Activity recognition has emerged as a challenging and high-impact research field, as over the past years smaller and more powerful sensors have been introduced in wide-spread consumer devices. Validation of techniques and algorithms requires large-scale human activity corpuses and improved methods to recognize activities and the contexts in which they occur. This book deals with the challenges of designing valid and reproducible experiments, running large-scale dataset collection campaigns, designing activity and context recognition methods that are robust and adaptive, and evaluating activity recognition systems in the real world with real users.

This book presents a rich compilation of real-world cases on digitalization, the goal being to share first-hand insights from respected organizations and to make digitalization more tangible. As virtually every economic and societal sector is now being challenged by emerging technologies, the digital economy is a highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous place - and one that holds substantial challenges and opportunities for established organizations. Against this backdrop, this book reports on best practices and lessons learned from organizations that have succeeded in overcoming the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the digital economy. It illustrates how twenty-one organizations have leveraged their capabilities to create disruptive innovations, to develop digital business models, and to digitally transform themselves. These cases stem from various industries (e.g. automotive, insurance, consulting, and public services) and countries, reflecting the many facets of digitalization. As all case descriptions follow a uniform schema, they are easily accessible, and provide insightful examples for practitioners as well as interesting cases for researchers, teachers and students. Digitalization is reshaping business on a global scale, and it is evident that organizations must transform to thrive in the digital economy. Digitalization Cases provides first-hand insights into the efforts of renowned companies. The presented actions, results, and lessons learned are a great inspiration for managers, students, and academics. Anna Kopp, Head of IT Germany, Microsoft Understanding digitalization in all its facets requires knowledge about its opportunities and challenges in different contexts. Providing 21 cases from different companies all around the world, Digitalization Cases makes an important contribution toward the comprehensibility of digitalization - from a practical and a scientific point of view. Dorothy Leidner, Ferguson Professor of Information Systems, Baylor University This book is a great source of inspiration and insight on how to drive digitalization. It shows easy to understand good practice examples which illustrate opportunities, and at the same time helps to learn what needs to be done to realize them. I consider this book a must-read for every practitioner who cares about digitalization. Martin Petry, Chief Information Officer and Head of Business Excellence, Hilti

"Personality Capture and Emulation" is the gateway to an amazing future that actually may be achieved, enabling the preservation and simulation of human personalities at progressively higher levels of fidelity. This challenge is no longer the province merely of uninhibited visionaries, but has become a solid field of research, drawing upon a wide range of information technologies in human-centered computing and cyber-human systems. Even at modest levels of accomplishment, research in this emerging area requires convergence of cognitive, social, and cultural sciences, in cooperation with information engineering and artificial intelligence, thus stimulating new multidisciplinary perspectives. Therefore this book will inspire many specific research and development projects that will produce their own valuable outcomes, even as the totality of the work moves us closer to a major revolution in human life. Will it ever really be possible to transfer a human personality at death to a technology that permits continued life?Or will people come to see themselves as elements in a larger socio-cultural system, for which a societal information system can provide collective immortality even after the demise of individuals? A large number and variety of pilot studies and programming projects are offered as prototypes for research that innovators in many fields may exploit for the achievement of their own goals. Together, they provide an empirical basis to strengthen the intellectual quality of several current debates at the frontiers of the human and information sciences."

The field of computer graphics combines display hardware, software, and interactive techniques in order to display and interact with data generated by applications. Visualization is concerned with exploring data and information graphically in such a way as to gain information from the data and determine significance. Visual analytics is the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces.

Expanding the Frontiers of Visual Analytics and Visualization provides a review of the state of the art in computer graphics, visualization, and visual analytics by researchers and developers who are closely involved in pioneering the latest advances in the field. It is a unique presentation of multi-disciplinary aspects in visualization and visual analytics, architecture and displays, augmented reality, the use of color, user interfaces and cognitive aspects, and technology transfer. It provides readers with insights into the latest developments in areas such as new displays and new display processors, new collaboration technologies, the role of visual, multimedia, and multimodal user interfaces, visual analysis at extreme scale, and adaptive visualization.

