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Trust is crucial when integrating virtual agents in human teams. Our study investigated the combined use of psychological and physiological measures in predicting human trust of agents undertaking social tasks. The psychological measures comprised trust scores on ability, benevolence and integrity. The physiological measures included facial expressions, voice, heart rate and gestural postures. Subjects interacted with two avatars. A neuro-fuzzy algorithm extracted rules from the psychophysiological data to predict trust. Results revealed that trust can be predicted with 88% accuracy.

The purpose of this study was to analyze people's attitudes to disasters by investigating how people feel, behave and think during disasters. We focused on disasters induced by humans, such as terrorist attacks. Two types of textual information were collected - from Internet blogs and from research papers. The analysis enabled forecasting of attitudes for the design of proactive disaster advisory scheme. Text was analyzed using a text mining tool, Leximancer. The outcome of this analysis revealed core themes and concepts in the text concerning people's attitudes. The themes and concepts were sorted into three broad categories: Affect, Behaviour, and Cognition (ABC), and the data was visualized in semantic maps. The maps reveal several knowledge pathways of ABC for developing attitudinal ontologies, which describe the relations between affect, behaviour and cognition, and the sequence in which they develop. Clearly, terrorist attacks induced trauma and people became highly vulnerable. Language: en

Unlike visual stimuli, little attention has been paid to auditory stimuli in terms of emotion prediction with physiological signals. This paper aimed to investigate whether auditory stimuli can be used as an effective elicitor as visual stimuli for emotion prediction using physiological channels. For this purpose, a well-controlled experiment was designed, in which standardized visual and auditory stimuli were systematically selected and presented to participants to induce various emotions spontaneously in a laboratory setting. Numerous physiological signals, including facial electromyogram, electroencephalography, skin conductivity and respiration data, were recorded when participants were exposed to the stimulus presentation. Two data mining methods, namely decision rules and k-nearest neighbor based on the rough set technique, were applied to construct emotionpredictionmodelsbasedonthefeaturesextractedfromthephysiologicaldata.Experimental results demonstrated that auditory stimuli were as effective as visual stimuli in eliciting emotions in terms of systematic physiological reactivity. This was evidenced by the best prediction accuracy quantified by the F1 measure (visual: 76.2% vs. auditory: 76.1%) among six emotion categories (excited, happy, neutral, sad, fearful and disgusted). Furthermore, we also constructed culturespecific (Chinese vs. Indian) prediction models. The results showed that model prediction accuracy was not significantly different between culture-specific models. Finally, the implications of affective auditory stimuli in human‐computer interaction, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are discussed. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • Emotions can be predicted accurately based on physiological data using computational models. • Prediction accuracy was on the same level for auditory and visual stimuli. • Auditory stimuli can thus have potential in affective human–computer interaction applications.

This article describes a methodology for elicitation and analysis of affective needs for vehicle design. Driven by the concept of citarasa or emotional intent, the method has five steps. First, a model of emotional intent was conceptualised; second, a semantic framework of citarasa words was developed that mapped words to specific vehicle components to form a citarasa ontology; third, customer citarasa were elicited in the field using probe interview technique; fourth, affective needs were refined through Web survey; and fifth, the elicited citarasa were analysed using data mining techniques and the citarasa analysis tool. The tool is linked to the citarasa database that enables analysis of affective needs in several countries in Europe and Asia. The system has been technically verified, validated and tested for usability with consumers and automotive end-users.

While it is often reported that collaboration in product design team is difficult because individuals bring with them their own language, terminology, perspectives and detailed knowledge, these claims rely on personal accounts and recollections. The lack of quantitative measures makes it challenging to identify individual-level differences and their influence on group-level behaviour. This paper presents a new method to measure the coherence of team communication at a linguistic level to ascertain the extent to which individuals share a common language and terminology. We then relate individual coherence to group performance in terms of collaboration process and design outcome. The research is based on a study of experienced product designers in China. The study shows that teams with high levels of semantic coherence between each participant and between each participant and the group are likely to have high quality collaboration processes. The team members’ high semantic coherence, however, is not strongly correlated to a high-quality design outcome.

