Design thinking is a unique way of thinking. This talk will explore a research agenda for the understanding and development of design thinking. It will introduce the following ten questions:
1. What is design thinking?
2. How can we understand design thinking?
3. What is an ontology of designing?
4. How is design thinking carried out?
5. How can we model design thinking?
6. What research is needed to develop a fuller understanding of design
thinking?
7. How can designing gain from modelling design thinking?
8. Where is the creativity in design thinking?
9. What does design thinking tell us about the rest of the world?
10. How can design thinking be applied in non-design domains?

This presentation will give an update on an ongoing PhD research aimed at developing a computational model to study social behavior in teams. The main research ideas, the computational requirements for implementing a situated social agent, the scenarios to be tested and the research plan will be discussed.

A method for measuring the design process and correlate it with the assessment of the design outcome will be presented. Linkography - atechnique used in analyzing design protocols - is reported to reveal the quality of design ideas is used to capture the interconnectivity of ideas in the design process. Previous studies found that Shannon's entropy as a measure of a linkograph might indicate design outcomes. An empirical verification that design outcomes can be correlated to the entropic interpretations of a linkograph will be reported. Experimental data from protocol studies of six designers performing two similar design tasks in two different conditions were analyzed. In one condition the designers were blindfolded (BF) during designing, and then given a relative short time to draw their design at the end of the session. In the other condition the designers were allowed to sketch (SK). Three highest scored and the three lowest scored design sessions were considered. Their verbalization during the design session were segmented and coded to produce linkographs. The entropy and the change of entropy over time of these linkographs were studied in relation to the design outcome. The results demonstrate that entropy measurement of linkographs provides a way of to study design protocols and show that the design outcome is more related to the rate of change of entropy than to the availability of sketching.

This research investigates knowledge and identity in design education by examining perceptions of achievement and membership within four design disciplines: engineering, architecture, digital media and fashion design. Drawing on concepts derived from sociology of education, we theorize how designers and those new to the field recognize and realize design practices, how "knowledge" and "knowers" are specialized, and its relation to the shaping of identity within these disciplines. In order to explore the application of this theory, we conducted in depth interviews with design professionals and a survey with Year 10 students. This seminar presents the results of a pilot study, discussing how engineering design tends to be perceived as knowledge driven, and is often associated with adjectives such as "scientific" and "technical". Architecture, digital media and fashion design are described as "artistic" and "creative". Strategies used within the practice of these disciplines tend to be associated with personal and/or social dispositions, such as "being sensitive" and "having a network of contacts". Strategies used by engineers tend to emphasize seeking information on procedures and techniques (e.g. books, journals).

Mapping Footprints, lost geographies in Australian landscapes, is a research project in development that explores the relational qualities of places and contemporary perceptions of geography. It reflects on new mapping technologies that have the capacity to reinstate relations between subjects and places via a spatial exploration that engages with inventive and specific uses of location sensing technologies informed by physical and cultural contexts. The Elvina rock engravings in Kuringai National Park is the site of a location sensitive sound installation in which we integrate the specificities of landscape with a navigational medium. A sonic map is overlayed over the physical terrain opening up the site as a place embedded with memories, creating the potential for spontaneous exploration and new understandings of place. The 'map' in Mapping Footprints is composed from the geographical narration of the cartographers' exploration across Indigenous mediascapes.

It has been proposed that there are designerly ways of knowing, thinking and acting that may be regarded as the natural intelligence of design. Common designerly acts include cognitive strategies, such as solution-focusing and prestructuring. Exploring and learning about a problem, by producing tentative solutions, is another common designerly behaviour. However, while some designerly behaviours may be peculiar to designing, others such as reflection are more general, and others may be peculiar to individual practitioners. In a recent study, of the conceptual design discoveries of 45 accomplished architects and designers, a wide range of beliefs, priorities and behaviours that could be regarded as designerly were observed. In the presentation I will describe these findings, and propose that the natural intelligence of designing may be better understood as a native intelligence, being the unique combination of discovered components and facets of intelligence that are natural or native and situated in a particular individual. Implications of this will also be raised for consideration.

