Gamified services delivered on smart phones, such as Foursquare, are able to utilise the sensors on the phone to capture user contexts as a means of triggering game elements. This paper identifies and discusses opportunities and challenges that exist when using mobile sensors as input for game elements. We present initial findings from a field study of a gamified mobile application made to supp...

Adverse neighborhood conditions play an important role beyond individual characteristics. There is increasing interest in identifying specific characteristics of the social and built environments adversely affecting health outcomes. Most research has assessed aspects of such exposures via self-reported instruments or census data. Potential threats in the local environment may be subject to shor...

Despite 'power' being an often used word in studies on management and organisations, it is variously conceived, variously employed and the problems associated with it variously dispensed with. This paper makes power its central focus. It examines the main assumptions implicit in the predominant conceptions of power in organisational analysis and in the wider social theory which informs, and is ...

Using smartphones in healthcare research is an upcoming topic, but it raises issues in terms of security and privacy. We have a case in which we want to research a mobile application, using an online participant registration system and online questionnaires. In this article we describe the problems that we faced building a research data architecture and the solution we have created.

Would an ill person interact with an application the same way as a healthy person? Could a simulation of a chemical spill provide the same stressful environment for emergency response workers to give realistic feedback about the usability of a chemical spill assistant application? Researchers have noted [1, 2] that traditional laboratory usability studies are insufficient for mobile application...

This research-in-progress paper describes the factors that influence the adoption of IT platforms for application development. The adoption of specific platforms is of tremendous importance in the IT industry; as developers choose particular platforms, they influence the programming languages, applications, and technologies that will become dominant in the future. IT adoption has been a popular...

An important aspect of a Dutch research project into usable (and well scaled) mobile maps for consumers is presented: the development of an appropriate field-based usability evaluation methodology for the prototype of a geo-mobile application that will be the result of a user centred design approach. Automatic generalisation, required for the user’s orientation in space, but also for progressiv...

The National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT) has undertaken a wide range of hot mix asphalt (HMA) related research projects. These projects have been funded by various agencies such as the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) of the Transportation Research Board, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Alabama Department of Transportation, the South Carolina Departm...

BACKGROUND With growing demand for medical information and health applications in pregnancy, the potential of electronic health (eHealth) and mobile health (mHealth) solutions in clinical care is increasingly unfolding. However, we still do not know how pregnant women engage with mobile apps, how such apps impact routine medical care, and whether benefit expectations are met. Whereas recent res...

Existing climate classification has not been designed for an efficient handling of public health scenarios. This work aims to design an objective spatial climate regionalization method for assessing health risks in response to extreme weather. Specific climate regions for the conterminous United States of America (USA) were defined using satellite remote sensing (RS) data and compared with the ...