<p>Text communication is often perceived as lacking some components of communication that are essential in sustaining interaction or conversation. This interaction incoherency tends to make&nbsp / text communication plastic. It is traditionally devoid of intonation, pitch, gesture, facial expression and visual or auditory cues. Nevertheless, Instant Messaging (IM), a form of text communication is on the upward uptake both on PCs and on mobile handhelds. There is a need to rubberise this plastic text messaging to improve co-presence for text communications thereby improving&nbsp / synchronous textual discussion, especially on handheld devices. One element of interaction is gesture, seen as a natural way of conversing. Attaining some level of interaction naturalism&nbsp / requires improving synchronous communication spontaneity, partly achieved by enhancing input mechanisms. To enhance input mechanisms for interactive text-based chat on mobile devices,&nbsp / there is a need to facilitate gesture input. Enhancement is achievable in a number of ways, such as input mechanism redesigning and input offering adaptation. This thesis explores affective gesture mode on interface redesign as an input offering adaptation. This is done without a major physical reconstruction of handheld devices. This thesis presents a text only IM system built on&nbsp / Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). It was developed with a novel user-defined hotkey implemented as a one-click context menu to &ldquo / fast-track&rdquo / text-gestures and emoticons. A hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach was taken to enable data triangulation. Results from experimental trials show that an&nbsp / Affective Gesture (AG)approach improved IM chat spontaneity/response. Feedback from the user trials affirms that AG hotkey improves chat responsiveness, thus enhancing chat spontaneity.</p>

<p>This investigation has been carried out at the RoyalInstitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. The main goal hasbeen to investigate the factors determining the production of asense of presence and reality in video mediated communication.Presenceis in these studies defines as the subjectiveexperience of being together in one place when one isphysically situated in another. Presence is an emergentproperty; it has no physicality, but arises as a mentalsensation. Special attention has been paid to spatial factors,embodiment issues, and narrative elements related to theproduction of presence.</p><p>A context map has been used in order to model the semanticsof presence production and to visualize the relationshipsbetween the determining factors. The conclusions may besummarized as follows:</p><p>    Knowledge about physical and extended spaces and bodiesand of the shifting of attention between these is importantin presence production.</p><p>    Well planned design of physical and virtual spacesenhances the sense of presence.</p><p>    Coherent design and production of mediated embodiment canenhance the sense of presence.</p><p>    Conscious use of content characteristics, e.g., goodstorytelling, can enhance the sense of presence.</p><p>    Different communication modes need the support ofdifferent combinations of presence production factors.</p><p>    Even technically poorly mediated communication maysupport a sense of presence and reality if the storytellingis good.</p><p>    The human sensory environment should be supported by asense of non-mediation, technological transparency, on theplane of discourse.</p><p>    The results indicate that individual differencesinfluence the sense of presence and reality.</p><p>The perception of video mediated communication evolves aspeople become daily users. People seem to intuitively begin tointerpret new types of mediated cues, adding what is missing incomparison to a real time physical communicationexperience.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>Telepresence, presence, social presence,co-presence, concept modeling, virtual reality, person space,task space, narration, video mediated communication, videoconferencing.</p>

<p>Text communication is often perceived as lacking some components of communication that are essential in sustaining interaction or conversation. This interaction incoherency tends to make&nbsp / text communication plastic. It is traditionally devoid of intonation, pitch, gesture, facial expression and visual or auditory cues. Nevertheless, Instant Messaging (IM), a form of text communication is on the upward uptake both on PCs and on mobile handhelds. There is a need to rubberise this plastic text messaging to improve co-presence for text communications thereby improving&nbsp / synchronous textual discussion, especially on handheld devices. One element of interaction is gesture, seen as a natural way of conversing. Attaining some level of interaction naturalism&nbsp / requires improving synchronous communication spontaneity, partly achieved by enhancing input mechanisms. To enhance input mechanisms for interactive text-based chat on mobile devices,&nbsp / there is a need to facilitate gesture input. Enhancement is achievable in a number of ways, such as input mechanism redesigning and input offering adaptation. This thesis explores affective gesture mode on interface redesign as an input offering adaptation. This is done without a major physical reconstruction of handheld devices. This thesis presents a text only IM system built on&nbsp / Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). It was developed with a novel user-defined hotkey implemented as a one-click context menu to &ldquo / fast-track&rdquo / text-gestures and emoticons. A hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach was taken to enable data triangulation. Results from experimental trials show that an&nbsp / Affective Gesture (AG)approach improved IM chat spontaneity/response. Feedback from the user trials affirms that AG hotkey improves chat responsiveness, thus enhancing chat spontaneity.</p>

Loneliness is increasingly understood as a significant physical and mental health concern in modern society. Yet studies of the subject typically characterise it as resulting entirely from subjective individual characteristics and circumstances. The impact of broader living environments is understudied, leaving disciplines such as urban planning with little guidance as to how environmental intervention strategies might best ameliorate loneliness. This paper uses Stockholm as a case study for asking two place-based questions: (1) what can our knowledge of loneliness risk factors tell us about the possible spatial distribution of loneliness in cities? (2) what influence does the built environment itself have on loneliness? An abductive approach is used to test different ways in which urban planners might map risk of loneliness and social isolation in different neighbourhoods. The results shed light on spatial segregation as a potential contributing factor, with implications for planning practice.