The seminar will present a computational architecture for a constructive memory system in an optimization agent. Design experiences are formally represented in this memory system as graphs. An algorithm based on Singular Value Decomposition on the nodes (design representations) and graph algorithms coupled with convergence analysis on the node-link structures (sequences of optimization actions on design representations) together form a basis for learning and construction in an agent. An agent is able to start with very little hard-coded knowledge, learn from previous experiences, construct strategies, and use this knowledge for new, unseen problems. The architecture, being implemented in MATLAB, will be discussed and simple demonstrations on some example problems (continuous, non-linear optimization, mechanical design) will be shown.

As part of the cognitive process to form an abstract picture of a sound, the question arises as to how timbral impression can enhance comprehension. From previous experimental results and questionnaire, we found that timbre (tone color) has potential to improve discriminablility of two current audio streams. Therefore, a task is proposed to evaluate the most effective synthesized timbres for the purpose of reinforce spatializaed data streams in info-sonification. Instead of dissimilarity, this study focuses on discriminability of synthesized timbres from the listener's perspective. This involves candidates participating in our listening task. The analysis will combine acoustic measurement (i.e. brightness) and semantic structure of timbre (i.e. sharp/dull).

A model of computational analogy-making is presented in which the relatedness of two concepts is dependent not only on what an agent knows about those concepts but also on the way the agent is looking at them. This notion of how an agent is "looking at them" is called being "situated" and the particular way an agent "sees" the world is its situation. This situated-interpretation based model of analogy is well suited to design applications as the meanings of concepts in a design problem are constantly reformulated during the design process depending on what the designer sees the world to be.

This research investigates how adaptive systems influence engagement within interactive soundspace installation. Soundspace installation is a form of interactive art that uses gesture-sensing technology and computational sound generation as the basis for interaction between the audience and art system. This research models and develops adaptive soundspace installation in order to examine how adaptation of the art system influences engagement. It studies engagement by investigating and comparing a quantitative index of the computational environment and qualitative responses from participants.

There has been a wide body of design research regarding the categorisation of design text by understanding their content or function. Much of this research was conducted for purposes such as design rationale capture, decision support, and case-based reasoning. However, recent research has suggested the need to consider the semantic orientation (i.e., the opinion, sentiment, and attitude expressed as an appraisal) toward the subject matter within the text in addition to knowing the semantic meaning of the text. In a prior paper {Dong, 2006 #301}, we described the language of appraisal in design, developed a grammatical analysis technique for analysing the various ways that appraisal is registered in language, and applied the technique of functional grammatical analysis to illustrate a way to characterise appraisal. In this paper, we present an alternative method for understanding appraisal in design using a computational natural language classifier using statistical machine learning. Given the model of the language of appraisal in design presented in our prior work, the classifier categorises the design text as being about product, process or people, and then classifies the associated sentiment. The next section briefly reviews the theory of appraisal and the theory of the language of appraisal in design text. Given the model, we then present a computational model for the language of appraisal in design text. This model is used to encode design text to enable a natural language classifier to categorise and classify the text according to semantic meaning and sentiment. We show performance results of the system and discuss the types of studies and design text applications that such a text classifier enables.

Multiple devices, both hardware and software, may come and go at any time in a given room.  Computational processes controlling these devices must be able to adapt their behaviour to encompass new devices or the removal of existing devices.  This talk presents a model for curious, supervised learning agents that address the issue of adaptability at a behavioural level in intelligent environments.  Curious, supervised learning agents comprise a curiosity module and a supervised learning algorithm.  The curiosity module identifies interesting devices on which to focus the agent's learning.  The supervised learning component realises behaviours by observing, modelling and mimicking human actions.  Our framework is demonstrated in the Virtual Sentient Room, an intelligent meeting room in Second Life that is modelled on the KCDC Sentient.  We show that the curious learning agent can adapt its behaviour to identify new learning goals and control new devices as they are introduced into the meeting room. 

