Michael Scott

Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Michael James Scott, Gheorghita Ghinea et al.

Whilst affective responses to various forms and genres of multimedia content have been well researched, precious few studies have investigated the combined impact that multimedia system parameters and human factors have on affect. Consequently, in this paper we explore the role that two primordial dimensions of human factors - personality and culture - in conjunction with system factors - frame rate, resolution, and bit rate - have on user affect and enjoyment of multimedia presentations. To this end, a two-site, cross-cultural study was undertaken, the results of which produced three predictve models. Personality and Culture traits were shown statistically to represent 5.6% of the variance in positive affect, 13.6% in negative affect and 9.3% in enjoyment. The correlation between affect and enjoyment, was significant. Predictive modeling incorporating human factors showed about 8%, 7% and 9% improvement in predicting positive affect, negative affect and enjoyment respectively when compared to models trained only on system factors. Results and analysis indicate the significant role played by human factors in influencing affect that users experience while watching multimedia.

Michael 'Adrir' Scott

Encouraging children to read frequently and helping them to develop their reading skills as effectively as possible can be a challenge for some primary schools. This research questions whether the use of a game-based intervention can integrate into the existing teaching culture to aid volunteer teaching assistants in achieving a more significant impact on pupil reading development. A prototype based on the initial process of requirements gathering is presented using Multimedia Fusion Developer 2. The design incorporates a game-like exercise where a foam volcano character releases bubbles containing letters and words. Pupils must read these aloud in order to burst them open, which is recorded as a metric of reading ability.