This paper describes a generic approach to the design of a 3D virtual environment for visual navigation. The basic design principle is that users need to understand how an environment is organised and how they can utilise the knowledge to find their way through the environment. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between implicit semantic structures associated with a collection of domai...

In information retrieval, a user’s query is often not a complete representation of their real information need. The user’s information need is a cognitive construction, however the use of cognitive models to perform query expansion have had little study. In this paper, we present a cognitively motivated query expansion technique that uses semantic features for use in ad hoc retrieval. This mode...

This study constitutes part of an ongoing research programme exploring New Zealand dairy farmers’ uptake of technological learning (TL), which means the way in which people access information, convert it into useable knowledge, and benefit by it in some way. As yet, no research has explored the ways in which social networks may be important in TL, despite the awareness that social networks may ...

The core problem in the decision sciences has always been how to use scarce data optimally. But the proliferation of inexpensive computer-based instrumentation and broadband communication make it commonplace in current applications that data is abundant, often excessive. The technical challenges are twofold: how to distill data into knowledge, and how to use that knowledge wisely. The former is...

Quantum theory has been applied in a number of fields outside physics, e.g., cognitive science and information retrieval (IR). Recently, it has been shown that quantum theory can subsume various key IR models into a single mathematical formalism of Hilbert vector spaces. While a series of quantum-inspired IR models has been proposed, limited effort has been devoted to verify the existence of th...

Remote sensing is increasingly used to assess disaster damage, traditionally by professional image analysts. A recent alternative is crowdsourcing by volunteers experienced in remote sensing, using internet-based mapping portals. We identify a range of problems in current approaches, including how volunteers can best be instructed for the task, ensuring that instructions are accurately understo...

Barbara A. Karanian, Ph.D. , Lecturer, previously visiting Professor, in the School of Engineering, in the Mechanical Engineering Design Group, makes it possible for teams to find unmet user needs using her proven methodsfrom a socio-cognitive psychology, art and applied design thinking perspectivethat she has developed and refined over the past few decades. In addition, she teaches some of the...