The idea of putting together innovations that actually work can be a tall order on a design masters course. And yet test rigs and prototypes lie right at the heart of the work by history’s creative giants. To innovate in design, these messy and often faulty prototypes are critical. Whether it is the age of Leonardo, Brunel, Edison, or Dyson and Hadid, bringing together the real versus the ideal has to happen as part of the creative birth process.

This lecture speed-dates several giants of creativity to look for innovation lessons before plunging headlong into the recent history of Tom’s groundbreaking SmartSlab – as seen on TV! The talk then looks at a series of innovative projects by RCA students in which the creative and prototyping process was documented though video. This is followed by a discussion of Tom’s personal struggle to synthesise ideal creative environments and the Ptolemic relationship between design, creativity and commerce.

Based in London, Professor Tom Barker is an academic, entrepreneur, technologist and design consultant. He has been running the Industrial Design Engineering department at the Royal College of Art for the last 4 years. With 60 multidisciplinary students from 20 countries, Tom’s 2 year MA is jointly taught with Imperial College London. Tom has worked in design and architecture for many years and projects/collaborations include: Zaha Hadid, the London Eye, Richard Rogers Partnership, BP Solar, Reggiani and Targetti Lighting. Tom has over 20 patents in his name. Tom also teaches in the Design Research Lab (DRL) at the Architectural Association.

1) China's political and ideological past have been turbulent and varying; dramatically affecting the cultures and practices within China itself. One particular cultural artifact to have survived through all of this is the artform of calligraphy. This paper explains the importance of calligraphy in China and presents a model for the expression of the differing power, ideology and censorship issues in contemporary China thorough novel generative computational methods of producing pseudo-Sinitic characters and calligraphy.

1)
As the field of information visualization matures, implementations of information visualization has advanced from graphs and databases to the use of player analysis in computer games. In addition, video and computer games of today are developed using advanced hardware and software tools that allow such rapid rendering of data. The immense amount of data presented to the players of computer games, mainly in massively online role playing games (MMORPG) such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft can be considered as a challenge that information visualization can solve. This paper uses currently modified user interfaces, implement an information visualization enhanced display and evaluate the effects on players on the game World of Warcraft.

2)
The aim of this research is to develop and evaluate an interactive public information display which takes aesthetic data visuali s ation approach of conveying information. Data visualis ation is often utilised in representing scientific and statistical data and involves mapping data values in a visual fashion in order to enhance understanding and help detect the underlying connections and patterns. The developed prototype "Time loom" is an interactive public information screen for the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning that attempts to apply a data visualisation technique in a suitable way for ordinary people in everyday situation. It will be evaluated by various methods such as heuristics and lab environment testing.

What kind of design tools could we produce if computers used their knowledge more like people? How do designers interpret the world during design activity, and how does it change this activity?

These are the kind of questions that are asked during this research into constructive interpretation. The research is at a stage where ideas about situatedness and interpretation are understood, but need to be synthesised into an implementation. The seminar will describe these ideas and put forth a proposal for an implementation and experiments to be carried out.

The proposed implementation relates to the use of representation by designers. Computer Aided Design (CAD) packages are capable of many types of representation. Different representations are more suited to different actions. Current tools for movement from an image representation to CAD representation have scope for improvement. This implementation looks to demonstrate constructive interpretation through an agent that creates a two-dimensional CAD representation from an image representation.

Story coverage is a systemic issue in creating complex and satisfying games. This research presents the Narrativium Story Engine: a novel computational model for generating and re-interpreting interwoven plot lines for secondary characters. This work was specifically designed for real-time use in single and massively multiplayer games. The system makes use of a multi-agent architecture of character agents that continually negotiate and synthesise their individual story lines from universal plot elements. The results from the experimentation show that the system is indeed capable of performing real-time work. The potential benefits to designers incorporating such a system into their work include being able to radically scale up the complexity and scale of possible worlds with minimal impact to the project budget, and introducing entirely new game mechanics based on story.