With camera, smart phone, and wireless connection to a worldwide distribution source on a single device that fits in your pocket, now billions of citizens are able to become sousveillant micro-media activist – in real time. This case study investigates purposive texts in detail from over 50 hours of live and archived streaming video webcasts taken from geographically diverse sites. The goal is to explore how this tool is being used by videographers in a complex 21st century social movement. My sample video texts were gathered in late February and early March 2012 as the Occupy Movement stirred to life after a relatively quiet winter (from the corporate media’s point-of-view). In this project, I examine how Occupy’s use of live-streaming video combines “mediated co-presence” (Giddens 1984; Ito 2005) with “networked autonomy” (Castells 2011) to represent the ambivalent face of a complex, postmodern movement for social justice. / text

This Master Thesis concerns a telepresence implementation which utilizes state-of-the-art virtual reality combined with live 360 degree video. Navigation interfaces for telepresence with virtual reality headsets were developed and evaluated through a user study. An evaluation of telepresence as a communication media was performed, comparing it to video communication. The result showed that telepresence was a better communication media than video communication.

There is an apparent problem with children being abused in different ways in their everyday life and the lack of education related to these issues among working adults in the vicinity of these children, for example as social workers or teachers. There are formal courses in child interview training that teach participants how to talk to children in a correct manner. Avatar-mediation enables new methods of practicing this communication without having to involve a real child or role play face-to-face with another adult. In this study it was explored how a system could be designed in order to enable educational practice sessions where a child interview expert can be mediated through avatars in the form of virtual children. Prototypes were developed in order to evaluate the feasibility of the scenario regarding methods for controlling the avatar and how the avatar was perceived by the participants. It was found that there is a clear value in the educational approach of using avatar-mediation. From the perspective of the interactor it was found that using a circular radial interface for graphical representation of different emotions was possible to control a video-based avatar while simultaneously having a conversation with the participant. The results of the study include a proposed design of an interface, description of underlying system functionality and suggestions on how avatar behavior can be characterized in order to achieve a high level of presence for the participant.

Cette thèse vise à appréhender les rapports à l’espace et la coprésence des individus habitant de façon temporaire ou permanente une ville soumise au double processus de patrimonialisation et mise en tourisme. Si de nombreux «hauts-lieux» touristiques dont le développement est fondé sur le patrimoine, tels les centres anciens de Venise ou Bruges ou Tolède, sont caractérisés par le fait qu’ils sont investis par les touristes jour et nuit tout au long de l’année, nous pouvons nous demander comment fonctionnent et évoluent les lieux urbains patrimoniaux qui connaissent une fréquentation touristique moins forte et davantage marquée par la saisonnalité.En ce sens, les petites villes mises en tourisme et en patrimoine constituent un terrain d’enquête fécond, d’autant qu’elles retiennent encore peu l’attention des géographes s’intéressant au tourisme. Considérant l’urbanité telle que définie par Lévy et Lussault comme le croisement de la densité et de la diversité, ces villes connaissent des degrés d’urbanité fluctuant, passant d’une certaine forme «d’entre-soi» hors saison touristique à une forte densité doublée d’une mixité importante en haute saison.Dans l’objectif d’appréhender les rapports à l’espace, nous nous intéressons aux représentations, aux pratiques et aux modalités d’appropriation de l’espace par des individus habitant de façon temporaire ou permanente Dinan (Côtes d’Armor) et Sarlat (Dordogne), deux villes connaissant des niveaux de mises en tourisme et en patrimoine conséquents mais différents. Reprenant la typologie développée par l’Équipe MIT, ce sera alors une lecture croisée d’une ville à fonction touristique et d’une ville touristifiée qui sera menée. / This thesis aims at understanding the relation to space and the co-presence of individuals living temporarily or permanently in a city subjected to the double process of heritage and tourism. While many "hauts-lieux" which development is based on heritage, such as the ancient centers of Venice or Bruges or Toledo are characterized by the fact that they are invested by tourists day and night throughout the year, we can ask ourselves how urban heritage places, which have a lower level of tourist activity and are more marked by seasonality, operate and evolve.In this sense, small touristic and historic cities constitute a fertile ground of inquiry, especially since they still receive little attention from geographers interested in tourism. Considering urbanity as defined by Lévy and Lussault combining density and diversity, these cities experience various degrees of urbanity, moving from a form of "entre-soi" outside the touristic season to a high density coupled with a high mix in high season.In order to understand the relation to space, we are interested in the representations, practices and modes of appropriation of space of individuals living temporarily or permanently in Dinan (Côtes d'Armor) and Sarlat (Dordogne), two cities with different levels of touristic development and heritage making, substantial but different. Using the typology developed by the Equipe MIT, it will be a cross-reading of a city with a tourist function and a touristified city that will be carried out.