Sensorialities: Information Extraction and Perceptual Grouping in the Auditory System; B.C.J. Moore. Ultrasonic Techniques for Environment Perception; D. Dotti. The Vestibular System; E. Mira. Perception and Integration: Integration and Storage of Sensory Motor Information: Computation in the Cerebellum; E. D?Angelo. Field Computation and Sensory Fusion; V. Sanguineti, et al. Panel Summary-Plasticity and Reconfigurability in Sensory Systems; S. Vallerga, et al. Perception and Decision: Solving by Redundancy and Misunderstanding by Simplification; W. Gerbino. Perception for Decision or Decision for Perception?;B.Y. Zavidovique. Perception and Action: Integrating Reflexes and Voluntary Behaviors: Coordination and Adaptation Controls in Man; G.M. Gauthier, et al. Motion Perception as an Area Process; Y. Hermush, Y. Yeshurun. Perception and Representation: Representation and Integration of Multiple Knowledge Sources: Issues and Questions; C. Castelfranchi. Symbolic, Conceptual and Subconceptual Representations; P. Gardenfors. Percepton and Communication: Picture Icon and Word Icon; J.P. Rossi, G. Querrioux-Coulombier. Panel Summary. Characters, Pixels, and Phonemes; S. Levialdi, et al. 4 Additional Articles. 4 Panel Summaries. Index.

The usability and design in technological systems is imperative due to their abundance in numerous professional industries. Computer interfaces have seen significant advancement in their design and development as they have become an integral part of today's society. As humans continue to interact with technology on a regular basis, it is essential for professionals, professors, and students to keep pace with innovative research on interface design and the various applications interfaces have in professional fields. Interactivity and the Future of the Human-Computer Interface is a collection of innovative research on the development and application of interfaces in today's modern society and the generational implications for design of human and technology interaction. While highlighting topics including digital gaming, augmented reality, and e-learning, this book is ideally designed for educators, developers, web designers, researchers, technology specialists, scientists, and students seeking current research on modern advancements and applications in human-computer interaction.

This timely text/reference explores the business and technical issues involved in the management of information systems in the era of big data and beyond. Topics and features: presents review questions and discussion topics in each chapter for classroom group work and individual research assignments; discusses the potential use of a variety of big data tools and techniques in a business environment, explaining how these can fit within an information systems strategy; reviews existing theories and practices in information systems, and explores their continued relevance in the era of big data; describes the key technologies involved in information systems in general and big data in particular, placing these technologies in an historic context; suggests areas for further research in this fast moving domain; equips readers with an understanding of the important aspects of a data scientist's job; provides hands-on experience to further assist in the understanding of the technologies involved.

It's Our Research: Getting Stakeholder Buy-in for User Experience Research Projects discusses frameworks, strategies, and techniques for working with stakeholders of user experience (UX) research in a way that ensures their buy-in. This book consists of six chapters arranged according to the different stages of research projects. Topics discussed include the different roles of business, engineering, and user-experience stakeholders; identification of research opportunities by developing empathy with stakeholders; and planning UX research with stakeholders. The book also offers ways of teaming up with stakeholders; strategies to improve the communication of research results to stakeholders; and the nine signs that indicate that research is making an impact on stakeholders, teams, and organizations. This book is meant for UX people engaged in usability and UX research. Written from the perspective of an in-house UX researcher, it is also relevant for self-employed practitioners and consultants who work in agencies. It is especially directed at UX teams that face no-time-no-money-for-research situations.

This self-contained book, written by active researchers, presents up-to-date information on smart maintenance strategies for human-robot interaction (HRI) and the associated applications of novel search algorithms in a single volume, eliminating the need to consult scattered resources. Unlike other books, it addresses maintaining a smart HRI from three dimensions, namely, hardware, cyberware, and hybrid-asset management, covering problems encountered in each through a wide variety of representative examples and elaborated illustrations. Further, the diverse mathematical models and intelligent systems constructions make the book highly practical. It enables readers interested in maintenance, robotics, and intelligent systems but perplexed by myriads of interrelated issues to grasp basic methodologies. At the same time, the referenced literature can be used as a roadmap for conducting deeper researches.

