What does inspiration mean to creative amateurs? Inspiration as a concept has been hard to define in information science terms. Several theories of information-seeking behavior have also been proposed to be applicable to inspiration-seeking, but have not seen empirical testing. While previous researchers on inspiration have mostly focused on artists and designers, this essay has studied amateurs and makers engaged in creative hobbies. Based on a survey distributed to study circles organized under Swedish adult educational associations, the grounded theory analysis indicated that inspiration is important as a feeling of motivation, joy, well-being and productivity, a source of ideas, and a driving force in the creative process. The results of the survey also showed that more passive information-seeking strategies, such as serendipitous encounters, browsing, and social interaction, were more commonly associated with finding inspiration than active strategies, such as systematic searches and question-based seeking, within the group. The responses showed that the respondents’ perceptions of inspiration were somewhat idiosyncratic, and future research based on individual or focus group interviews would be needed to explore the more ambiguous concepts and answers gleaned in this study. This is a two years master's thesis in Library and information science.

This thesis concerns the 2.0 decade, the decade when the social web started to develop. The main research objective is to contribute to our embedment in Internet technology in a conscious and livable way. The thesis is part of a general attempt to improve our understanding of the transformation taking place in the development of the web. We live in a time when knowledge contexts are moving from expert knowledge towards conversational knowledge. My research is mainly presented in the form of five essays. This thesis can be described as a conversational analysis of knowledge processes during the 2.0 decade. The 2.0 decade came to life in the wake of the information technology bubble in the end of the 1990s. The first decade of the 2000s was the decade when 'the Web' became 'Web 2.0' and the energy of the Internet switched from monetary speculations to conversations. Everyone wanted to start conversations and build digital technology, which induced conversations. Like the concept Web 2.0, this thesis came to life in the wake of the information technology bubble. It presupposes the knowledge relation between humans and our technology to be conversational rather than rational. This basically means that digital technology is not a tool but an integrated part in the person assemblage. There are many important thinkers embedded in this thesis. Some of them are more important than others, notably Gilles Deleuze and Donna Haraway. However, the thesis does not analyze the text of other thinkers, it involves them in the conversation. Important concepts as assemblage, rhizome (Deleuze) and cyborg (Haraway) are participants in the text rather than being its objectives. They are part of the general experience behind the essays, together with all the persons I have linked up to and the digital technology I have tried to become with. To become with (or develop together with) technology means to acknowledge the idea that technology is more than a tool. It is something within, not something external.

The background to this study lies in the discrepancy between the perceptions of international student mobility in the context of the internationalisation of higher education by the EU and universities on one hand and international students themselves in terms of their motivations to study abroad on the other hand. This is a comparative study based on three main case studies, of six universities in New Zealand, Oxford University in the UK and the Charles University in the Czech Republic. It explores the students’ experiences abroad in terms of their intercultural competence, the shaping of identities, the acquisition and transfer of knowledge, the possible forming of cosmopolitan mind-sets and empathy, perceptions of employability and their future mobility aspirations. This thesis also considers the barriers and ‘push and pull’ factors of mobility, perceptions of risk and uncertainty in regards to mobility and the role of serendipity in student mobility, which has been overlooked in the literature on mobility and migration. The theoretical framework of the study builds on social capital theory, Europeanisation and the ‘do-it-yourself biography’ theory. The nature of this topic, however, suggested the employment of the concepts of globalisation, transnationalism and consideration of other forms of capital, such as the total human capital, mobility capital and transnational identity capital. This is predominantly a qualitative, mixed-method and longitudinal research project, which uses surveys, case studies, interviews and the data collecting tool called grounded theory. It triangulates data to support and enhance the analytical validity of the thesis. This research concludes that student experiences abroad as well as the internationalisation efforts of universities and the EU would benefit from the introduction of education for global citizenship, which should focus on the intercultural competencies of students. The thesis suggests sociocultural elements for example the cosmopolitan mind-set can enhance the economic, academic and political rationales of internationalisation, such as employability.

A qualitative approach was taken to explore Canadian Congolese refugees’ experience of war trauma recovery. Six volunteers (three men and three women), who self-identified as traumatized by their experience of war in Congo and had lived in Canada for less than ten years, participated in in-depth interviews. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach to analysis, a core construct of Surviving War was identified. A hierarchical model of surviving war was developed that subsumed all other categories. By extrapolating principles from this model, a theory of Surviving War was developed which identifies factors that contribute to surviving war. Limitations of the current research are presented along with suggestions for further research. Recommendations for professionals working with a refugee population are also presented.