Magister Scientiae - MSc / Text communication is often perceived as lacking some components of communication that are essential in sustaining interaction or conversation. This interaction incoherency tends to make text communication plastic. It is traditionally devoid of intonation, pitch, gesture, facial expression and visual or auditory cues. Nevertheless, Instant Messaging (IM), a form of text communication is on the upward uptake both on PCs and on mobile handhelds. There is a need to rubberise this plastic text messaging to improve co-presence for text communications thereby improving synchronous textual discussion, especially on handheld devices. One element of interaction is gesture, seen as a natural way of conversing. Attaining some level of interaction naturalism requires improving synchronous communication spontaneity, partly achieved by enhancing input mechanisms. To enhance input mechanisms for interactive text-based chat on mobile devices, there is a need to facilitate gesture input. Enhancement is achievable in a number of ways, such as input mechanism redesigning and input offering adaptation. This thesis explores affective gesture mode on interface redesign as an input offering adaptation. This is done without a major physical reconstruction of handheld devices. This thesis presents a text only IM system built on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). It was developed with a novel user-defined hotkey implemented as a one-click context menu to "fast-track" text-gestures and emoticons. A hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach was taken to enable data triangulation. Results from experimental trials show that an Affective Gesture (AG) approach improved IM chat spontaneity/response. Feedback from the user trials affirms that AG hotkey improves chat responsiveness, thus enhancing chat spontaneity.

Urban segregation is considered a major social problem in Sweden and several national anti-segregation initiatives have been launched to decrease social and ethnic segregation but so far only with marginal effects (SOU 2005:29). Urban design and town planning are rarely the focus in national anti-segregation initiatives; the architectural issue has mainly been confined to matters concerning housing policies. This thesis argues that the strong focus on residential segregation in prevailing research on urban segregation is unfortunate and skewed, confusing issues related to urban design.This licentiate thesis explores urban segregation in relation to urban form because physical separation between people or between activities has an obvious direct relationship to how cities are shaped and structured by built form. Urban public space is often neglected in discussions on segregation and this thesis suggests that its role has been underrated. If it can be shown that segregation in public space influences such aspects of life as accessibility to other people and amenities, movement flows, co-presence in public space, and movement patterns, then it can be established that urban public space – as it is structured and shaped by built form – very directly influences people’s everyday lives. The thesis explores how urban segregation can be conceptualized, analysed, and described in a way that increases knowledge and under­standing regarding the role of urban form. Using a configurational morphological approach, this study shifts the focus by bringing attention to spatial relations within the city through public space, i.e., from spatial location to spatial relations. Hence, analysis focuses on distributions of space and through space rather than distributions in space. The result shows that configurational theories, methods, and tools contribute to more nuanced descriptions of spatial relations on both a local and a comprehensive level and analysis has the ability to shed light on essential differences in neighbourhoods and in the city as a whole. Using Södertälje as a case study, this thesis found a pronounced ruptured interface between the global and the local structure that clearly speaks of segregation in public space; this finding suggests that whether the neighbourhoods are residentially segregated or not, public space in most areas already is segregated. Results show that the built environment has a significant influence: urban space can both reinforce and mitigate certain social outcomes. This thesis identifies various negative social consequences of the hierarchical and segregated spatial structure found in Södertälje. Although it is not possible to say that integration processes are hindered by urban form, it is possible to conclude that spatial properties may both create and reproduce segregation patterns.Segregation in public space is found to be a far more urgent issue in the context of urban segregation than earlier recognised, and the result shows that urban form has a distinguishable influence on people’s everyday lives. This understanding opens for the possibility to address urban segregation from an urban design perspective, contributing to a significant discussion of space and society as well as issues related to urban sustainability. The findings of this study widen the possibility for urban design practice to be an important tool within anti-segregation initiatives in the future, a tool that in Sweden is used only to a very limited extent. / <p>QC 20101109</p>