This book describes, from a computer science viewpoint the software, methods of simulating and analysing crowds with a particular focus on the effects of panic in emergency situations. The power of modern technology impacts on modern life in multiple ways every day. A variety of scientific models and computational tools have been developed to improve human safety and comfort in built environments. In particular, understanding pedestrian behaviours during egress situations is of considerable importance in such contexts. Moreover, some places are built for large numbers of people (such as train stations and airports and high volume special activities such as sporting events). Simulating Crowds in Egress Scenarios discusses the use of computational crowd simulation to reproduce and evaluate egress performance in specific scenarios. Several case studies are included, evaluating the work and different analyses, and comparisons of simulation data versus data obtained from real-life experiments are given.

Considering the overall situation of the current pandemic and pertinent recommendations, this book focuses on the use of augmented reality (AR) applications for preventing COVID-19 outbreaks along with techniques, tools, and platforms to achieve social distancing.and sanitization. COVID-19 Public Health Measures: An Augmented Reality Perspective contains theoretical and practical knowledge of AR and remedies on how to cope with the pandemic, including multiple use cases along with a set of recommendations. This book illustrates application building using open-source software with an interactive interface to aid impaired users. The initial part of this book emphasizes the basic knowledge of AR, technology, devices, and rest of the relevant theories. This book is aimed at researchers, students of AR, technical healthcare professionals, and practitioners. Key Features: * Consists of an extensive introduction to the terminologies and components of AR * Provides in-depth knowledge of various tools and techniques used in AR * Introduces various platforms and software development kits (SDKs) such as Unity Engine, Unreal Engine, and Vuforia * Gives a step-by-step guide for the development of an AR app * Describes how AR can be used specifically by impaired users not only in the situation of current pandemic but also in normal situations thus simplifying day-to-day activities

Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting UX Metrics, Third Edition provides the quantitative analysis training that students and professionals need. This book presents an update on the first resource that focused on how to quantify user experience. Now in its third edition, the authors have expanded on the area of behavioral and physiological metrics, splitting that chapter into sections that cover eye-tracking and measuring emotion. The book also contains new research and updated examples, several new case studies, and new examples using the most recent version of Excel.

This book contains a range of invited and submitted papers presented at the 11th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.4, 11.6/SIG 9.2.2 International Summer School, held in Karlstad, Sweden, in August 2016. The 17 revised full papers and one short paper included in this volume were carefully selected from a total of 42 submissions and were subject to a two-step review process. The papers combine interdisciplinary approaches to bring together a host of perspectives: technical, legal, regulatory, socio-economic, social, societal, political, ethical, anthropological, philosophical, and psychological. The paper 'Big Data Privacy and Anonymization' is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book offers an in-depth and systematic introduction to improved failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) methods for proactive healthcare risk analysis. Healthcare risk management has become an increasingly important issue for hospitals and managers. As a prospective reliability analysis technique, FMEA has been widely used for identifying and eliminating known and potential failures in systems, designs, products or services. However, the traditional FMEA has a number of weaknesses when applied to healthcare risk management. This book provides valuable insights into useful FMEA methods and practical examples that can be considered when applying FMEA to enhance the reliability and safety of the healthcare system. This book is very interesting for practitioners and academics working in the fields of healthcare risk management, quality management, operational research, and management science and engineerin. It can be considered as the guiding document for how a healthcare organization proactively identifies, manages and mitigates the risk of patient harm. This book also serves as a valuable reference for postgraduate and senior undergraduate students.

This is the first comprehensive research monograph devoted to the use of augmented reality in education. It is written by a team of 58 world-leading researchers, practitioners and artists from 15 countries, pioneering in employing augmented reality as a new teaching and learning technology and tool. The authors explore the state of the art in educational augmented reality and its usage in a large variety of particular areas, such as medical education and training, English language education, chemistry learning, environmental and special education, dental training, mining engineering teaching, historical and fine art education. Augmented Reality in Education: A New Technology for Teaching and Learning is essential reading not only for educators of all types and levels, educational researchers and technology developers, but also for students (both graduates and undergraduates) and anyone who is interested in the educational use of emerging augmented reality technology.

