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Two experiments were conducted to investigate how performance on a primary rock climbing task is affected by the inclusion of a secondary word memory task. In Experiment 1, twelve experienced rock climbers completed a dual traverse climb and word memory task, with participants’ performance analysed relative to their single task performance (climbing alone and word memory alone). Participants’ climbing efficiency and word recall were significantly lower in the dual-task condition. Experiment 2 examined the effects of emotional content on climbing performance. Fifteen experienced rock climbers completed two dual-tasks, in which they were asked to recall negatively valenced or neutral words. Climbing efficiency, climbing distance, and word recall were all significantly lower in the dual-task conditions, relative to the single-task conditions. Climbing efficiency and climbing distance were also significantly lower in the negative word dual-task, relative to the neutral word dual-task. The findings from these two experiments have important human factors implications for occupational settings that require climbing-like operations, including search and rescue and fire-fighting.

What does it mean to do the disco? Or perform a cheerleading routine? Or move in a style appropriate for a given mode of human interaction? Answering these questions requires an interpretation of what differentiates two distinct movement styles and a method for parsing this difference into quantitative parameters. Furthermore, such an understanding of principles of style has applications in control, robotics, and dance theory. This thesis present a definition for “style of motion” that is rooted in dance theory, a framework for stylistic motion generation that separates basic movement ordering from its precise trajectory, and an inverse optimal control method for extracting these stylistic parameters from real data. On the part of generation, the processes of sequencing and scaling are modulated by the stylistic parameters enumerated: an automation that lists basic primary movements, sets which determine the final structure of the state machine that encodes allowable sequences, and weights in an optimal control problem that generates motions of the desired quality. This generation framework is demonstrated on a humanoid robotic platform for two distinct case studies – disco dancing and cheerleading. In order to extract the parameters that comprise the stylistic definition put forth, two inverse optimal control problems are posed and solved -- one to classify individual movements and one to segment longer movement sequences into smaller motion primitives. The motion of a real human leg (recorded via motion capture) is classified in an example. Thus, the contents of the thesis comprise a tool to produce and understand stylistic motion.

The purpose of this paper is to present, illustrate and systematize documentation on projected and existing international examples and housing conditions for an aging population and to question the architect's role in terms of person-environment relations.As architects we often base our design on assumptions. A thorough training in the techniques of systematic observation can provide information, and data for improvements and necessities.The paper consists of two main parts. The first part focuses on research of theoretical and practical design aspects through a retrospective look at the history and the physiology of aging.Major goals are:• To increase the knowledge of person-environment interactions through a better understanding of behavioral systems of older people (environment as a stimulant).• To examine environmental attributes constituting an appropriate environment for an independent life (therapeutic aspects of design).• To identify necessities and ways of filling gaps in the relationship between theoretical design aspects and their practical application.•To refelect on historical aspects of aging by showing the ambivalence and changeability in man's systems of values.The second part of the paper considers several international innovative housing and living arrangements in an illustrative way. / Department of Architecture

To build for living is to understand that built form exists only in relationship to the life that occupies it and that human life is better when it is in constant interaction with the built environment; we design it, build it, and change it as we design, build, and change our selves. Making your own place and changing it over time is an important component of living one's life to its fullest. To explore these issues, designs were made for an adaptable building type - the "mountain hut," a temporary accommodation for its wandering inhabitants. Designing it twice, as well as relocating the initial building type across the globe, from the mountains of Sierra Nevada to the Himalayas in Nepal, provided an opportunity to compare and understand the influences of local environmental and cultural conditions on the building's adaptability, as well as the level of interactivity its inhabitants could experience as they occupied and transformed the dwelling. Both designs incorporate sustainable design principles, which strengthen the overall comparison of climatic responses and the use of local materials and building technologies. / Department of Architecture