This study aims to predict different affective states via physiological measures with three types of computational models. An experiment was designed to elicit affective states with standardized affective pictures when multiple physiological signals were measured. Three data mining methods (i.e., decision rules, k-nearest neighbours, and decomposition tree) based on the rough set technique were then applied to construct prediction models from the extracted physiological features. We created three types of prediction models, i.e., gender-specific (male vs. female), culture-specific (Chinese vs. Indian vs. Western), and general models (participants with different genders and cultures as samples), and direct comparisons were made among these models. The best average prediction accuracies in terms of the F"1 measures (the harmonic mean of precision and recall) were 60.2%, 64.9%, 63.5% for the general models with 14, 21, and 42 samples, 78.0% for the female models, 75.1% for the male models, 72.0% for the Chinese models, 73.0% for the Indian models, and 76.5% for the Western models, respectively. These results suggested that the specific models performed better than did the general models.

This study explores how cellular phone attributes influence the affective experiences of users. It is hypothesized that product attributes trigger emotional responses and that different sets of product attributes trigger intense emotional responses in Singapore and Philippines, two countries with different cultures. Results of the study showed that Singaporean pre-purchase affect (PPA) is intensified mostly by functional attributes such as display area, weight, and thickness while Filipino PPA is influenced by aesthetic attributes. Relevance to industry Designers can use the results of the study as input to cellular phone design. The study also highlights the fact that cultural differences should be considered in design. The approach taken in the analysis will also be helpful in identifying specific attributes that designers can focus on.

In an effort to address the inherent deficiencies of traditional Kano method, this paper proposes an analytical Kano (A-Kano) model with focus on customer need analysis. Kano indices in accordance with the Kano principles are proposed to incorporate quantitative measures into customer satisfaction. Accordingly, two alternative mechanisms are proposed to provide decision support to product design, (1) the Kano classifiers are used as tangible criteria for categorizing customer needs, and (2) the configuration index is introduced as a decision factor of product configuration design. The merit of product configurations is justified using a Kano evaluator, which leverages upon both the customer's satisfaction and the producer's capacity. A case study of dashboard in automotive design is also presented. It is demonstrated that the A-Kano model can effectively incorporate customer preferences in product design, while leading to an optimal tradeoff between customer's satisfaction and producer's capacity.

Emotions are compelling human experiences and product designers can take advantage of this by conceptualizing emotion-engendering products that sell well in the market. This study hypothesized that product attributes influence users' emotions and that the relationship is moderated by the adherence of these product attributes to purchase criteria. It was further hypothesized that the emotional experience of the user influences purchase intention. A laboratory study was conducted to validate the hypotheses using mobile phones as test products. Sixty-two participants were asked to assess eight phones from a display of 10 phones and indicate their emotional experiences after assessment. Results suggest that some product attributes can cause intense emotional experience. The attributes relate to the phone's dimensions and the relationship between these dimensions. The study validated the notion of integrating affect in designing products that convey users' personalities.

Objective: Our objective was to examine the extent to which increasing precision of predictive (rate of change) information in process control will improve performance on a simulated process-control task. Background: Predictive displays have been found to be useful in process control (as well as aviation and maritime industries). However, authors of prior research have not examined the extent to which predictive value is increased by increasing predictor resolution, nor has such research tied potential improvements to changes in process control strategy. Method: Fifty nonprofessional participants each controlled a simulated chemical mixture process (honey mixer simulation) that simulated the operations found in process control. Participants in each of five groups controlled with either no predictor or a predictor ranging in the resolution of prediction of the process. Results: Increasing detail resolution generally increased the benefit of prediction over the control condition although not monotonically so. The best overall performance, combining quality and predictive ability, was obtained by the display of intermediate resolution. The two displays with the lowest resolution were clearly inferior. Conclusion: Predictors with higher resolution are of value but may trade off enhanced sensitivity to variable change (lower-resolution discrete state predictor) with smoother control action (higher-resolution continuous predictors). Application: The research provides guidelines to the process-control industry regarding displays that can most improve operator performance.

