Rethinking auditory alarms. This project aims to investigate whether auditory displays that give listeners background information about the status of monitored processes will lead to better situation awareness than conventional auditory alarms. Recent efforts to combat alarm fatigue by reducing auditory alarms may cause listeners to lose awareness of early process deterioration and its context. This project will investigate benefits of intermittent displays summarising process status with sound ....Rethinking auditory alarms. This project aims to investigate whether auditory displays that give listeners background information about the status of monitored processes will lead to better situation awareness than conventional auditory alarms. Recent efforts to combat alarm fatigue by reducing auditory alarms may cause listeners to lose awareness of early process deterioration and its context. This project will investigate benefits of intermittent displays summarising process status with sound or time-compressed speech while participants perform specific ongoing tasks. Anticipated outcomes are safer, more effective and better tolerated ways of monitoring processes than conventional auditory alarms. Results apply to healthcare, transportation and process industries.Read moreRead less
Interruptions, work coordination, and resilience. Evidence is emerging of an association between the number of workplace interruptions that hospital clinicians experience and outcomes such as clinical errors that could cause patient harm. However there is still no direct evidence that interruptions cause clinical errors. This project seeks such evidence, but also views interruptions as an integral part of normal work coordination. This project investigates the origin and need for interruptions, ....Interruptions, work coordination, and resilience. Evidence is emerging of an association between the number of workplace interruptions that hospital clinicians experience and outcomes such as clinical errors that could cause patient harm. However there is still no direct evidence that interruptions cause clinical errors. This project seeks such evidence, but also views interruptions as an integral part of normal work coordination. This project investigates the origin and need for interruptions, tests causal connections between interruptions and errors, and explores workplace improvements as a means to handle concerns about interruptions. This research will provide a solid basis from which clinical leaders can formulate policy about distractions and interruptions in the healthcare workplace. Read moreRead less
Sonification and Multiple-Patient Monitoring. Auditory alarms on medical equipment are meant to save lives. If there are too many nuisance alarms, though, staff become unresponsive to all alarms: this is "alarm fatigue". Alarm fatigue can lead to patient harm or even death, particularly if staff must divide their attention across multiple patients. This project conjectures that a form of auditory display called sonification might be extended to multiple-patient monitoring. In a series of three s ....Sonification and Multiple-Patient Monitoring. Auditory alarms on medical equipment are meant to save lives. If there are too many nuisance alarms, though, staff become unresponsive to all alarms: this is "alarm fatigue". Alarm fatigue can lead to patient harm or even death, particularly if staff must divide their attention across multiple patients. This project conjectures that a form of auditory display called sonification might be extended to multiple-patient monitoring. In a series of three studies this project will develop and test novel sonifications for remote monitoring of multiple patients. It also tests whether a head-worn display unit can help staff orient auditory attention effectively across multiple patients without distracting from current tasks. Outcomes will offer solutions to alarm fatigue.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100211
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$650,000.00
Summary
The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and developmen ....The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and development using Australian English and facilitate the development of Australian speech technology applications from automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis used in taxi and other ordering services, to hearing prostheses and talking head aids for learning-impaired children, and a range of security and forensic applications.Read moreRead less
Cognitive Modelling of Computer Games Pidgins. This project develops a pidgin language for use in computer games and models the way human users exploit such languages. It has implications also for computer assisted collaborative work and other educational or entertainment interactive environments like computer games. By developing mini-languages for games environments we can dramatically simplify the speech recognition problem and make recognition robust across different speech cultures and ba ....Cognitive Modelling of Computer Games Pidgins. This project develops a pidgin language for use in computer games and models the way human users exploit such languages. It has implications also for computer assisted collaborative work and other educational or entertainment interactive environments like computer games. By developing mini-languages for games environments we can dramatically simplify the speech recognition problem and make recognition robust across different speech cultures and backgrounds. We use protocol analysis and markup techniques for modelling dialogues between human player and reactive agents in computer games.Read moreRead less