This anthology contributes to creating awareness on how digital ageism operates in relation to the widely spread symbolic representations of old and young age, the (lack of) representation of diverse older individuals in the design, development, and discourses and in the actual algorithms and datasets. It also shows how individuals and institutions deal with digital ageism in everyday life. In the past decades, digital technologies permeated most aspects of everyday life and became ingrained into human existence. With a focus on how age is represented and experienced in relation to digital technologies leading to digital ageism, digitalisation's reinforcement of spirals of exclusion and loss of autonomy of some collectives is explored, when it could be natural for a great part of society and represent a sort of improvement. The book addresses social science students and scholars interested in everyday digital technologies, society and the power struggles about it, providing insights from different parts of the globe. By using different methods and touching upon different aspects of digital ageism and how it plays out in contemporary connected data societies, this volume will raise awareness, challenge power, initiate discussions and spur further research into this field.

The concept of usability has become an increasingly important consideration in the design of all kinds of technology. As more products are aimed at global markets and developed through internationally distributed teams, usability design needs to be addressed in global terms. Interest in usability as a design issue and specialist area of research and education has developed steadily in North America and Europe since the 1980 s. However, it is only over the last ten years that it has emerged as a global concern.
"Global Usability" provides an introduction to the important issues in globalizing design" "and an insight into the development of usability expertise around the world. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with the general issues in cross-cultural design and the methods for conducting usability design and evaluation across geographical boundaries. The second section describes the state of usability development in fifteen countries. The descriptions include a history and review of activities and include some unique perspectives that have developed in relation to usability work. Researchers and practitioners from a variety of design-related disciplines will find the book a useful guide for understanding the issues and an excellent reference source for working in any of the countries covered."

A longstanding goal of haptic engineering is to develop haptic interfaces that can provide realistic sensations of touch. A fundamental step towards this goal is to understand what mechanical tactile signals the hand feels during daily touch interactions. This book reveals the complex patterns of mechanical waves propagating throughout the hand that can be elicited even by simple touch interactions, which helps in expanding existing knowledge of tactile function beyond the region of near skin-object contact and inspires new designs for haptic sensing and feedback technologies. The first part of this book describes new methods for capturing dynamic, spatially distributed tactile signals in the whole hand during natural hand interactions. The second part characterizes these signals and evaluates how well and how efficiently they encode the information of touch, relating to the transmission of mechanical waves in hand tissues. The final part demonstrates how these findings can be utilized to create novel haptic effects and tactile displays. Tactile Sensing, Information, and Feedback via Wave Propagation provides a unique view of tactile sensing and feedback and will appeal to researchers, engineers, and students who are interested in learning cutting-edge haptic science and technology.

* Joey F. George I was honored to be asked to open the VI Conference of the Italian Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (ItAIS), held in Olbia, on the Costa Smeralda of Sardinia, Italy, in October 2009. Over 90 research papers were presented over two days, and over 120 people attended the conference. Each day, five par- lel sessions featured papers on diverse information systems topics. Session themes included Information and Knowledge Management; Organizational Change and Impact of ICT; IS Quality, Metrics and Impact; E-Justice and Ethics of Information Systems; Information Systems Development and Design Methodo- gies; E-Services in Public and Private Sectors; Innovation Transfer of IT Research Projects; the Strategic Role of Information Systems; Accounting Management and Information Systems; Human Computer Interaction; and Emerging Issues in a Globalized and Interconnected World. The majority of attendees were from Italy, which would be expected for a meeting of the Italian Chapter of AIS. However, as much as 30% of participants came from elsewhere, from other parts of Europe to be sure, but also from as far away as Nigeria, Mexico and Australia. That the conference was so decidedly international provides support for the 2009 con- rence theme, "Achieving Fusion in the Interconnected World. " Amid lively d- cussion and intellectual exchanges, professional networks were extended well beyond the Costa Smeralda and new connections and friendships were made.