Most studies on product design have focused on customer needs concerning functionality and utility. Rarely has the issue of customer emotions been investigated. Traditional cognitive approaches to product usability tend to underestimate the importance of customer emotions in design. Not surprisingly, the success of a product in the marketplace may be determined by its aesthetic appeal, the pleasure it creates, and the satisfaction it brings to the customer. Emotions influence how a customer interacts with the product. In the interaction, feelings accompany thinking. This article characterizes customer emotions and issues concerning their measurement. The literature has documented various methods for measuring and evaluating emotions, but only a few are relevant to product development. In this article, we illustrate subjective and objective methods that are commonly used in evaluating customer emotion to an artifact. While evidence suggests that emotion matters in determining the sales potential of products, the measurement of emotions may be difficult because of the indefinite relationship between an emotion and its behavioral expression. Culture has a strong effect on what customers look for in a product and how they interpret the product and its interfaces. We present a framework for analysis of customer emotions in relation to the designer’s environment. The framework is part of the product development life cycle, where customer needs and measured emotions are input early in the design process. The goal is to achieve a pleasurable and satisfying product.

Affective design has received much attention from both academia and industries. It aims at incorporating customers' affective needs into design elements that deliver customers' affective satisfaction. The main challenge for affective design originates from difficulties in mapping customers' subjective impressions, namely Kansei, to perceptual design elements. This paper intends to develop an explicit decision support to improve the Kansei mapping process by reusing knowledge from past sales records and product specifications. As one of the important applications of data mining, association rule mining lends itself to the discovery of useful patterns associated with the mapping of affective needs. A Kansei mining system is developed to utilize valuable affect information latent in customers' impressions of existing affective designs. The goodness of association rules is evaluated according to their achievements of customers' expectations. Conjoint analysis is applied to measure the expected and achieved utilities of a Kansei mapping relationship. Based on goodness evaluation, mapping rules are further refined to empower the system with useful inference patterns. The system architecture and implementation issues are discussed in detail. An application of Kansei mining to mobile phone affective design is presented.

Next generation manufacturing calls for mass customization of product fulfillment encompassing global and networked enterprises. This paper reports the development of an electronic configure-to-order platform for customized product development over the Internet. It aims to integrate different Web-based services across companies, as well as various lifecycle issues of product fulfillment, into a collaborative web of interactive commerce. A generic product family (GPF) master model is proposed to support product customization over the Internet while achieving a synergy of sales force automation, product design, manufacturing planning, and supply chain management within a coherent framework. Implementation of the configure-to-order platform is discussed in detail with a particular application to injection-molded parts.

Small batch manufacturing typical of modern production systems requires improved visual inspection of novel products for many defect types. Because each item inspected is different, inspectors cannot develop product-specific techniques to speed performance using traditional direct viewing. We performed two experiments to evaluate the use of binocular rivalry as an alternative to direct viewing in stereo viewing of product pairs. Both free stereo viewing (i.e., with no optical aids) and viewing with a stereoscope led to large increases in performance of searching for targets in extended symbol arrays. For increased target set size there was an expected increase in inspection time for direct viewing but no corresponding increase for stereo viewing. Binocular rivalry appears to be a promising, though difficult, tool for facilitating visual inspection, as it both improves performance and appears to allow parallel processing of targets.

This paper describes the influence of operator competence on judgement of product quality. Manual repetitive work with short work cycle was studied in a manufacturing company. One goal of the company was that all employees would be able to do most production tasks. Forty-six operators participated in a field study of quality control. Based on how many tasks operators could perform, they were classified as high competence or low competence. Operators inspected 30 items, out of which 6 were of poor quality. In average 38% of the good items were rejected and 10% of the poor items were missed. Signal detection theory was used to compare the sensitivity d′ and the criterion β for high and low competence operators and for departments 1 and 2. High competence operators had greater sensitivity and produced less false alarms and misses than low competence operators. The results are discussed in terms of efficiency of company policies and lack of operator feedback. In addition some tasks were perceived by operators as more prestigious and desirable to perform than others. This bias affects the desirability to learn and perform new tasks, and quality control may suffer. It is important to train and maintain competence in quality control as well as in task performance. The use of high competence operators can improve the quality in manufacturing considerably. Relevance to industry Employees with high competence who managed many production tasks performed significantly better in quality control and judgement of quality than employees who managed only few tasks.

