Suchergebnisse

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.A broad international consensus supports the view that ensuring judicial independence is a normatively appealing goal, either because independence is itself a virtue or because it is believed to set the conditions for many other normatively appealing goals. Academic research on the subject raises questions about what independence is and whether it is a useful concept at all. Scholars question whether independence can be designed, and if so, under what conditions. Assuming that judicial independence can be generated, scholars also question whether it will produce the ends we desire. This diversity of opinion is driven by the fact that judicial independence is a product of potentially complicated political processes. Scholars disagree about how these processes work. Particular theoretical models of the political systems in which judges are embedded have clear implications for all aspects of the research process, from conceptual development to causal inference. Absent theoretical consensus on the way that politics works in particular places, we cannot expect consensus over the nature, construction, and effects of judicial independence. The implication of this view is that reform efforts must be guided as much by the theoretical and normative orientations of designers. What scholars can do is help designers make their theoretical and normative commitments transparent.

This paper is discussing the intuitive interaction with robotic systems and the conceptualisation connected with known organisational problems. In
particular, the focus will be on the manufacturing industry with respect to its social dimension. One of the aims is to identify relevant research questions about the possibility of development of safer robot systems in closer human-machine intuitive interaction systems at the manufacturing shop-floor level. We try to contribute to minimize the cognitive and perceptual workload for robot operators in complex working systems. In particular that will be highly relevant when more different robots with different roles and produced by different companies or designers are to be used in the manufacturing industry to a larger extent. The social sciences approach to such technology assessment is of high relevance to understand the dimensions of the intuitive interaction concept.

Utopian images in XR-games are often ambiguous. How can ambiguity be consciously designed in virtual worlds? What are the design principles for game designers? Ambiguity arises from discontinuity and decontextualization, from the deliberate omission of facts, and from the skillful superimposition of contradictory codes. An ontology of interactive media explains the elusive visual poetry and image perception. The five basic elements of media are presented. The model shows the key correlations of user, content, and technology in image perception. An overview of utopian representation as a cross-media phenomenon places game design in an interdisciplinary context. Six selected computer-generated illustrations show how the above design criteria can be successfully applied to the design of virtual worlds. The ambiguous utopia of an image exists only in a brief, irretrievable moment of our own perception. But this moment is valuable for designing real visions for a better future.

"While research on social innovation develops the idea of opening up innovation processes towards society, the economic concepts of 'open innovation' and 'user innovation' focus on the implications for companies, customers and users of such processes. In order to find out how companies coordinate open resp. user innovation, and why users actively support companies in innovating, a case study of a German company developing computer games (Crytek) has been carried out. Adopting the theoretical facets of user innovation to this case, among others game designers and community managers of Crytek have been surveyed as well as 'modders', users who are deeply involved in generating new products. The following main results can be reported: (1) in terms of user motivation, intrinsic, social as well as extrinsic motives have a role. Extrinsic motives of the modders correlate clearly with the intentions of Crytek itself, in that it every now and then recruits its employees out of this group." (author's abstract)

Growth in popularity of computer (video) games is a noticeable change in recent years. Electronic entertainment increasingly engages the wider society and reaches to new audiences by offering them satisfy of wide variety of needs and aspirations. As a mass media games not only provide entertainment, but they are also an important source of income, knowledge and social problems. Article aims to bring closer look on the common areas of games and comics. On the one hand designers and artists working on games are often inspired by comic books, as well as they create their licensed adaptations and separate "interactive issues". On the other hand more and more often we can see comics based on popular games. Study present the areas of agreement, cooperation or dependence like: technologies used to create games and comic books, use of comic books to comment events in the gaming industry and organization of exhibitions or events popularizing the works from both fields.

Interviews and questionnaires are very important techniques to acquire information from the potential user. Surveys are one tool to understand users' needs which is in particular helpful in the early phases of user interface design processes. To get meaningful information interface designers typically determine the target user group for an application. Most commonly, when designing in-car interfaces, the car drivers are the prime target group. In this paper we suggest a method to involve this group for a quick survey and we report our experience. The distinct features of this method are the location where the survey takes place (the gas station) and the length of the interview (2 to 5 minutes). This place
ensures that the people actually use cars and have driven for sometime before the interview. The time is determined due to the task (filling the car) and people typically do not have plans how to spend this time and are happy to use this spare time to answer questions. (author's abstract)