Informatics, Volume 6, Issue 4 (December 2019) – 10 articles

Instagram is the top preferred social media platform in the art world, however, we know little about the features of the most-liked artworks, and what role does the interaction between artists and followers play in the most-liked artworks? This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the interaction between artists and followers on Instagram and the features of the most-liked artworks. Data from 706 artists’ accounts 497,649 posts on Instagram and 35 questionnaires. The results reveal that likes and comments were greatly influenced by interactions, with confusion and curiosity being a big reason to engage. The artist’s life experience and interaction with the followers had a positive influence on the most-liked artworks. Interaction with followers does not have much impact on their artistic creation, although artists expect more likes. Our study expands the research of mobile social media interaction in the art world, which is of great significance for the research on the interactive psychology of artwork and digital marketing communications on social media. The findings can also support future research on citizen curators and sociology analytics research areas. Full article

Translation revision is a relevant topic for translator training and research. Recent technological developments justify increased focus on embedding speech technologies—speech synthesis (text-to-speech) and speech recognition (speech-to-text)—into revision workflows. Despite some integration of speech recognition into computer-assisted translation (CAT)/translation environment tools (TEnT)/Revision tools, to date we are unaware of any CAT/TEnT/Revision tool that includes speech synthesis. This paper addresses this issue by presenting initial results of a case study with 11 participants exploring if and how the presence of sound, specifically in the source text (ST), affects revisers’ revision quality, preference and viewing behaviour. Our findings suggest an improvement in revision quality, especially regarding Accuracy errors, when sound was present. The majority of participants preferred listening to the ST while revising, but their self-reported gains on concentration and productivity were not conclusive. For viewing behaviour, a subset of eye-tracking data shows that participants focused more on the target text (TT) than the source regardless of the revising condition, though with differences in fixation counts, dwell time and mean fixation duration (MDF). Orientation and finalisation phases were also identified. Finally, speech synthesis appears to increase perceived alertness, and may prompt revisers to consult external resources more frequently. Full article

One positive impact of smart cities is reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emission through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). Energy transition pursues systematic changes to the low-carbon society, and it can benefit from technological and institutional advancement in smart cities. The integration of the energy transition to smart city development has not been thoroughly studied yet. The purpose of this study is to find empirical evidence of smart cities’ contributions to energy transition. The hypothesis is that there is a significant difference between smart and non-smart cities in the performance of energy transition. The Smart Energy Transition Index is introduced. Index is useful to summarize the smart city component’s contribution to energy transition and to enable comparison among cities. The cities in South Korea are divided into three groups: (1) first-wave smart cities that focus on smart transportation and security services; (2) second-wave smart cities that provide comprehensive urban services; and (3) non-smart cities. The results showed that second-wave smart cities scored higher than first-wave and non-smart cities, and there is a statistically significant difference among city groups. This confirms the hypothesis of this paper that smart city development can contribute to the energy transition. Full article

Many researchers consider Gamification as a powerful way to improve education. Many studies show improvements with respect to traditional methodologies. Several educational strategies have also been combined with Gamification with interesting results. Interest is growing and evidence suggest Gamification has a promising future. However, there is a barrier preventing many researchers from properly understanding Gamification principles. Gamification focuses of engaging trainees in learning with same intensity that games engage players on playing. But only some very well designed games achieve this level of engagement. Designing truly entertaining games is a difficult task with a great artistic component. Although some studies have tried to clarify how Game Design produces fun, there is no scientific consensus. Well established knowledge on Game Design resides in sets of rules of thumb and good practices, based on empirical experience. Game industry professionals acquire this experience through practice. Most educators and researchers often overlook the need for such experience to successfully design Gamification. And so, many research papers focus on single game-elements like points, present non-gaming activities like questionnaires, design non-engaging activities or fail to comprehend the underlying principles on why their designs do not yield expected results. This work presents a rubric for educators and researchers to start working in Gamification without previous experience in Game Design. This rubric decomposes the continuous space of Game Design into a set of ten discrete characteristics. It is aimed at diminishing the entry barrier and helping to acquire initial experience with Game Design fundamentals. The main proposed uses are twofold: to analyse existing games or gamified activities gaining a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and to help in the design or improvement of activities. Focus is on Game Design characteristics rather than game elements, similarly to professional game designers. The goal is to help gaining experience towards designing successful Gamification environments. Presented rubric is based on our previous design experience, compared and contrasted with literature, and empirically tested with some example games and gamified activities. Full article

