1,721,006 research outputs found
Experience goals in designing professional tools : evoking meaningful experiences at work
Get PDFFor most adults, work is an important part of life. Experiences at work are shaped considerably by the workplace context wherein professional tools often play a crucial role. Given this significance, this doctoral research is concerned with human flourishing at work as mediated by professional tools and work-related service touchpoints. This dissertation concentrates on prioritising meaningful experiences as high-level design goals in the early phase of the design process, which enables a creative approach to professional tool innovation.
In the last three decades, the societal change from the materialistic to the experiential has boosted business-to-consumer design practices with a focus on experiential quality. Compelling consumer experiences in daily life have raised the bar of people’s expectations for desirable experiences at work. In contrast, current work tool design in the business-to-business setting is mainly driven by product performance criteria, system productivity, and cost efficiency. The value of meaningful experiences at work as a catalyst for employee flourishing seems largely neglected in work tool design. This dissertation therefore proposes to shift the orientation of work tool design from product-centred problem solving towards experience-focused possibility seeking.
This research follows Hassenzahl’s proposition of experience design, to think intended experiences before concrete design outcome. To maintain the designers’ focus on experiential objectives throughout the design process, this dissertation introduces a key conceptual instrument of inquiry into design practice, namely, the experience goal (Xgoal). This dissertation defines Xgoals as high-level design objectives that concretise the intended momentary emotion or lasting meaning that a person feels about a product or service to be designed. The main challenges of Xgoal setting and realisation correspond to a design abduction process in which designers constantly experiment with tentative Xgoals until a preferable match between the two emerges. Thus, this research investigates Xgoal setting and utilisation for work tool design in the specific context of the Finnish metals and engineering industry where traditional problem-solving engineering design dominates.
Theoretically, this research utilises the multidisciplinary lenses of positive psychology, organisational management, and possibility-driven design thinking to study Xgoals in creative design practice. Methodologically, this dissertation extracts data from 20 master student projects that collaborated with heavy industry companies. These projects were deliberately designed for meaningful experiences at work in relation to professional tool innovation. The analysis of these project reports emphasises design reasoning for Xgoal setting and utilisation in design activities. Finally, Xgoals as designerly instruments were evaluated in expert interviews.
The findings of this research first indicate that Xgoals with in-depth meaning can lead a possibility-driven design process because Xgoals define the in-depth reason for design opportunities rather than a means to a solution. Xgoals can facilitate the considered design space expansion from the main product towards a product-service system and from styling towards human-product interaction, face-to-face communication, and organisational strategy. Second, the findings suggest that the mechanisms of meaningful work can complement a Positive Design Framework, and further propose Xgoals in terms of design for virtue, personal significance and pleasure intertwined with the meaningfulness of work. Third, this research uncovers design strategies for experiences of pride at work along social and temporal dimensions. Finally, this dissertation suggests the generative, reflective, and communicative functions of Xgoals in design practice.
This research contributes a theory-inspired and design case-based approach to tool design for evoking meaningful experiences at work. Future studies on this could concentrate on applying the proposed framework and design strategies to other domains, and further develop context-dependent Xgoal setting and utilisation methods for possibility-driven design
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
HIV/AIDS preparedness in the CIS, Baltic, East and Southeast Europe and the Balkans: a situation report
No full textDispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
HIV/AIDS preparedness in the CIS, Baltic, East and Southeast Europe and the Balkans: a situation report
No full textkoamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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