With the rapid advancement of affective agents, there is an increasing interest in enhancing agent's emotional communication and maximizing social response from users. This thesis investigates the influence of gender-emotion stereotypes on the communicating of emotional events by affective agents. One hundred and twenty-eight undergraduates with equal number of males and females, successfully participated in a 2 (affective agent's gender: male vs. female) x 2 (participant's gender: male and female) between-subjects experiment with twenty emotional events conveying four gender-stereotypic emotions presented by affective agents as within-subject factors. Significant main effects demonstrated that participants perceived affective agents to be exhibiting greater emotional intensity in stereotypic emotional events that were gender-consistent compared to those that were gender-inconsistent. On the other hand, participants experienced a higher level of message involvement and perceived affective agents to be exhibiting greater social presence and trustworthiness in stereotypic emotional events that were gender- inconsistent compared to those that were gender-consistent. In addition, female participants were found to possess greater sensitivity in the perception of emotional intensity and social pre sence than male participants in all stereotypic emotional events communicated by affective agents. The findings of the thesis suggest that appropriate matching of affective agent's gender with the stereotypic emotional events that it is communicating is critical in enhancing human-agent communication.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 170 p.; also includes graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Brenda Dervin, Communication Graduate Program. Includes bibliographical references (p. 135-144).

Games are fundamentally a social activity. The effects of this foundation can be felt at every level - from the social negotiation of rules, through cooperation and collaboration between players during the game, to the effects of relationships and social status on play. Social effects can change the way the game is played, but the mechanics of games can also affect the patterns of social behaviours of the players. The arrangement of game mechanics and interfaces together defines a ``social architecture". This architecture is not limited to directly social mechanics such as trading and messaging - the game design itself has a holistic effect on social activity. This dissertation frames games around these social aspects, and focuses on analysis of the patterns that emerge from these playful interactions. Firstly, a model is defined to understand games based on the social effects of play, and these effects explored based on the varying impact they have on the play experience. Mischief and deviance is also investigated as forces that challenge these social effects in and around games. Based on interaction data gathered from server logs of experimental social games, social network analysis is used as a tool to uncover the macroscopic social architectures formed by each design. This allows the use of quantitative methods to understand the nature of the relationship between game design and the social patterns that emerge around games in play. Key findings confirm that social activity follows a heavy-tailed distribution - a small number of ``hardcore" players are responsible for a disproportionately large number of interactions in the community of the game. Further than this, the connections between active hardcore and the rest of the player base show that without the hardcore users, the community of games as ``small worlds" would collapse, with large numbers of players being separated from the society within a game. The emergence of grouping behaviour is investigated based on the effect of social feedback. Following findings of social psychology in non-game environments, evidence is provided that highlights the effect of socio-contextual feedback on players forming strongly bound tribal groups within games. The communities formed through the play of games can be described in terms of network graphs - webs of interactions flowing around a network of players. Social network analyses of social games show the emergence of patterns of reciprocity, clustering and tribal behaviours among the players. The evidence also shows that the collections of game mechanics, or social architectures, of games have a predictable effect on the wider social patterns of the players. As such, this suggests games can be specifically engineered for social effects based on changes in the patterns of interactions, and issues around mechanical or interface elements can be identified based on anomalies observed in the network graph of player interactions. Together, this dissertation provides a link between the theoretical ideas around social play to the measurable effects of social behaviours of players within games. It proves that game designs, as mechanical systems, have a demonstrable effect on the social patterns of play, and that these patterns can be examined and used to engineer better game designs for the benefit of social experience.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. (2003) User Interface Design. MacMillan Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Vol. 4, London:MacMillan, 453-458. Article definition: This article covers the basic issues that the field of cognitive science raises in the design and testing of new digital technologies for human use. Contents list: Introduction, Cognitive Science and design, The Basics of Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Design Guidelines: from psychophysics to semiotics, Beyond guidelines Cognitive theories and models in HCI, Developing user-centered design methods, Summary, Bibliography, Glossary