A qualitative approach was taken to explore Canadian Congolese refugees’ experience of war trauma recovery. Six volunteers (three men and three women), who self-identified as traumatized by their experience of war in Congo and had lived in Canada for less than ten years, participated in in-depth interviews. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach to analysis, a core construct of Surviving War was identified. A hierarchical model of surviving war was developed that subsumed all other categories. By extrapolating principles from this model, a theory of Surviving War was developed which identifies factors that contribute to surviving war. Limitations of the current research are presented along with suggestions for further research. Recommendations for professionals working with a refugee population are also presented.

Les travaux de recherche présentés et discutés dans cette thèse s’intéressent aux grandes collections d’images numériques. Plus particulièrement, nous cherchons à donner à un utilisateur la possibilité d’explorer ces collections d’images, soit dans le but d’en extraire de l’information et de la connaissance, soit de permettre une certaine sérendipité dans l’exploration. Ainsi, cette problématique est abordée du point de vue de l’analyse et l’exploration interactive des données. Nous tirons profit du paradigme de navigation par similarité et visons à respecter simultanément les trois contraintes suivantes : (i) traiter de grandes collections d’images, (ii) traiter des collections dont le nombre d’images ne cesse de croître au cours du temps et (iii) donner des moyens d’explorer interactivement des collections d’images. Pour ce faire, nous proposons d’effectuer une étude conjointe de l’indexation et de la visualisation de grandes collections d’images qui s’agrandissent au cours du temps. / The research work that is presented and discussed in this thesis focuses on large and evergrowing image collections. More specifically, we aim at providing one the possibility to explore such image collections, either to extract some kind of information and knowledge, or to wander in the collections. This thesis addresses this issue from the perspective of Interactive Data Exploration and Analytics. We take advantage of the similarity-based image collection browsing paradigm and aim at meeting simultaneously the three following constraints: (i) handling large image collections, up to millions of images, (ii) handling dynamic image collections, to deal with ever-growing image collections, and (iii) providing interactive means to explore image collections. To do so, we jointly study the indexing and the interactive visualisation of large and ever-growing image collections.

No description available.

Surprise is an important component of serendipity. In this research, we address the problem of measuring the capacity of a recommender system at embedding surprise in its recommendations. We show that changes in surprise of an item owing to the growth in user experience, as well as to the increase in the number of items in the repository, are not taken into account by the current metrics and evaluation methods. As a result, in so far as the time elapsed between two measurements grows, they become increasingly incommensurable. This poses as an additional challenge in the assessment of the degree to which a recommender is exposed to unfavourable conditions, such as over-specialisation or filter bubble. We argue that a) surprise is a finite resource in any recommender system, b) there are limits to the amount of surprise that can be embedded in a recommendation, and c) these limits allow us to create a scale up in which two measurements that were taken at different moments can be directly compared. By adopting these ideas as premises, we applied the deductive method to define the concepts of maximum and minimum potential surprises and designed a surprise metric called \"normalised surprise\" that employs these limits. Our main contribution is an evaluation method that estimates the normalised surprise of a system. Four experiments were conducted to test the proposed metrics. The aim of the first and the second experiments was to validate the quality of the estimates of minimum and maximum potential surprise values obtained by means of a greedy algorithm. The first experiment employed a synthetic dataset to explore the limits to surprise to a user, and the second one employed the Movielens-1M to explore the limits to surprise that can be embedded in a recommendation list. The third experiment also employed the Movielens-1M dataset and was designed to investigate the effect that changes in item representation and item comparison exert on surprise. Finally, the fourth experiment compares the proposed and the current state-of-the-art evaluation method in terms of their results and execution times. The results obtained from the experiments a) confirm that the quality of the estimates of potential surprise are adequate for the purpose of evaluating normalised surprise; b) show that the item representation and comparison model that is adopted has a strong effect on surprise; and c) indicate an association between high degrees of surprise and negatively skewed pairwise distance distributions, and also indicate a significant difference in the average normalised surprise of recommendations produced by a factorisation algorithm when the surprise employs the cosine or the Euclidean distance / A surpresa é um componente importante da serendipidade. Nesta pesquisa, abordamos o problema de medir a capacidade de um sistema de recomendação de incorporar surpresa em suas recomendações. Mostramos que as mudanças na surpresa de um item, devidas ao crescimento da experiência do usuário e ao aumento do número de itens no repositório, não são consideradas pelas métricas e métodos de avaliação atuais. Como resultado, na medida em que aumenta o tempo decorrido entre duas medições, essas se tornam cada vez mais incomensuráveis. Isso se apresenta como um desafio adicional na avaliação do grau em que um sistema de recomendação está exposto a condições desfavoráveis como superespecialização ou filtro invisível. Argumentamos que a) surpresa é um recurso finito em qualquer sistema de recomendação; b) há limites para a quantidade de surpresa que pode ser incorporada em uma recomendação; e c) esses limites nos permitem criar uma escala na qual duas medições que foram tomadas em momentos diferentes podem ser comparadas diretamente. Ao adotar essas ideias como premissas, aplicamos o método dedutivo para definir os conceitos de surpresa potencial máxima e mínima e projetar uma métrica denominada \"surpresa normalizada\", que emprega esses limites. Nossa principal contribuição é um método de avaliação que estima a surpresa normalizada de um sistema. Quatro experimentos foram realizados para testar as métricas propostas. O objetivo do primeiro e do segundo experimentos foi validar a qualidade das estimativas de surpresa potencial mínima e máxima obtidas por meio de um algoritmo guloso. O primeiro experimento empregou um conjunto de dados sintético para explorar os limites de surpresa para um usuário, e o segundo empregou o Movielens-1M para explorar os limites da surpresa que pode ser incorporada em uma lista de recomendações. O terceiro experimento também empregou o conjunto de dados Movielens-1M e foi desenvolvido para investigar o efeito que mudanças na representação de itens e na comparação de itens exercem sobre a surpresa. Finalmente, o quarto experimento compara os métodos de avaliação atual e proposto em termos de seus resultados e tempos de execução. Os resultados que foram obtidos dos experimentos a) confirmam que a qualidade das estimativas de surpresa potencial são adequadas para o propósito de avaliar surpresa normalizada; b) mostram que o modelo de representação e comparação de itens adotado exerce um forte efeito sobre a surpresa; e c) apontam uma associação entre graus de surpresa elevados e distribuições assimétricas negativas de distâncias, e também apontam diferenças significativas na surpresa normalizada média de recomendações produzidas por um algoritmo de fatoração quando a surpresa emprega a distância do cosseno ou a distância Euclidiana

