Siu-Tsen Shen

Using personality type differences to form engineering design teams

Abstract This paper argues for the greater use of personality type instruments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS II), when forming engineering design teams. Considering the importance of teamwork in all aspects of education and industry, it is surprising that few universities in the UK use personality type information when forming design teams. This has led to many courses not getting the best out of their students, and more importantly the students not getting the most out of the teamworking experience. Various team formation methods are discussed and their relative strengths and weaknesses outlined. Normal personality type distributions in base populations are presented and compared with data from recent studies of engineering students, and the link between engineering, design and creativity is discussed. The results of this study have shown that the most important of the type preferences is the Sensing-iNtuitive (S-N) scale, with its proven link to creativity and learning styles. It is concluded that both engineers and designers have much in common, and a methodology of using personality type choice sets to select and form engineering design teams is proposed.

Development of a Novel Platform for Greater Situational Awareness in the Urban Military Terrain

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the more recent war in the Gaza Strip have emphasized the need for novel platforms which provide for greater situational awareness in the urban terrain. Without intelligent systems, which can accurately provide real-time information, collateral damage to property will result, together with unnecessary civilian deaths. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that within the next decade 75% of the worlds population will be living in urban areas. This paper outlines the current state of unmanned aerial vehicles throughout the world and presents a novel design of a multiple rotary wing platform which has great potential for both military and civilian application areas.

Development and comparison of a full-scale car display and communication system by applying Augmented Reality

By adopting augmented reality (AR) and integrating the functions of wireless communication of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a head-mounted displays (HMD), we built a design evaluation environment that combines a full-scale car display and a visual evaluation system. The image of a car is transmitted via wireless communication onto the PDA, which provides functions for measuring distances and changing parameters of the virtual car using graphical user interfaces (GUI). The updated car image is constructed on the fly on a PC server and sent back to the HMD and the PDA. Multiple users can look at a virtual car simultaneously and discuss its various aspects, enabling better evaluation of the car design.

HALO the Winning Entry to the DARPA UAVForge Challenge 2012

The DARPA UAVForge challenge was designed to bring together a diverse group of UAV enthusiasts to develop the next generation, low cost, small unmanned air system (SUAS) for perch and stare operations in a military context. The challenge combined a web-based collaboration site with a live competitive fly-off event held at Fort Stewart, Georgia, USA in May 2012. UAVForge was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Atlantic (SSC Atlantic) initiative to leverage the exchange of ideas among an international community united. More than 140 teams and 3,500 registered citizen scientists from 153 countries participated in this year long event. From several selection rounds, a core of nine teams competed in the fly-off event and in June 2012 Team HALO from the UK was declared the winner scoring 47.7 points out of a maximum possible 60 points, with their co-axial tri-rotor Y6 design.

My favorites (bookmarks) schema: one solution to online information storage and retrieval

Dealing with the overwhelming daily amount of online information is perhaps the biggest challenge faced by all computer users, whether they are novices or experienced professionals. How, where and when to store information sources, such as websites, is becoming increasingly difficult as people spend more of their life online and use the internet in all aspects of their lives. Our survey of 202 internet users found that although 85% of the participants regularly use the favorites (bookmarks) function, 73% still have trouble finding a website that they have recently visited. Whether the strategy is to bookmark in a single massive list and use the search tool, or to bookmark into folders and sub-folders several levels deep, appears to make very little difference. This research proposes a contrarian approach, giving users a highly structured favorites (bookmarks) schema using only two levels, consisting of four main headings and 12 sub-headings. An open card sorting task was used to validate the utility of such an approach. The results and their impact towards a future user-based knowledge structure are presented in this paper.

Chinese web browser design utilising cultural icons

This study investigates the appropriateness and effectiveness of the design of icons for a Chinese web browser. Web browser developments are outlined, together with the future potential growth of Chinese internet users. The findings of the study show that the subjects shown icons and text, had higher recognition rates, and had higher satisfaction ratings. Furthermore, some evidence points to a gender bias in favour of males in terms of recognition and females in terms of satisfaction. Future work is suggested in terms of refining the web browser icons and exploring the usability of colour and 3D effects.

A Solution to Revisitation Using Organic Bookmark Management

This research paper presents the design and user evaluation of an add-in software program referred to as Organic Bookmark Management (OBM). This system will complement the Bookmark and History functions by enabling users to navigate more efficiently using organic visual graphical cues. The findings from formative user studies conducted by this research have defined web usage and analysis of web browsing in terms of navigation patterns. Evaluation of the OBM alternative to the normal “hub and spoke” navigation structure of traditional Bookmarks and History functions will be conducted. The main difference between this schema and conventional designs is that it maintains a complete and consistent visual display of previously bookmarked and visited pages based on an organic metaphor. Implementation decisions and present results of usability studies in which we deploy the prototype are discussed. The results show that OBM brings qualitative improvement to the browsing experience of users.

Testing of a Novel Web Browser Interface for the Chinese Market

This paper compares the perspicacity, appropriateness and preference of web browser icons from leading software providers with those of a culture-specific design. This online study was conducted in Taiwan and involved 103 participants, who were given three sets of web browser icons to review, namely Microsoft Internet Explorer, Macintosh Safari, and culturally specific icons created using the Culture-Centred Design methodology. The findings of the study show that all three sets have generally high recognition rates, but that some icon functions (e.g. Go/Visit and Favourite) in all three sets have poor recognition rates and are considered inappropriate.

Using music and motion analysis to construct 3D animations and visualisations

Abstract This paper presents a study into music analysis, motion analysis and the integration of music and motion to form creative natural human motion in a virtual environment. Motion capture data is extracted to generate a motion library, this places the digital motion model at a fixed posture. The first step in this process is to configure the motion path curve for the database and calculate the possibility that two motions were sequential through the use of a computational algorithm. Every motion is then analysed for the next possible smooth movement to connect to, and at the same time, an interpolation method is used to create the transitions between motions to enable the digital motion models to move fluently. Lastly, a searching algorithm sifts for possible successive motions from the motion path curve according to the music tempo. It was concluded that the higher ratio of rescaling a transition, the lower the degree of natural motion.

Re-thinking bookmark management --- less choice is more efficient

This research investigates the role of a Controlled Vocabulary (CV) in next generation bookmark management systems. The search for a more efficient graphical user interface solution to deal with the massive information overload situation faced by most computer users today is a pressing problem. CVs allow categorization of title words and phrases into the appropriate location recognized by the user, so as to facilitate easier information storage and retrieval. The results of this user study involving 152 individuals indicated that there is potential for a well-defined two-tier controlled vocabulary system to assist user categorization, information storage and retrieval in personal information management systems.