Zugl.: München, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

With the use of touch-screen enabled interfaces, came a new era for in-car interactions. Sadly, no technology comes without drawbacks, in this case the demand of visual attention, which is desperately needed to operate the vehicle in a safe manner. The main motivation for this project is finding a way to bring the sense of touch back to interfaces while retaining the flexibility that touch-screens have introduced. The collaborating partner for this project was Icon Incar, who also supported it in many ways. The research phase of this project has been carried out at the company HQ in Berlin. This included feedback sessions at the company, reading research papers on haptics and automotive interfaces, talking to experts in the field of haptics and the facilitation of a workshop. The research helped to confirm the initial problem statement and helped to form ideas in the ideation stage, of which there were many. Those ideas were a mixture of technologies and sensing abilities that went far beyond the initial problem statement in order keep a brother scope. There were many feedback session, with different people, which were necessary to weed out the bad ideas and keep the viable ones for testing. While building and testing the first prototypes, there was simultaneously a quest going on to find a solution for fully actuated and shape shifting displays, something that has not been done before. While coming up with dozens of possible technical solutions, the fact was overlooked that none of them would provide a good experience (except some far fetched futuristic granular systems). As it turns out, actuating the display itself would not cause any problems, but manipulating the actuation would, because it would not give the best experience. Manipulating actuated button would work and feel just fine, but sliders and knobs - whenever the finger has to move over a surface - would feel unnatural. After more analysis, I found that there is not one technology yet, that could stimulate all the different properties a human being can feel with the sense of touch. Therefor, there have to be many technologies working together to provide the best possible experience. More than a dozen haptic prototypes have been built and tested to help the users perform various tasks blindly. Those ranged from controlling the climate, scrolling throughout lists, identifying functions and getting feedback for selected options. Many of the ideas did not work out as expected and were discontinued after the haptic testing, which was a vital part of the process. The working ideas were then combined into a larger concept. To simplify the interface even more, a general list of features was thoroughly studied so that functions could be simplified, combined or discarded. Drivers and car dealers have been interviewed to understand what the most commonly used functions are. The analysis of existing interfaces has shown that there is currently only one function and type of information provided at any time. This means that the driver can not see directions while changing the music, for example. The concept layout will, therefore, provide information about all the basic functions (climate control, navigation, music and phone) where one function shows all information and others only the basics. To avoid visual clutter and ensure quick recognition, graphic elements have been distilled to their essential forms while still retaining a sense of visual pleasure. To identify, differentiate between and set climate control, the knob for heating would change its temperature, the ventilation knob blow air at the set speed and the air flow direction knob would tilt in the set direction. While the volume knob would react to the beat of the music. With the help of microfluidics, active buttons would pop out of the screen and can be identified by their shapes. When activating those shape shifting buttons, the driver would feel feedback, similar to the one of real buttons, provided by an actuator at the back of the display. The combination of all listed solutions would provide simpler interactions and help the drivers to keep their focus on the road. This would in turn make driving a better and safer experience.

This diploma thesis covers and discusses the issues of tabloidization within the news and media field. It is divided into two parts; the theoretical part and the analytical part. The theoretical part defines the concept of tabloid media, its history, and key characteristics. In addition, it describes the characteristics of tabloid media in stylistics and lexicology. The analytical part of the thesis analyzes the theoretical principles which are then applied to specific examples using the Blesk magazine and MF Today newspapers. The aim of this paper is to confirm or decline the phenomenon of tabloidization.

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., 2008 u.d.T.: Alt, O.: Modell-basierter Systemtest von Car-Multimedia-Systemen mit SysML

In order to realize effective infotainment systems for vehicles, we need to have context-aware applications that use the latest (live) information for an enhanced user experience. Such up-to-date information is now abundantly available on the Internet, due to the explosive growth of the Web 2.0. In earlier times, it was difficult and expensive for vehicles to connect to the Internet. Recent advances in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) have enabled vehicles to connect to the Internet through road side infrastructures, with little to no additional cost. However, there are several problems with directly using Internet data in a vehicle, such as (1) Internet data sources have their own interfaces, which keep changing over time, needing frequent application updates, (2) information provided by multiple data sources needs to be preprocessed and fused before use, and (3) vehicles employ propriety platforms for infotainment systems, which makes an application update even more cumbersome. Furthermore, accessing multiple Internet sources may cause unnecessary overhead over the VANET bandwidth. In this thesis, we propose a cloud-based middleware framework for vehicular infotainment application development. The proposed framework follows service oriented architecture in which data filtering and fusion functionalities are delegated to the cloud. Data filtering and fusion reduce the data flow over VANET. Furthermore, because most the the processing is done on the cloud, the client becomes lightweight and loosely coupled with Internet resources and underlying platforms. We also propose a class based fusion method to combine information from multiple sources. The efficacy of the proposed framework is validated by developing an enhanced navigation (eDirection) application for the vehicle, as well as three infotainment applications: context-aware music, news, and weather.