Aesthetic is currently under represented in data visualization evaluation studies. This thesis investigated the results of an online survey of 285 participants, measuring both perceived aesthetic as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of retrieval tasks across a set of 11 different data visualization techniques. The studied data visualizations represent a single hierarchical dataset, normalized in terms of color, typography, and layout balance. Measured parameters included speed of completion, accuracy rate, task abandonment and latency of erroneous response. Research findings display a correlation between latency in task abandonment and erroneous response time to visualization's perceived aesthetic. These results support an increased recognition for aesthetic in the evaluation process of data visualization.

Much of the use of evolutionary computation methods in engineering design has focused on design optimization, i.e., tuning the parameters of a design to improve its characteristics with respect to one or more metrics. A more challenging problem is the use of evolutionary computation techniques at an earlier "conceptual design" stage. Here, taking additional inspiration from nature in the form of "generative representations" appears to be the most promising approach. In this presentation I will discuss this approach in some detail and give examples of the state-of-the-art.

BIO:
Ken De Jong has done fundamental work in developing evolutionary systems and genetic algorithms in particular. John Holland, the founder of evolutionary systems, was his doctoral supervisor. His current research is on adaptive systems, the application of evolutionary algorithms to the problem of learning task programs in domains such as robotics, diagnostics, navigation and game playing. He is also interested in experience-based learning in which systems must improve their performance while actually performing the desired tasks in environments not directly under their control or the control of a benevolent teacher. This work includes the evolution of agents in a very large scale agent environment. Support for these projects is provided by DARPA, the US Office of Naval Research, and the US Naval Research Lab.

Ken De Jong is currently a Professor of Computer Science, head of the Evolutionary Computation Laboratory, and Associate Director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University and is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Evolutionary Computation (MIT Press), and a member of the board of ACM SIGEVO.

This paper presents an outline of Virtual Miyazawa Kenji (MK) systems to realize the cognitive interaction between human user and Kenji Virtual system which realizes, factorizes and conceptualizes the virtual reasoning of famous Japanese story writer namely Miyazawa Kenji. This seminar will present the system parts and explain the main concept on which it is built. Bio:
H. Fujita is a professor of computer Science at Iwate prefectural university, Iwate, Japan. He was a Professor at Tohoku University of Art & Design, Japan. He is now the Director of Intelligent Software Laboratory at Iwate Prefectural University, Japan, http://www.fujita.soft.iwate-pu.ac.jp/ and is the founder of SOMET series (Software Methodologies Tools and Techniques), He has published many papers and books and also obtained several International patents related to software maintenance and Legacy systems. He is the chairman of the SOMET_07 International Conference to be held in Rome, Italy, November 2007.

This presentation will provide an update on an ongoing PhD research aimed at developing a computational model of temporary design teams (TDTs). The proposed approach to modelling TDTs and the agents will be presented. Concepts relating to agent’s social behaviour in a TDT environment will be discussed along with the agent architecture. The experiment design and some scenarios typical to TDT environment will be presented.

We present an overview of creative projects and research frameworks spanning the fields of electronic arts, HCI and interactive architecture. Recent joint projects demonstrate concepts involving navigation and mobile sound scapes. Since we are relocating from the Netherlands to Sydney, we are keen to share our plans for research and practice and to learn more about your research group.

BIOS
Bert Bongers (The Netherlands, 1964) has a mixed background in technology (BSc EE), human sciences (MSc Erg. UCL London) and the arts in a mixture of education and practice. In his recently completed PhD (VU Amsterdam) he combines insights and experiences gained from musical instrument design, interactive architecture, video performances, and interface development for multimedia systems to establish frameworks and an ecological approach to the design for the interaction between people and technology. He has set up new media labs in Amsterdam, Barcelona and Maastricht, and lectured in workshops and newly developed courses on interaction at various universities and schools. He has published in books, academic journals and conferences.
www.bertbongers.com

Yolande Harris (England, 1975) has a background in music (piano, flute and composition, BA Dartington College of the Arts, 1997), moving image and architecture (MPhil, Cambridge University 2000). Her artistic work consists of (commissioned) musical compositions, performances and installations exploring a variety of technologies to establish a relationship between the media of sound, video and space. She has been artist in residence in various places (Nau Coclea, Spain 2001, STEIM Amsterdam 2002, Jan van Eyck Academy, 2003-2005, Fellowship at the KHM Cologne 2006) as well as working independently. As an academic and a writer she has published in scientific journals, conferences and books, particularly on the expanded spatial and technological implications for scores and instruments.
www.yolandeharris.net