We conducted a classification analysis to identify factors associated with sitting comfort and discomfort. The objective was to investigate the possible multidimensional nature of comfort and discomfort. Descriptors of feelings of comfort and discomfort were solicited from office workers and validated in a questionnaire study. From this study, 43 descriptors emerged. The 42 participants rated the similarity of all 903 pairs of descriptors, and we subjected the resulting similarity matrix to multidimensional scaling, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Two main factors emerged, which were interpreted as comfort and discomfort. Based on these findings, we postulate a hypothetical model for perception of comfort and discomfort. Comfort and discomfort need to be treated as different and complementary entities in ergonomic investigations.

This paper describes the increasing emphasis on ergonomics in the manufacturing plants of IBM. Since 1978, 250,000 engineering hours have been devoted to ergonomics training. As a result a systematic approach to ergonomics improvement of manufacturing facilities has been implemented. This involves an analysis of the production environment including equipment, processes, ambient factors and job procedures. Information is collected through interviews of management, operators, and first-line supervisions, and complemented thorough field measurements of ergonomic parameters. Individual workstations as well as processes are analyzed with the purpose of modifying processes, reallocating tasks between automated devices and human operators and optimizing workstation design. Four case studies of industrial improvements are presented and analyzed in terms of improved productivity, quality, and reduction of injuries. All four studies proved to be good investments. Since its implementation around 1978, it is estimated that ergonomics improvements have resulted in cost savings of approximately $130 million.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Previous studies on consumption related affect did not identify specific components in the pre-purchase context. This article reviewed theoretical bases of affect and its relationship to product judgment and determined the components and structure of pre-purchase affect. Field studies were conducted to gather an initial list of affect experienced before purchasing "high-involvement" products. An initial list of 94 pre-purchase affect was identified and trimmed down to 18 after further statistical analysis. A second study was conducted to determine the structure of the pre-purchase emotion set (PES) derived from the first study. Multidimensional scaling was used and four clusters of emotion were found labelled satisfaction, positive enthusiasm, optimism, and amazement. The same results were found using factor analysis. It was proposed that pre-purchase affect experience followed the human information processing model.

This paper analyzes statistics of fatalities and injuries in construction work. Construction work is much more hazardous than most other occupations. Most accidents involve falls of persons and occur during work on roofs, scaffolds and ladders. Collapse of structures and falling materials also account for many fatalities. Many of these accidents can be avoided by the establishment of procedures and regulations to enhance safety. Many of the safety hazards are specific to the different job classification, and typically construction workers underestimate the hazards in their own work. This affects the motivation for adopting safe work procedures. The cost of construction accidents amounts to about 6% of total building costs. There are hence forceful monetary incentives in construction safety. Hopefully, these will encourage the industry as well as agencies to invest in this area. There are several urgent needs for research.

This paper describes the results of an ergonomics field study in a manufacturing environment. The study was performed primarily to improve the manufacturing yield in the production of electronic circuit board panels. A secondary objective was to improve operator comfort and job satisfaction. The project combined ergonomics and productivity assessments of several different tasks using analysis methodology such as ergonomic check lists, predetermined time and motion study operator assessment of ergonomic interventions and the rate of absenteeism. The project revealed a $1.7 million saving for modification costs of $16,000. This implies a hundred-fold rate of return of invested funds.

This paper reviews research on safety and ergonomics in robot workplaces. In the planning of function allocation between robots and human operators, several criteria must be taken into consideration. These include productivity, job satisfaction, and safety. This planning must begin at the early stage of product design where the choice of manufacturing method must be scrutinized to achieve an optimal allocation. An analysis of accidents shows that most fatalities have occured with the robot approaching unseen from behind or above. This has implications for the design of the workstation and the choice of safety equipment. The most critical aspect is the moving robot arm. Further research is needed to understand the perceptibility of arm movements. Research on sensors that can shut off the equipment in hazardous situations is summarized. Six research ideas are proposed: (1) the establishment of a databank for accident analysis; (2) field studies of design requirements of robotics workplaces; (3) perception of robot arm movement; (4) teach pendant design; (5) function allocation between humans and robots; and (6) development of a transponder safety sensor.