Conceptualising and measuring digital emotion regulation. This project aims to develop the theory and supporting research tools to investigate how, where, and why people engage in digital emotion regulation. Individuals often use digital technologies to shape their emotions, yet social norms often cast such technology use as disrespectful or distracting. The discrepancy between the practice and perception of digital emotion regulation may be due to the lack of a systematic understanding of this ....Conceptualising and measuring digital emotion regulation. This project aims to develop the theory and supporting research tools to investigate how, where, and why people engage in digital emotion regulation. Individuals often use digital technologies to shape their emotions, yet social norms often cast such technology use as disrespectful or distracting. The discrepancy between the practice and perception of digital emotion regulation may be due to the lack of a systematic understanding of this behaviour. The project will inform the debate about technology use and its impact on work, education and interpersonal relationships. Additionally, the created knowledge will inform policy-makers, designers, and end-users about how technology use is perceived, as well as effective use of technology in everyday settings.Read moreRead less
Wearable displays for high-tempo work in mission-critical worlds. This project aims to investigate how effectively head-worn display technology can support mobile work in complex high-tempo environments where workers must complete tasks quickly, handle competing demands, and manage interruptions. The project will draw on field investigations to specify functions and formats for head-worn displays, and will conduct laboratory and simulation studies to test the relative advantages of head-worn dis ....Wearable displays for high-tempo work in mission-critical worlds. This project aims to investigate how effectively head-worn display technology can support mobile work in complex high-tempo environments where workers must complete tasks quickly, handle competing demands, and manage interruptions. The project will draw on field investigations to specify functions and formats for head-worn displays, and will conduct laboratory and simulation studies to test the relative advantages of head-worn displays versus tablet computers. Work environments benefitting from the project should include emergency response, triage, defence, and field service industries.Read moreRead less
Eat, cook, grow: Ubiquitous technology for sustainable food culture in the city. Raising people's awareness of healthy and ecological food options with nutritional data and educational information does not foster a sustained practice towards a more environmentally friendly food culture. This study seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into supporting and sustaining action and change. Drawing on interaction design, ubiquitous computing and real- time informat ....Eat, cook, grow: Ubiquitous technology for sustainable food culture in the city. Raising people's awareness of healthy and ecological food options with nutritional data and educational information does not foster a sustained practice towards a more environmentally friendly food culture. This study seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into supporting and sustaining action and change. Drawing on interaction design, ubiquitous computing and real- time information, the study will deliver research findings that inform viable new design approaches and information interfaces which will strengthen Australia's position to resolve the problems of obesity, malnutrition and ecological issues of mass food processing, and contribute to the sustainability of life in Australian cities.Read moreRead less
Location-Based Personalisation in Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce). M-commerce, though playing an important role in future competitiveness of Australia, suffers a low user demand. While location-based services have taken off in Europe, they are still at their infancy in Australia. In terms of IT access, Australia is ranked lower than many Asian countries. Our work gains an understanding of users' concerns and expectations of location-based services, which leads to better application designs and thus ....Location-Based Personalisation in Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce). M-commerce, though playing an important role in future competitiveness of Australia, suffers a low user demand. While location-based services have taken off in Europe, they are still at their infancy in Australia. In terms of IT access, Australia is ranked lower than many Asian countries. Our work gains an understanding of users' concerns and expectations of location-based services, which leads to better application designs and thus a wider adoption. An examination of users' attitude towards personalised content and concerns about data privacy provides insights to Australian legislation in relation to telemarketing and data-driven marketing. National benefits will stem from a balance between telemarketing efficiency and users' benefits.Read moreRead less
How, What and Who in Human Communication: Movement of Face and Voice. The aim of this project is to identify the essential characteristics of tone, affect, and identity from face and voice using a combination of signal processing, biological, and behavioural techniques in order to develop a comprehensive model of auditory-visual speech processing and communication. This research will significantly improve understanding of the basis of auditory-visual perception and production in tonal languages ....How, What and Who in Human Communication: Movement of Face and Voice. The aim of this project is to identify the essential characteristics of tone, affect, and identity from face and voice using a combination of signal processing, biological, and behavioural techniques in order to develop a comprehensive model of auditory-visual speech processing and communication. This research will significantly improve understanding of the basis of auditory-visual perception and production in tonal languages and in affective communication, facilitate links between neurophysiological processes and auditory-visual speech processing; and contribute to applications in automatic person recognition, automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech systems, and talking head aids for the hearing impaired.Read moreRead less