Design is a field that encompasses many disciplines and professions (e.g. engineering, arts and architecture, digital media, fashion design and others). But how are knowledge and identity specialized in the design field and within the different disciplines? When learning a professional trade, besides learning specific procedures to perform, one has to learn the "rules", "processes" and "language" of the field. The understanding of such processes is essential - it is through these that one actually establishes a sense of what is a legitimate practice in a given field. This research draws on a development of Basil Bernstein's sociology to analyze how those who are new to the design field learn about this specialized knowledge within an informal environment. The aims of this project are to investigate how new designers recognize and realize design practices within four sub-disciplines of design: engineering, architecture, digital media and fashion design; and to define and implement ways of supporting new designers' inquiry through an ICT mediated learning environment. The expected contributions of this research include: (1) a model representing the underlying principles structuring knowledge within 4 design disciplines and strategies used by designers to recognize and realize legitimate practices; and (2) an informal e-learning environment to experience design grounded on socio-educational concepts.

Design optimization models employ formal mathematical-symbolic representations for designing. However, aspects of design reasoning like modeling and reformulation, developing and changing of design strategies based on experience, redefining the solution space as the design experience progresses, etc. are still not supported by automated environments, as it is not yet fully known how designers do these activities. We propose that it is possible to extend the traditional view of design optimization by using a situated-constructive approach. This seminar will focus on the implementation design aspects of a situated agent based design optimization environment. First, a preliminary implementation of an "unsituated" rule-based agent implemented in Jess will be used to demonstrate and compare the properties and characteristics that a situated agent is expected to have, developing aspects of situated behavior that can be measured against traditional benchmarks. Then, an architecture for such an agent will be presented, focusing on the constructive behavior of memory. We will discuss how the agent can build strategies from experiences and apply them constructively to future experiences.

Smart Cities. The very name conjures up futuristic visions of technologically transformed environments - a fusion of information and architecture connected through networks of wireless infrastructure. This is a place where ubiquitous devices provide pedestrians with on-the-go, geographically and temporally contextualised information; a place where your questions are predicted and answers provided before you need to ask.

The second half of Mitchell's talk focuses on the car of the future, an adaptive vehicle that provides a fun driving experience in dense areas and occupies the smallest possible footprint when parked (it's stackable!). Tomorrow's networked car of the future is accessible to the physical and virtual resources of the city. Physical resources include parking, infrastructure, access to goods, and cultural/social amenities. Information resources include knowledge about how to access these resources, an understanding of how the city works, and increased connectivity to the city, cars, and the ebb and flow of their dynamic systems.

Bio: William J. Mitchell is director of the MIT Design Laboratory, holds the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. (1954) Professorship, and directs the Media Lab's Smart Cities research group. He was formerly dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, both at MIT. Mitchell holds a BArch from the University of Melbourne, an MED from Yale University, and an MA from Cambridge. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. In 1997 he was awarded the annual Appreciation Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan, and he is currently chair of the National Academies Committee on Information Technology and Creativity.

1908 marks the birth of Film Sets as we know it today. This was the year that the film camera was freed from the static nature of the tripod and became a moving part of the action. The audience was no more limited to have a static perspective like in theatre but was brought into the films space through the eye of the camera. This brought about an activation of the dynamic qualities of space. From then on, film space was experienced as continuously unfolding volumes on screen, supporting the dramaturgic needs of the storyline. Recent years brought about profound changes in the way film sets are designed. Computer technology offers new tools to the designers palette. Especially considering dynamic quality of space, the use of animations offer new possibilities to design sets as space-time relation rather then static volumes. We will look at tendencies in progressive film design from a workflow - and design point of view. During the workshop techniques used during the design phase in the art department for film sets will be introduced and explored in principle. The focus will be on the use of animations to design into 4D. we will explore the temporal qualities of cinematic space. Starting from simple storyboard sketches we will approach set design from a dynamic point of view. Through the use of techniques such as camera projection and animatics in Autodesks Maya we will look at film design as choreography over time and will design them through this dramaturgic perspective. Tino Schaedler has an academic background in architecture and visual effects. He graduated from the University of Hannover in architecture with honours, studied at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, UC Berkeley in the US and the Filmschool in Vancouver. He has taught at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, the architecture department of UBC in Vancouver and the Architectural Association in London. He recently co-founded NAU, a cross-disciplinary design collective positioned between architecture and film.
 
