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Technology-rich creative and collaborative learning environments are believed to offer powerful settings for children to become acquainted with computational concepts through playful ways of learning. This chapter draws on a body of empirical research grounded in a Living Lab environment at Aalborg University in Denmark (Xlab – Design, Learning, Innovation), which functions as an educational mediator of playful workshops offering hands-on experience of technologies and creative approaches to experiment- and explorative-oriented activities, where children and teachers can play to learn. The chapter offers insights into understanding the tensions and potentials of such technology-rich environments for participatory-driven creative learning, providing information on practice-related possibilities for and constraints to implementing technology-rich educational designs in early years education.

Aims and objectives: To evaluate how digital life stories can be used to support person-centred care focusing on benefits and challenges experienced by the staff and the management team in a nursing home context. Background: Life story work can be used to support person-centred care and help people with dementia maintain their identity. The use of digital life stories provides opportunities to easily share the content between staff and relatives and combine different types of multimedia, for example pictures, videos, text and sound. Design: Six healthcare professionals and two members of the management team at a nursing home were recruited. Participant observations with informal interviews of the formal health career were conducted in two day shifts and two night shifts. Field notes were taken during the observations. Also, individual semi-structured interviews were held with four of the recruited participants. This article adheres to the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Results: Themes revealed were (1) person-centred care and life story work as interrelated approaches; (2) Pros and cons related to the My Life Story app; and how (3) Time and information and communication technology (ICT) can restrict life story work. Conclusion: Digital life stories can be used to support a person-centred care approach. However, a number of challenges exist related to digital life story work. When using digital life stories, it is important to ensure the staff time and competences needed to work with, for example an app and that visible support and encouragement are provided by the management team. Relevance to clinical practice: Challenges are revealed when life story work is embedded in the culture and everyday work of a nursing home. It is of great importance to clinical practice to be aware of and address these challenges in order to succeed with digital life story work.

Denne artikel tager udgangspunkt i et offentlig-privat innovationsprojekt, hvor der arbejdes med en participatorisk designtilgang. I projektet blev personer med demens og pårørende involveret i idégenereringsfasen i udviklingen af en ny GPS-løsning. Ofte inddrages især personer med demens ikke i forskningsarbejder, hvilket betyder, at der mangler viden om, hvilke behov og ønsker denne gruppe har. I projektet blev der afholdt tre workshops for henholdsvis personer med demens og pårørende med anvendelse af kreative generative værktøjer. Under workshopperne blev deltagende observation anvendt for at indsamle data om deltagernes ønsker og behov til en ny GPS-løsning, deres vurdering af eksisterende løsninger på markedet samt deres holdninger til overvågningsaspektet. Undersøgelsen viser, at personerne med demens og pårørende er opmærksomme på de udfordringer og bekymringer, der er knyttet til det at finde vej for personer med demens. Ligeledes udtrykker de i varierende grad et behov for sikkerhed og beskriver forskellige strategier, som de allerede anvender. Deltagerne forholder sig kritisk til de eksisterende løsninger, og hvordan de dækker deres behov. I forhold til overvågningsaspektet er de optaget af behovet for autonomi kontra behovet for sikkerhed og tryghed. Det konkluderes, at personer med demens og pårørende kan have forskellige opfattelser af behovet for demenssikring, men at de til en vis grad har forståelse for hinandens perspektiver. Overvågning kan således accepteres, hvis det kun benyttes, når det er relevant, og kun involverer nærmeste pårørende. Det konkluderes, at en fremtidig løsning skal introduceres tidligt, og det i starten kan anvendes som et hjælpemiddel til personerne med demens for på sigt at overgå til pårørende, så de kan lokalisere personen med demens efter behov. Søgeord: demens, GPS-løsning, overvågning, autonomi, participatorisk forskning, participatorisk design

Virtual reality is used to support teaching in the professional caregiver educations. Virtual reality can visualize the anatomical part of the body and provide interactive content that support and motivate students. This paper presents a preliminary study of an ongoing development of two new virtual and augmented reality applications with teaching material about leg ulcer and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. We have conducted workshops and interviews with a total of seven teachers at a caregiver program who have provided information about the potential uses of virtual and augmented reality including their design ideas and feedback on a prototype of the applications. This have contributed to insights into how future solutions should be designed and how these may support teaching. The results indicate that virtual and augmented reality can be useful for achieving many different learning goals. It also indicates that it is not always an advantage to use immersive virtual reality or augmented reality, but it is possible to achieve at least similar results using a non-immersive version through mobile phones or tablets.

The number of people with diabetes is increasing and today more than 8.5% of the adult population is diagnosed with diabetes. People with diabetes must make significant changes to their life and habits and adjust it to the recommendations for diabetic treatment to avoid or delay complications related to the illness. In this paper, we present empirical data from a survey, experience sampling data and interviews that addresses people with type 1 diabetes’ adherence with the recommended blood sugar measurements, their physical activity level and motivational factors. This information is used to understand and explain people with diabetes’ adherence to follow the recommendations using theories about self-efficacy and motivation. Finally, we give recommendations for how digital solutions can be designed that can aid the users and motivate them to follow the recommendations and hereby potentially improve the quality of life for diabetes patients.

