No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The need to design products that engage several senses has being increasingly recognised by design and marketing professionals. Many works analyse the impact of sensory stimuli on the hedonic, cognitive, and emotional responses of consumers, as well as on their satisfaction and intention to purchase. However, there is much less information about the utilitarian dimension related to a sensory non-reflective analysis of the tangible elements of the experience, the sequential role played by different senses, and their relative importance. This work analyses the sensorial dimension of consumer interactions in shops. Consumers were filmed in two ceramic tile shops and their behaviour was analysed according to a previously validated checklist. Sequence of actions, their frequency of occurrence, and the duration of inspections were recorded, and consumers were classified according to their sensory exploration strategies. Results show that inspection patterns are intentional but shifting throughout the interaction. Considering the whole sequence, vision is the dominant sense followed by touch. However, sensory dominance varies throughout the sequence. The dominance differences appear between all senses and within the senses of vision, touch and audition. Cluster analysis classified consumers into two groups, those who were more interactive and those who were visual and passive evaluators. These results are very important for understanding consumer interaction patterns, which senses are involved (including their importance and hierarchy), and which sensory properties of tiles are evaluated during the shopping experience. Moreover, this information is crucial for setting design guidelines to improve sensory interactions and bridge sensory demands with product features.

This paper describes the design and implementation of a prototype to support collaborative Ieaming. It is part of a)arger effort dealing with the study of mechanisms of cooperation and collaboration between distance Ieamers while performing joint tasks involving complex interactions. The final goal of the project is to produce a conceptual model and a tailorable system for describing a variety of collaborative distance Ieaming seenarios providing active group support. A first web-based prototype integrating private and shared workspaces has been implemented, and a testbed carried out with graduate students. The Ieaming scenario and the collaborative facilities offered by the system are presented.

2010) Analysis of the impact of slight changes in product formal attributes on user's emotions and configuration of an emotional space for successful design, Journal of Engineering Design, 21:6, 693-705, Despite virtual concept testing being widely used to evaluate users' emotions elicited by products, prototypes tested in the early stages often undergo slight modifications before reaching the market. This study analyses how slight changes might affect users' perception as well as influence their intention to purchase a product. Furthermore, this analysis opens the door to a new way of dealing with the users' perceptual judgements by means of what has been defined as an emotional space for successful design (ESSD). This space integrates the users' emotional reactions into a physical product solution space. Using a loudspeaker as a case study, eight virtual prototypes were obtained by slightly varying height, diameter and colour. The prototypes were then evaluated by 225 users employing the semantic differential method. The results showed that modifying certain attributes significantly influenced users' responses, thus calling into question the consistency of the user's appraisal of virtual product concepts in the early stages of design. As such, the ESSD aids the identification of a subset of successful design solutions, so providing a clearly useful tool enabling designers to manage the users' emotional needs throughout the product development process.

The recent emergence of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a pandemic, in what is the most severe infectious disease outbreak in many decades. Other infective agents such as Influenza as well as other neglected viruses such as Lassa, Nipah or Poxviruses are also a cause for concern due to its attack rate and potential for global spread. Drug-resistant bacteria, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis are already a significant public health issue in many countries, and it is expected that they will be expanding in the near future. Finally, airborne bioterrorism agents have high morbidity and mortality rates, and should be looked with concern in the current international unrest.

The creation and maintenance of a virtual campus is a task that not only implies the deployment of sophisticated hardware and software but also requires considerable effort in the integration of the main university management systems with the chosen teaching tools present in the campus. Such integration requires the definition of a range of services tailored for the different user profiles. Hence, it has been necessary to develop a management environment for the virtual campus that enables it to be manipulated and controlled in an efficient manner where new services (above and beyond the basic e-Learning platform tools) can be integrated in a seamless fashion. The implementation of these services should guarantee a large degree of interoperability among virtual learning environments, VLEs and tools. To this end, some of these services have been implemented using the IMS Enterprise standard. This standard essentially contributes to the organization of a given e-Learning platform in terms of users, courses and roles therein; leaving to one side the formalization of other services more specific to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) together with the current technological framework.