At some point during a creative action something clicks, suddenly the prospective problem solver just knows the solution to a problem, and a feeling of joy and relief arises. This phenomenon, called Eureka experience, insight, Aha moment, hunch, epiphany, illumination, or serendipity, has been part of human narrations for thousands of years. It is the moment of a subjective experience, a surprising, and sometimes a life-changing event. In this thesis, I narrow down this moment 1. conceptually, 2. experientially, and 3. temporally. The concept of emerging solutions has a multidisciplinary background in Cognitive Science, Arts, Design, and Engineering. Through the discussion of previous terminology and comparative reviews of historical literature, I identify sources of ambiguity surrounding this phenomenon and suggest unifying terms as the basis for interdisciplinary exploration. Tracking the experience based on qualitative data from 11 creative practitioners, I identify conflicting aspects of existing models of creative production. To bridge this theoretical and disciplinary divide between iterative design thinking and sequential models of creativity, I suggest a novel multi-layered model. Empirical support for this proposal comes from Dira, a computer-based open-ended experimental paradigm. As part of this thesis I developed the task and 40 unique sets of stimuli and response items to collect dynamic measures of the creative process and evade known problems of insightful tasks. Using Dira, I identify the moment when solutions emerge from the number and duration of mouse-interactions with the on-screen elements and the 124 participants' self-reports. I provide an argument for the multi-layered model to explain a discrepancy between the timing observed in Dira and existing sequential models. Furthermore, I suggest that Eureka moments can be assessed on more than a dichotomous scale, as the empirical data from interviews and Dira demonstrates for this rich human experience. I conclude that the research on insight benefits from an interdisciplinary approach and suggest Dira as an instrument for future studies.

This thesis describes how I took part in a series of collaborations with dancers Danai Pappa and Katie Hall, musician George Williams and video artist Julie Kuzminska. To realise our collaborations, I built electronic sculptural instruments from junk using bricolage, the act of subversion, skip diving and appropriation. From an auto-ethnographic viewpoint, I explored how collaborations began, how relationships developed and how various levels of expertise across different disciplines were negotiated. I examined how the documentation of the performances related to, and could be realised as, video art in their own right. I investigated the themes of work, labour and effort that are used in the process of producing and documenting these works in order to better understand how to ‘create’. I analysed the gender dynamics that existed between my collaborators and myself, which led to the exploration of issues around interaction and intimacy, democratic roles and live art. The resulting works challenged gender stereotypes, the notion of what a musical instrument can be and how sound is produced through action/interaction. I found that reflective time was imperative; serendipity, constant awareness of one’s environment, community and intimate relationships greatly enhanced the success of the collaborations. Instruments became conduits and instigators with shifting implied genders based on their context or creative use. As well as sound being a product of movement, effort and interaction, I realised it was also an artefact of the instruments.