This paper reviews interface design of web pages for e-commerce. Different tasks in e-commerce are contrasted. A systems model is used to illustrate the information flow between three subsystems in e-commerce: store environment, customer, and web technology. A customer makes several decisions: to enter the store, to navigate, to purchase, to pay, and to keep the merchandize. This artificial environment must be designed so that it can support customer decision-making. To retain customers it must be pleasing and fun, and create a task with natural flow. Customers have different needs, competence and motivation, which affect decision-making. It may therefore be important to customize the design of the e-store environment. Future ergonomics research will have to investigate perceptual aspects, such as presentation of merchandize, and cognitive issues, such as product search and navigation, as well as decision making while considering various economic parameters. Five theories on e-commerce research are presented.

In modern electronics manufacturing, many of the assembly operations require the use of microscopes. This paper presents measures and suggestions that could help in relieving visual and postural fatigue in microscope work. These measures include the ergonomic design of microscope workstations as well as of microscopes themselves, process changes to minimise use of the microscope, replacement of microscope workstations with television systems, and a training programme for inexperienced operators. The main emphasis in implementing these recommendations was the ergonomic design of microscope workstations; several examples are given.

The continuity of patient care and limited resident working hours routinize the handover of patients between doctors. Despite of the pivotal role to ensure quality of patient care, clinical handovers were found to be vulnerable episodes contributing to near misses, adverse events and waste of healthcare resources. Handovers can be conceptualized as a three-phase process, namely pre-handover, handover communication, and post-handover. Existing research, however, is largely limited to the communication phase, especially to the study of communication content. Little effort was made to study the information retrieval strategy during pre-handover and the effect of media during handover communication. This thesis therefore aims to propose a suitable framework for modeling the factors influencing the performance of pre-handover and handover communication; and to study experimentally the effects of information access cost, overconfidence bias and media affordances. This thesis includes an extensive review of clinical shift handovers, information retrieval strategy and media affordance, as well as four empirical studies to investigate the proposed research models. Study 1 explored medical residents’ handover practices in a university hospital. Study 2 adopted a laboratory setting to examine the underlying factors affecting the information retrieval strategy. Study 3 investigated medical residents’ information retrieval strategy in pre-handover. Study 4 examined the effect of media affordances on medical residents’ handover communication. With regard to the pre-handover phase, the results of quantitative and qualitative analyses across the studies showed that besides the well-documented factor - information access cost, the perceived accuracy of memory is another important determinant influencing the information retrieval strategy. Moreover, overconfidence affected medical residents’ pre-handover performance. With regard to the handover communication phase, the results of quantitative and qualitative analyses across the studies showed that reviewability (14% increase) and visual access to object of reference (12% increase) strongly supported the handover receivers’ memory retention of important patient information, and interactivity supported both memory retention (24% increase) and case comprehension (26% increase). Furthermore, the results provided contradicting evidence to the long-held recommendation that face to face handover is preferred to mediated communication. Being able to see other was found to affect neither memory retention nor case comprehension. This research is of both theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, the research proposed two research models to describe various factors influencing the performance of pre-handover and handover communication. In particular, at the pre-handover phase, this research modeled the relationship between information access cost, overconfidence bias and medical residents’ information retrieval strategy. At the handover communication phase, this research modeled the relationship between the affordances of interactivity, reviewability, visual access of object of reference, visibility and medical residents’ handover communication performance. Moreover, this research provided empirical evidence for the causal relationships. Alongside the theoretical significance is a very practical concern. Singapore is aiming to become a leading medical hub in Asia and hospitals in Singapore are developing standard handover protocols to enhance patient safety. Results from this research provided practical implications for the development of handover tools and protocols. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (MAE)