Tino Schaedler graduated from the University of Hannover in architecture with honours, studied at the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, UC Berkeley in the US and the Filmschool in Vancouver. He has taught at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, the architecture department of UBC in Vancouver and the Architectural Association in London. He recently co-founded NAU, a cross-disciplinary design collective positioned between architecture and film. He has worked on several big budget productions, such as Tim Burtons `Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, `Catwoman, `V for Vendetta and `Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the upcoming New Line Cinema production `His Dark Materials - The Golden Compass as art director for digital sets.

Please note the seminar is followed by a general public lecture on the same day at 18:30-19.30 REMIXING REALITY: FILM DESIGN IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Constructivist theory suggests that existing online learning approaches restrict aspects of learning due to the students’ limited interactions between themselves and with the tutor. If students are to construct their own knowledge by interacting with their learning environment, then the learning environment has to be developed in such a way as to ameliorate learning, through interaction with the content, between fellow students and with the tutor. The research problem addressed by this thesis is poor instructional design in e-learning applications. Reforming instructional design methods should result in a measurable improvement in learning outcomes. This research proposes to improve the pedagogical design of e-learning systems by developing a pattern language for e-learning based on constructivist and experiential learning theories. The pattern language will be developed embedding learning theories within the patterns themselves, providing a pedagogical basis for the design/production process.

The ultimate goal of sonification is to transfer information effectively to listeners. While there is a large amount of multidisciplinary investigation in the field of psychoacoustic, psychology, cognition and human computer interaction, sonification design still lacks empirical evidence on which to base design decisions. This paper presents an empirical investigation of spatialization, which can provide one or more dimensions for auditory display. It focuses, in particular, on evaluating spatial presentation in sonification so as to enhance pattern identification when two audio streams are played simultaneously. Hence it aims to develop design decisions that benefit from effective information representation. The sounds were created for binaural reproduction using non-individual head-related transfer functions. The results reported are based on the listeners' performance within two display modes: (i) two co-located streams and (ii) two streams spatially separated at static locations.

Redundancy is a key mechanism used to improve fault tolerance in hardware and software. But redundant systems can still fail, for example if the redundant components fail at the same time in the same way (common mode failure). In diverse systems, multiple faults can be detected and/or corrected if they lead to different failure modes. Diversity is therefore an important feature in designing redundant systems.

Conventional design tools rarely allow a designer to produce diverse sets of designs from a single specification. Even if they do, they will not allow the creation of components that are 'matched' for fault tolerance. In this talk, I describe an evolutionary computing approach that creates diverse sets of designs, optimized for fault tolerance. The system is based on a two stage process, with a co-evolutionary optimization of an ensemble in the second step.

To demonstrate the idea, I show experiments with digital electronic circuits. Tests with a number of circuit design tasks, and a number of different fault models, show that the resulting circuit combinations perform considerably better than textbook circuits, in some cases reducing the number of undetected faults by more than half.

Bio: Dr. Thorsten Schnier has been a Research Fellow with the University of Birmingham from 1999, and joined Cercia at its inception in January 2003. Before coming to Birmingham, Dr Schnier read Electrical Engineering (BSc, MSc) at the University of Hannover and Computer Science (PhD) at the University of Sydney. His Ph.D research at the Key Centre for Design Computing involved work on Computational Creativity, Evolutionary Design, and particularly the role of representations. Following his PhD he worked as a lecturer at the Key Centre, and was also involved in online teaching, 'virtual classrooms' and an online conference on Design Computing on the Net.

