. In turn, one stream of personal data currently attracting high levels of interest in the HCI community is physiological data (e.g., heart rate, electrodermal activity), but this has seen little consideration in building architecture or the design of responsive environments. In this context, we developed a prototype mapping a single occupant’s respiration to its size and form, while it also sonifies their heartbeat. The result is a breathing building prototype, formative trials of which suggested that it triggers behavioral and physiological adaptations in inhabitants without giving them instructions and it is perceived as a relaxing experience. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a controlled study of this prototype, comparing three conditions: the static prototype, regular movement and sonification and a biofeedback condition, where the occupant’s physiological data directly drives the prototype and presents this data back to them. The study confirmed that the biofeedback condition does indeed trigger behavioral changes and changes in participants’ physiology, resulting in lower respiration rates as well as higher respiration amplitudes, respiration to heart rate coherence and lower frequency heart rate variability. Self-reported state of relaxation is more dependent on inhabitant preferences, their knowledge of physiological data and whether they found space to ‘let go’. We conclude with a discussion of ExoBuilding as an immersive but also sharable biofeedback training interface and the wider potential of this approach to making buildings adapt to their inhabitants.