Gamification, in its nature, combines not only games but also the whole psychological environment. Thanks to this, a properly prepared implementation of gameplaying can encourage people to compete with others and achieve the set tasks and goals. A person feels fulfilled that through his actions has performed a mission or reached a new level. It stimulates them to continue their activity and self-improvement to be better and beat their records. Its advantage is also that it does not have to be limited to one technology or method—it can be realized both through a simple scenario and a corkboard with results, it can also be embedded, e.g., in a virtual or augmented reality. This article focuses on the gamification of dyslexia, a common disorder of developmental disorders among pupils. It affects about 10%–15% of school-age children. The research narrowed the field of the study to one of the aspects of developmental dyslexia—dysorthography and making spelling mistakes by people affected by this disorder. This work aims to present an original application which is using gamification as a supportive tool for the learning of school children with diagnosed dyslexia. The conducted study was based on the implementation of original algorithms and scenarios of gamification on mobile devices, especially smartphones. School children are following a gamification approach for a specified period. As a conclusion, it can be stated that the proposed framework and gamification can help in the learning of people with dyslexia. Full article

The growth of smart cities and collateral movements offer new and exciting possibilities for the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for service delivery, civic engagement, and governance. The exponential growth of ICTs and their use in governance both formally and informally highlights the need for urban planners and public administrators who are trained on how to use ICTs to achieve the public interest, maximize the positive impacts of ICTs, and minimize the negative impacts of ICTs. This presents a challenge for professional education to provide a supporting infrastructure that trains urban planners and public administrators for smart city governance in the 21st century. This paper reviews those challenges and suggests changes in content and delivery options that can be implemented in urban planning and public affairs programs. Full article

This research aims to explore how to enhance student engagement in higher education institutions (HEIs) while using a novel conversational system (chatbots). The principal research methodology for this study is design science research (DSR), which is executed in three iterations: personas elicitation, a survey and development of student engagement factor models (SEFMs), and chatbot interaction analysis. This paper focuses on the first iteration, personas elicitation, which proposes a data-driven persona development method (DDPDM) that utilises machine learning, specifically the K-means clustering technique. Data analysis is conducted using two datasets. Three methods are used to find the K-values: the elbow, gap statistic, and silhouette methods. Subsequently, the silhouette coefficient is used to find the optimal value of K. Eight personas are produced from the two data analyses. The pragmatic findings from this study make two contributions to the current literature. Firstly, the proposed DDPDM uses machine learning, specifically K-means clustering, to build data-driven personas. Secondly, the persona template is designed for university students, which supports the construction of data-driven personas. Future work will cover the second and third iterations. It will cover building SEFMs, building tailored interaction models for these personas and then evaluating them using chatbot technology. Full article

Due to the advanced technologies, governments today are facing more challenges in the governance field than ever before. One of the serious issues is how to develop relationships with younger generations. As a purpose of smart governance, sustainability emphasizes the responsibility of government for building a stable association with future generations. This study is devoted to promoting sustainability in the smart governance field through e-government services. It seeks to understand the situation of local e-government use in a special group of future generations: undergraduate students. In order to achieve this objective, this research conducts a case study in Chongqing, the only inland municipality in China. Drawing upon data from a sample of 1046 respondents in 2019, the findings reveal that the way to interact with the government via e-government is by receiving a wide range of undergraduate students at the local level. In this sense, the role of e-government in linking government and younger generations is larger and more significant than previously estimated. Additionally, the results witness a rise of social media in e-government services among younger generations. Based on all these findings, it offers practical suggestions for the future development of e-government services in China. Full article

Virtual reality (VR) technologies have opened new possibilities for creating engaging educational games. This paper presents a serious VR game that immerses players into the activities of lunar exploration missions in a virtual environment. We designed and implemented the VR game with the goal of increasing players’ interest in space science. The game motivates players to learn more about historical facts of space missions that astronauts performed on the Moon in the 1970s. We studied usability and engagement of the game through user experience in both VR and non-VR versions of the game. The experimental results show that the VR version improved their engagement and enhanced the interest of players in learning more about the events of lunar exploration. Full article

Research has shown that educational robotics can be an effective tool to increase students’ acquisition of knowledge in the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and promote, at the same time, a progression in the development of computational thinking (CT) skills in K–12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) education. Within this research field, the present study first sought to assess the effect of a robotics laboratory on the acquisition of CT-related skills in primary school children. The study also aimed to compare the magnitude of the effect of the laboratory across third- and fourth-grade students. For the purpose of the study, a quasi-experimental post-test-only design was adopted, and a group of 51 students, from third- and fourth-grade classrooms, participating in the robotics laboratories, were compared to a control group of 32 students from classrooms of the same grades. A set of Bebras tasks was selected as an overall measure of CT skills and was administered to children in both the intervention and control groups. Overall, the results showed that programming robotics artefacts may exert a positive impact on students’ learning of computational thinking skills. Moreover, the effect of the intervention was found to be greater among third-grade children. Full article