He is Principle Investigator of the 'Nature Inspired Creative Design' network, an AHRC/EPSRC sponsored 'Designing for the 21st Century' initiative. He is also chair of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society task force on 'Esthetics, Entertainment and Education'.

This research will investigate situatedness in computational analogy-making. Situatedness emphasises the roles of experience and interpretation in cognition while analogy-making models have traditionally been abstract and symbolical. An analogy-making system will be developed that incorporates ideas from situated cognition and its analogy-making capabilities will be explored. When re-framed through situatedness, an analogy-making system may be able to produce diverse and complex solutions.

My argument is that documentary texts can be transformed into artworks via the processes of intertextuality and détournement, when they are exhibited as video installations. I interviewed 67 Australian Muslims and used these interviews to explore the use of documentary in video installation. The theoretical framework I used is based on the following: Julia Kristeva's notion of intertextuality, derived from Mikhail Bahktin's work on dialogism, to interpret how documentary texts take on conventions appropriate to other genres; Guy Debord's concept of détournement to provide a theory for the reuse of pre-existing artistic elements found in documentary film; genre theory to interpret interactions between documentary texts; Ludwig Wittgenstein's notion of 'family resemblance' to explore the indistinct boundaries of documentary; and Pascal Beausse's analysis of how artists have hijacked documentary. The documentary genre is not habitually discussed outside film, television, photography or the web. My research demonstrates that the genre has found its place in other areas of artistic practice and can also apply to medium of video installation.

onacloV Islamic Intertext (2006) Canberra Contemporary Art Space

"CAADRIA: Digitization and Globalization"

Turning to 21st century, the globe has been rapidly becoming a small village as the transportation and communication tools become more efficient and more easily available to the public. So has this been happening in AEC industry (Architecture, Engineering and Construction). Digital technology has apparently changed the working process in the AEC industry, but not as efficiently as in the manufacturing industry, such as automobile production. It might be mainly because of the diversified components and scattered sites with lower industry standards, especially against the background of customization and vernacular traditions of architecture. What roles can digital technology play in this development and how can we steer correctly this inevitable trend?

This conference was held on the 19-21 April, 2007. Come along to this seminar and hear about current trends in this field and find out about the submission that won 'Best Paper'.

"CHI 2007: 25th Anniversary"

CHI is the premiere conference in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Every year, it is a venue for 2000 HCI professionals, academics, and students to discuss HCI issues and research and make lasting connections in the HCI community.

Soundspace installation utilises motion-sensing technology to generate sound in response to gesturing by the participant. The mapping, or procedure that translates gestural input to audio output, is the generative mechanism that characterises the interactive experience. Analysis of interactive responses to different mapping techniques builds understanding about interaction in novel sound environments. This seminar presents work towards developing a computational measuring system for observing interaction in soundspace installation.

There has been a wide body of design research regarding the categorisation of design text by the content or role of the text. However, recent research on information use in design has suggested the need to consider the semantic orientation toward the subject matter within the text as the orientation might signal design rationale and other critical meta-functions. This paper presents a computational implementation of a natural language classifier for the understanding of appraisal in design text, that is, the expression of an opinion or attitude toward the designed work, the design process, and the design team. Using the supervised machine learning technique of support vector machines and data from informal and formal design documents, including transcripts of conversations between designers, we find that machine learning techniques can be trained to categorise the semantic meaning of design documents and the polarity of the opinion expressed in the document.

2) As the field of information visualization matures, its implementations has advanced from graphs to the use of player analysis in computer games. Video and computer games of today are developed using advanced hardware and software tools that allow such rapid rendering of data. The immense amount of data presentated to the players of computer games, mainly in massively online role playing games (MMORPG) such as Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, can be considered as a challage that information visualization has the potential to solve. This paper proposes to design and implement an information visualization enhanced display and evaluate the effects on players on the game of World of Warcraft.

3) The need for information anytime and anywhere has meant that computers have migrated from the familiar context of the desktop onto the human body in the form of wearable computers. This research proposes the development of three different wrist-worn displays that measure and convey skin conductivity, which in its broadest sense can be considered a measurement of physiological arousal in humans. Each distinctive display will vary in the level of comprehensibility and ease of understanding it affords to those who view it over a period of time. An in-depth evaluation study of usage patterns of each display will be conducted to assess the success of wearable computing displays in everyday contextual environments.

1) Environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly important in the world today. The majority of past scientific research focuses upon technological innovations for reducing resource consumption. An alternative approach focuses on the motivation of environmentally responsible behaviour in individuals. A large body of research notes the potential of the field of "persuasive technology" for use in the domain of environmental sustainability, however few projects have examined this area. This research project investigates persuasive technology for motivating environmentally responsible behaviour in individuals within a large community setting.  This will be achieved via the design and implementation of interactive, persuasive installations in three buildings within the University of Sydney.  The installations will focus specifically on energy conservation, and will be evaluated over a two-month period. The outcome of the project will provide increased knowledge about the feasibility of persuasive technology within the domain of environmental sustainability, and generate a possible reduction in the energy consumption of the buildings targeted. 

1) Information aesthetics is emerging as an interdisciplinary field which combines aspects of functionality seen from information visualisation research, with creative style and artistic motivation from visualisation art. A model is proposed which defines data focus and mapping technique as underlying relationships between visualisation techniques which involve the mapping of abstract data to a visual form. Three implementations were then created which address salient areas of the model. User evaluations showed how consideration of each factor allows insight to be gained across visualisation techniques and motivate interdisciplinary collaboration.

2) Web surfing, the act of following links of interest with no pre-defined search goal, is a paradigm that can be translated to the physical realm of urban exploration. With mobile computing technology and its supporting infrastructure becoming ever more ubiquitous, a user's digital device can be transformed into a portal that connects their physical environment with the virtual, providing instant access to a plethora of information that can influence and guide their interactions with the city. This research proposes a framework for interacting with urban environments based on the paradigm of web surfing, using the technology and infrastructure of mobile computing.  An implementation has been developed that provides navigation information based on the user’s context.

This presentation describes ongoing work to create a model of constructive interpretation. It begins by recognising circumstances where the intention of an agent changes the way that they interpret external stimulus, such as when searching for an artefact that has a specific function. It then poses the question of how we can try to understand the way that an agent's current way of 'seeing the world' biases interpretation. This question is addressed by asking the question of how cognition occurs, and identifying those parts that are crucial for interpretation. We arrive at a method for exploring interpretation that requires representation of concepts, a way for concepts to interact to form a view of the world and a way for the view of the world and the current percepts to resolve to an interpretation. A specific proposal for developing a computational implementation of some of these ideas is discussed.

1PM: This research will operationalize pedagogical theories into a set of design principles that can be implemented in e-learning. The lens through which this work will focus is the constructivist and experiential learning theories. Embedding these theories into the e-learning design process will be done by generating a set of design patterns. These patterns will be used to guide e-learning designers and developers in the construction of e-learning applications.

The challenge in this research is the process of embedding the pedagogical theories into the design patterns, and by doing so refocussing the design of e-learning solutions onto pedagogy, rather than the current focus, which is usability. These design patterns will be evaluated to determine if they improve the design process and the students’ learning. To assess design effectiveness, the designers will be observed using the design patterns. To assess learning experiences, the resultant designs will be evaluated by a panel of experts and then tested on students to determine the quality of the learning experience.

The main contributions of this research will be:
1) Creating a theory and method of embedding pedagogical theories into
design patterns.
2) Confirmation if the design patterns improve the design process of
e-learning applications.
3) Determine if the use of design patterns improves the students’ learning
experience

4PM: Information technology is playing an increasing role in enhancing the capability of human creative thinking and problem solving. Can our knowledge of creativity and our experiences in creative practice inspire transformative research and education in computing? We see that research and development of new ideas and areas of study in computer
science, information technologies, and human computer interaction are emerging from interaction with creative professionals. The National Science Foundation is starting a funding program that addresses this trend by funding projects that give us a better understanding of creativity as cognitive and computational processes, of the models that lie behind information technology that enhancing human creative thinking, and how design (creative) thinking develops new products,
methods, organizations in the context of a perceived need or problem.