Many scholars have noted the increasingly widespread combination of politically-relevant information and entertaining or sensational media formats and presentational styles over the past several decades, falling broadly under the umbrella term of ‘infotainment.’ However, in spite of this burgeoning infotainment literature very little research has been done on the nature and dynamics of infotainment within the Canadian context. This is especially true of research on infotainment within Canada’s traditional news media outlets. To being filling this gap, this study undertakes a mixed-methods content analysis of Canadian newspapers’ coverage of the 2019 federal election to evaluate the scope and nature of infotainment therein. Building off of a systematic review and mapping of the existing infotainment literature, this study develops a comprehensive conceptual and analytical framework for defining and evaluating infotainment characteristics within ‘hard news’ coverage. The quantitative and qualitative results are outlined in detail before being evaluated for their potential implications on citizens’ information processing and political knowledge, as well as some broader evaluations of potential implications for Canadian politics. These ethico-political considerations are developed by drawing on insights from a number of literatures, including political psychology and decision-making, strategic voting, and broader media and infotainment research.

La vie politique française est dépeinte depuis longtemps dans les médias par des humoristes. Songeons à Coluche bien évidemment, mais n’oublions pas Pierre Dac, le premier humoriste candidat à l’élection présidentielle (1965) dans une grande démocratie occidentale après 1950. Aujourd’hui, Ils s’appellent Nicolas Canteloup, Alex Vizorek, Guillaume Meurice, Charline Vanhoenacker, Nicole Ferroni, Ils sont des hommes et des femmes présents à l’antenne d’une radio en matinale ou en soirée et ils racontent à leur manière la vie politique en France, en riant des mandataires politiques. Cette thèse propose de rendre compte de leur discours en identifiant une typologie à quatre volets: le discours militant, le discours de dédramatisation, le discours obscène et le discours injurieux. Ancrée dans les approches théoriques du rire de supériorité, cette thèse livre un regard critique sur l'humour politique, moins innocent qu'on pourrait le croire. Elle consiste en une exploration des cibles des humoristes par une analyse de contenu, avant de poursuivre par une analyse approfondie de 1312 sketchs via une analyse de discours critique. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This paper deals with rendering of automobiles with use of WebGL technology. Aim of this paper is proposal and implementation of method for realistic and stylized rendering of 3D models of automobiles for internal use as a simple preview of automobile in development and presentation or for use in infotainment systems directly in automobiles. Part of this paper is implementation and outline of reachable options and properties of such implementation. This paper is created in cooperation with company SKODA AUTO a.s.

Teknikutvecklingen inom bilbranschen ökar i takt med konsumenters krav på multifunktionella system. Mobiltelefoner är ett vanligt inslag i konsumenternas vardag och används dessvärre även under bilkörning. Det finns ett tydligt samband mellan mobilanvändning bakom ratten och antalet trafikolyckor. Detta antal skulle kunna minska om infotainmentsystem kan erbjuda samma funktionalitet fast på ett mer trafiksäkert sätt. Det finns idag riktlinjer gällande användarupplevelse och trafiksäkerhet från Android och NHTSA. Denna uppsats syftar till att undersöka hur väl dessa befintliga riktlinjer går att kombinera samt att ta fram nya riktlinjer för hur utvecklare kan förhålla sig till köpfunktionalitet i en infotainmentapplikation. För att uppnå detta har en prototyp av en infotainmentapplikation med sådan funktionalitet utvecklats och utvärderats med hjälp av observationer. Den insamlade data från utvecklingsprocessen har sedan analyserats och sammanställts. Resultatet presenterats slutligen i form av framtagna riktlinjer som fungerar likt en rekommendation för utvecklare i framtiden.

Práce se zaměřuje na specifický obor mobilní komunikace ? infotainment&entertainment (též contentové služby), který představuje informačně zábavné služby v mobilním telefonu ? a na marketingovou strategii, kterou mobilní operátor aplikuje v rámci těchto služeb. Strategie je analyzována z hlediska modelu 4P. ?Product? představuje detailní zmapování služeb, ?Price? nejen celu ale i spotřební rozhodování na trhu contentových služeb, ?Promotion? nejdůležitější nástroje komunikačního mixu, ?Place? souhrn činností, které vedou k tomu, že je konečnému zákazníkovi poskytnuto perfektní plnění. Důraz je kladen také na aplikaci efektivních postupů při organizaci činností a moderních technologií využívaných pro mobilní služby.