Yearly, a number of accidents happen, where cyclists are injured by right turning trucks. In Denmark, the proposed solution has been to provide a higher number of mirrors to the truck driver in order to cover visual blind spots. However, this doesn’t seem to eliminate the problem. Investigations into the reason for this point to cognitive phenomena such as change blindness, where more visual information won’t help. For other professional vehicle operators such as pilots, auditory solutions adding to a higher situational awareness has proven valuable.This paper describes the development of a dynamic binaural synthesis system for investigation into situational awareness for truck drivers. The system is built around several software components enabling the 3D positioning of an auditory representation of a bicycle. The sound is played back over headphones to the truck driver whose head movements are monitored and taken into account in the binaural sound synthesis. To enable experiments in real traffic, the system facilitates an operator interface where the investigator can position the auditory objects according to real bicycles appearing in the traffic.The software is organized in a number of modules communicating over a network protocol (UDP) enabling distribution on several hardware devices. The modules are: Graphical user interface, head tracking server, truck tracking, and binaural synthesis module.The function of the individual modules as well as overall topology of the system will be presented, and initial practical experience with the system used in real driving situations will be discussed.

Hvert år sker der adskillige uheld, hvor højresvingende lastbiler rammer cyklister, der kører ligeud. Mange tiltag har haft fokus på at forbedre lastbilchaufførens evne til visuelt at spotte cyklisterne, hvilket har resulteret i, at chaufføren er blevet overbebyrdet med for mange visuelle input. I denne artikel forsøges der i stedet at hjælpe lastbilchaufføren ved at repræsentere cyklisten ved hjælp af 3D-lyd, og dermed give lastbilchaufføren en indikation af cyklistens placering. I et feltstudie, hvor fire chauffører kørte på deres daglige rute, blev en eksperimentel platform brugt til at give lastbilchaufføren auditiv information om cyklistens placering, hver gang en cyklist nærmede sig lastbilen. Lastbilchaufførerne gav udtryk for, at systemet var en hjælp, og at de forholdsvis let kunne bruge lyden til at følge cyklisten undervejs., Proceedings from the Annual Transport Conference at Aalborg University, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2016): Proceedings from the Annual Transport Conference at Aalborg University

An earphone system is presented, that enables the listener to hear the sound sources and acoustics of the surroundings as close to real life as possible. The capturing of the surrounding sound is achieved by mounting a microphone on the outside of insert earphones and simultaneously record and play-back the sound. In this paper, measurements with different in-ear recording positions are conducted on nine subjects. The measurements are used for finding the optimal microphone position. The results show that spatial information equivalent to ears without insert earphones can be preserved up to around 4-5 kHz.

In the oil and gas industry, the foundations of offshore platforms have, for decades, used the grouted technique. This technology has now been transferred into the offshore wind turbine industry. This paper gives details of the use of the technology in some of the first offshore windfarms in Europe and considers future design possibilities.

solution for recreating the natural sound reception of the open ear while wearing earphones exists. It is achieved by mounting microphones on the outside of earphones, and simultaneously record and playback the sound. The solution could potentially be used for augmented audio applications. Due to practical limitations, such as the size of the earphones and microphones, it is not possible to record the sound in the ideal position. This paper presents work on finding the best position of a microphone with the purpose of reproducing as much of the spatial information as possible. The results from measurements with an artificial ear show that all spatial informations can be reproduced up to around 5-6 kHz. Above this frequency deviations in the reproduced sound, compared to the natural, is introduced. A method to evaluate how the deviations in the reproduced sound affect the listening experience is also proposed

The state-of-the-art speech intelligibility tests are created with the purpose of evaluating acoustic communication devices and not for evaluating audio-visual virtual reality systems. This paper present a novel method to evaluate a communication situation based on both the speech intelligibility and the indexical characteristics of the speaker. The results will be available in the final paper.Index Terms: speech intelligibility , virtual reality, body language, telecommunication. The state-of-the-art speech intelligibility tests are created with the purpose of evaluating acoustic communication devices and not for evaluating audio-visual virtual reality systems. This paper present a novel method to evaluate a communication situation based on both the speech intelligibility and the indexical characteristics of the speaker. The results will be available in the final paper.Index Terms: speech intelligibility , virtual reality, body language, telecommunication.

The number of people suffering from dementia will most likely increase in the future. This means that more relatives experience a family member suffering from dementia and some must even take up the role as informal caregiver. Taking care of a person with dementia can be very stressful and potentially lead to mental illnesses, due to a role-change; from relative to an informal caregiver. If these people get information and guidance about dementia at an early stage, it can have a positive effect on their understanding of people with dementia and aid them in their new role as caregivers. In this chapter, we give examples of how Virtual Reality (VR) experiences can help relatives understand what people with dementia are going through.

A hear-through headset is formed by mounting miniature microphones on small insert earphones. This type of ear-wear technology enables the user to hear the sound sources and acoustics of the surroundings as close to real life as possible, with the additional feature that computer-generated audio signals can be superimposed via earphone reproduction. An important aspect of the hear-through headset is its transparency, i.e. how close to real life can the electronically amplied sounds be perceived. Here we report experiments conducted to evaluate the auditory transparency of a hear-throughheadset prototype by comparing human performance in natural, hear-through, and fully occluded conditions for two spatial tasks: frontal vertical-plane sound localization and speech-on-speech spatial release from masking. Results showed that localization performance was impaired by the hear-through headset relative to the natural condition though not as much as in the fully occluded condition. Localization was affected the least when the sound source was in front of the listeners. Different from the vertical localization performance, results from the speech task suggest that normal speech-on-speech spatial release from masking is unaffected by the use of the hear-through headset. This is an encouraging result for speech communication applications.