As computers are increasingly used to mediate social interaction, tools are needed not only to support direct communication, but also to create a richer social environment for the networked group. These include tools that provide information about the presence of others and that give the user a sense of the ongoing activities. This paper describes two ongoing research projects in this area. Col...

While the casual game market is expanding, there are increasingly few research projects and explorations about the definition of this game style. Existing definitions are contradictory and some areas, like casual game design practice, remain under-explored. Using game designers’ professional knowledge, this study aims to provide a new understanding and perspective towards definitions of casual ...

BACKGROUND Frequently eating fast food has been associated with consuming a diet high in calories, and there is a public perception that fast-casual restaurants (eg, Chipotle) are healthier than traditional fast food (eg, McDonald's). However, research has not examined whether fast-food entrées and fast-casual entrées differ in calorie content. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to deter...

This article describes the preparation, recording and orthographic transcription of a new speech corpus, the Nijmegen Corpus of Casual French (NCCFr). The corpus contains a total of over 36 hours of recordings of 46 French speakers engaged in conversations with friends. Casual speech was elicited during three different parts, which together provided around ninety minutes of speech from every pa...

Clear speech is a speaking style adopted by speakers in an attempt to maximize the clarity of their speech and is proven to be more intelligible than casual speech. This work focuses on modifying casual speech to sound as intelligible as clear speech. First, we examine the role of speaking rate for intelligibility. Clear and casual speech signals are time-scale stretched, matching the average d...

Research on relations between casual sex and mental health is inconclusive; while some studies indicate casual sex may lead to more negative mental health (e.g., depression), other studies report no such relationship. Using a genetically informed approach, this study examined whether earlier casual sex (i.e., ever engaging in casual sex and number of casual sex partners) in adolescence has a ca...

This study describes undergraduate casual-leisure information behaviors relevant to online videos. Diaries and in-depth interviews were used to collect data. Twenty-four undergraduates participated in this study (9 men, 15 women; all were aged 18–22 years). This study presents a model of casual-leisure information behaviors and contributes new insights into user experience in casual-leisure set...