This book provides an introduction and overview of the rapidly evolving topic of game narratives, presenting the new perspectives employed by researchers and the industry, highlighting the recent empirical findings that illustrate the nature of it. The first section deals with narrative design and theory, the second section includes social and cultural studies on game narrative, the third section focuses on new technologies and approaches for the topic, the fourth section presents practices and case studies, and the final section provides industry cases from professionals.

Extensive research conducted by the Hasso Plattner Design Thinking Research Program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, has yielded valuable insights on why and how design thinking works. The participating researchers have identified metrics, developed models, and conducted studies, which are featured in this book, and in the previous volumes of this series. Offering readers a closer look at design thinking, and its innovation processes and methods, this volume addresses the new and growing field of neurodesign, which applies insights from the neurosciences in order to improve design team performance. Thinking and devising innovations are inherently human activities - and so is design thinking. Accordingly, design thinking is not merely the result of special courses or of being gifted or trained: it is a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life in general. As such, the research outcomes compiled in this book are intended to inform and provide inspiration for all those seeking to drive innovation - be they experienced design thinkers or newcomers.

The two-volume set IFIP AICT 639 and 640 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 18th IFIP WG 5.1 International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, PLM 2021, held in Curitiba, Brazil, during July 11-14, 2021. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 crisis.The 107 revised full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 133 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Sustainability, sustainable development and circular economy; sustainability and information technologies and services; green and blue technologies; AI and blockchain integration with enterprise applications; PLM maturity, PLM implementation and adoption within industry 4.0; and industry 4.0 and emerging technologies: Volume II: Design, education and management; lean, design and innovation technologies; information technology models and design; and models, manufacturing and information technologies and services.

Social platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter have rekindled the initial excitement of cyberspace. Text based computer-mediated communication has been enriched with face-to-face communication such as Skype, as users move from desk tops to laptops with integrated cameras and related hardware. Age, gender and culture barriers seem to have crumbled and disappeared as the user base widens dramatically. Other than simple statistics relating to e-mail usage, chatrooms and blog subscriptions, we know surprisingly little about the rapid changes taking place. This book assembles leading researchers on non-verbal communication, emotion, cognition and computer science to summarize what we know about the processes relevant to face-to-face communication as it pertains to telecommunication, including video-conferencing. The authors take stock of what has been learned regarding how people communicate, in person or over distance, and set the foundations for solid research helping to understand the issues, implications and possibilities that lie ahead.

Based on the seminar that took place in Dagstuhl, Germany in June 2011, this contributed monograph studies the four important topics within the scientific visualization field: uncertainty visualization, multifield visualization, biomedical visualization and scalable visualization.

Uncertainty visualization deals with uncertain data from simulations or sampled data, uncertainty due to the mathematical processes operating on the data, and uncertainty in the visual representation,
Multifield visualization addresses the need to depict multiple data at individual locations and the combination of multiple datasets,
Biomedical is a vast field with select subtopics addressed from scanning methodologies to structural applications to biological applications,
Scalability in scientific visualization is critical as data grows and computational devices range from hand-held mobile devices to exascale computational platforms.

"Scientific Visualization" will be useful to practitioners of scientific visualization, students interested in both overview and advanced topics and those interested in knowing more about the visualization process."

This book presents selected research and development on virtual reality (VR) and serious games (SG) applications to assist children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in their learning of different skills. Children with ASD have challenges to learn skills of learning, living, and working, due to their cognitive and behavioral limitations. The authors and their research teams of this book have many years' research experience developing innovative and interactive VR and SG technology for the special needs education. More specifically, several VR serious games are designed to train children with ASD on learning skill, life skill, and job skill. Such games are often developed based on the needs of special education and used by special needs schools in Singapore. This book is a useful resource for students, scholars, and designers of learning material who want to embrace VR and SG for children with ASD.