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. (1990) Accessing information: a psychological analysis of researchers' perceptions of texts. In: M. Feeney and K. Merry (eds.) Information Technology and the Research Process, London: Bowker-Saur, 104-113. Abstract: An important aspect of any application of new technology is understanding how the proposed users of this technology conceptualise the task domain. In terms of the research process this requires an appreciation of researchers' practices and preferences. Only in this way is it possible to develop technology which will support the researcher. The present paper outlines work carried out within the academic community under the British Library funded Project QUARTET. It reports on research aimed at understanding human interaction with a variety of text-based information sources with a view to specifying user requirements for future technologies. By employing personal construct theory and repertory grid analysis it becomes possible to shed light on researchers' perceptions and uses of current sources of information. Results are presented and the implications of such findings for the development of information storage, retrieval and presentation systems will be discussed.

Previous research on gender differences and collaboration technology illustrate the need to investigate gender issues as early as possible in the development cycle in order to avoid any negative consequences the technology may impose. Therefore we are investigating the potential of 3D telepresence technology now when only a proof-of-concept demonstration of the technology exists. We conducted a controlled lab study using a post-test design in which male and female paramedics diagnosed and treated a trauma victim (a computerized mannequin) in collaboration with a physician via 2D video or a 3D proxy. The results show several gender differences that imply male paramedics may inherently receive more benefits from use of the 3D telepresence technology than female paramedics.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. and Zhu, E. (1997) Designing Web Based Instruction: A Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Perspective. In: Khan (ed.) Web-Based Instruction. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Educational Technology Publications, 221-225. Introduction: The general interest in the World Wide Web (WWW) as a medium for sharing and distributing textual and graphic information has brought about an increasing number of instruction-oriented web sites and web-based instructional pages. These range from offering supplemental (or even duplicate) instructional materials to students on campus to providing opportunities for off-campus individuals to complete courses via WWW. This chapter briefly discusses the design of web-based instruction from an HCI perspective, raising issues which instructors and designers need to consider in the design of web-based instruction, and suggesting ways in which instructors and designers can build optimal web instructional sites and pages.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. (1991) New technology and the reading process. Computers in Libraries, 11(6) 23-26. Abstract: The present paper discusses some the important issues involved in presenting text on screen. It is argued that reading is a complex cognitive and physical skill that requires careful analysis if technology is going to support rather than hinder the user. The need to consider texts individually in terms of how and why they are read as well as the type of information they contain is discussed. On the basis of a study of journal usage the implications of this approach for the presentation of electronic journals is described.

This thesis presents a multimodal sonification system that combines video with sound synthesis generated from motion capture data. Such a system allows for a fast and efficient exploration of musicians' ancillary gestural data, for which sonification complements conventional videos by stressing certain details which could escape one's attention if not displayed using an appropriate representation. The main objective of this project is to provide a research tool designed for people that are not necessarily familiar with signal processing or computer sciences. This tool is capable of easily generating meaningful sonifications thanks to dedicated mapping strategies. On the one hand, the dimensionality reduction of data obtained from motion capture systems such as the Vicon is fundamental as it may exceed 350 signals describing gestures. For that reason, a Principal Component Analysis is used to objectively reduce the number of signals to a subset that conveys the most significant gesture information in terms of signal variance. On the other hand, movement data presents high variability depending on the subjects: additional control parameters for sound synthesis are offered to restrain the sonification to the significant gestures, easily perceivable visually in terms of speed and path distance. Then, signal conditioning techniques are proposed to adapt the control signals to sound synthesis parameter requirements or to allow for emphasizing certain gesture characteristics that one finds important. All those data treatments are performed in realtime within one unique environment, minimizing data manipulation and facilitating efficient sonification designs. Realtime process also allows for an instantaneous system reset to parameter changes and process selection so that the user can easily and interactively manipulate data, design and adjust sonifications strategies.

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