In this study, Multidimensional Scaling of a reperatory grid using five point scale was found to be a flexible, precise and sensitive method of measuring visual quality and preference. The results of the multidimensional scaling were found to be consistent with the arithmetic means of a five point rating scale. Each of the two major dimensions of the spatial configuration gave important insights into the criteria by which Muncie residents (Ball State Students) evaluated townscapes. "Dim 1" revealed the importance of whether the townscapes have dense or little vegetative cover, and "Dim 2" indicated that visual perception of a townscape is influenced by whether it is "old" or "new". In addition the resulting solutions also showed a high positive correlation between visual quality and preference.The dimensions may be used as generalized guidelines for determining characteristics of visual quality and preferred townscapes. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Radar surveillance systems, in both airspace and maritime domains, are facing increasing challenges in dealing with objects that cannot be detected by traditional transponder-based radar surveillance technologies. These objects, including birds, weather, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), hot balloons, are labeled as non-cooperative objects. In order to prevent ambiguity and confusion for human operators using the surveillance data non-cooperative objects are commonly treated as unwanted clutter and removed from the displayed data. However, the omitted information of non-cooperative object can be critical to aircraft safety. With new developments in technology and radar capabilities, it is possible to detect these non-cooperative objects and consider how to distribute relevant information about them to human operators throughout a system. The research goal of this thesis is to identify the human factors challenges in future radar surveillance systems where non-cooperative object information is distributed to both air traffic controllers and pilots. In order to achieve the goal, the thesis first constructed a model of surveillance information distribution in current ATC operations and a model of surveillance information distribution in the expected future operational environment. The expected future surveillance information distribution model was then carefully examined to identify potential human factors challenges in the non-cooperative object information distribution process. Two of the identified challenges (non-equal time delay and information level of details) were studied in depth through conducting human-in-the-loop experiments and online surveys. The results of an asynchronous information (non-equal time delay) static simulation environment experiment showed that while a delay in the non-cooperative object information would lead to observable but not statistically significant longer communication time, it does have a significant effect on number of clarification statements ??? with an increase of time delay, more clarifications were made. A survey of controller and pilot perceptions of maximum acceptable delay showed no significant differences in the average maximum acceptable delay reported by controller (20.5 seconds) and pilot (13.64 seconds) participants. Future research should consider adopting dynamic simulation environment, subject matter experts and shorter delay intervals to identify an acceptable delay threshold. The survey results also demonstrated that there are more controllers and pilots who have had encounters with UAS in their daily tasks than what was originally expected. The survey also helped identify operational information requirements and availabilities for individual UAS and challenges in sharing non-cooperative object information between controllers and pilots. These findings are quite valuable as they provide guidance on future radar surveillance systems design in supporting the effective distribution of non-cooperative object information. Future work should complete the analysis of the survey and create more dynamic environment for studying information asynchrony.

Most multi-user horizontal interactive surfaces, or tabletop computers, cannot determine which user has performed a given action. These tabletops are less capable than identity-aware (IA) tabletops, which can. However, current research on IA is scarce and speculative. Notably, no one has rigorously compared the power of IA and non-IA devices, so evidence that IA enables groups to work better together is lacking. My thesis establishes an identity-aware perspective for interactive surface design. First, I have constructed an experiment to determine that IA can improve the effectiveness of small collaborative groups. A second experiment compares several emulation techniques designed to bring the benefits of IA to non-IA devices. I explore IA in detail through examples, present some open problems involving IA, and discuss promising solutions. Taken as a whole, this document serves as a comprehensive introduction to the study of identity awareness and a springboard for future research on the topic.

The research reported in this thesis had two aims. To investigate how the variability and complexity of the mobile context of use should be addressed when capturing user needs for mobile products and to explore the role of indirect methods of data capture as tools for eliciting user needs in a form appropriate for informing the scenario based design of mobile products during the. earliest stages of product development. This research presents a novel scenario-based approach to eliciting and representing user needs in a form suitable for informing the earliest exploratory stages of mobile product design. Within this approach scenarios are used to provide snapshots of actual or envisaged product use that can be used to find a starting point for design when there is no clearly defined focus for innovation. Scenarios are organized into sets using scenario tables to structure consideration of key variables within the mobile context of use. These key variables are identified as: mobility, emotion, social relationship and communication purpose. Three user studies were conducted using UK undergraduate students as the study population. Study One explored use of schematic representations ('maps') of each participant's social communications and mobility as tools for eliciting user needs, both in relation to existing mobile product use and in relation to projected use of future mobile product concepts. Study Two used a diary study method to explore existing mobile communications use. Ways of structuring consideration of the mobile context of use were explored and the effectiveness of the diary as a tool for eliciting user needs and for scenario generation was assessed. Study Three extended the diary study approach to include consideration ofthe emotional context of product use and to include pictorial feedback of diary entries to study participants. These personal representations of product use were used to further explore user needs and to prompt participants to generate narratives describing motivations for product use suitable for presentation in scenario form.