Given that it is essential for hotels to understand how guests experience hospitality, hotel managers need more concrete and tangible insights into this issue to improve their service. Quantitative research on experience of the physical environment and employee contact has shown that the comfort of hotel rooms and an inviting ambience are the factors that most influence guest loyalty. This exploratory paper employs verbal and visual association methods to translate comfortable and inviting into tangible sensory characteristics. Results show association of comfortable with lingering, sitting, resting, natural colours, rounded-off rectangles, and multiple layers. By contrast, inviting is associated with common (meeting) areas such as corridors, white, grey, transparency, and colourful accessories. Visual dataproved suitable for identifying tangible (sensory) characteristics, and delivering concrete recommendations for improving invitingness and comfort.
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Interactive design is an emerging trend in dementia care environments. This article describes a research project aiming at the design and development of novel spatial objects with narrative attributes that incorporate embedded technology and textiles to support the wellbeing of people living with dementia. In collaboration with people with dementia, this interdisciplinary research project focuses on the question of how innovative spatial objects can be incorporated into dementia long-term care settings, transforming the space into a comforting and playful narrative environment that can enhance self-esteem while also facilitating communication between people living with dementia, family, and staff members. The research methodologies applied are qualitative, including Action Research. Participatory design methods with the experts by experience—the people with dementia—and health professionals have been used to inform the study. Early findings from this research are presented as design solutions comprising a series of spatial object prototypes with embedded technology and textiles. The prototypes were evaluated primarily by researchers, health professionals, academics, and design practitioners in terms of functionality, aesthetics, and their potential to stimulate engagement. The research is ongoing, and the aim is to evaluate the prototypes by using ethnographic and sensory ethnography methods and, consequently, further develop them through co-design workshops with people living with dementia.
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Background: The modified painDETECT questionnaire (PDQ) is a self-reported questionnaire to discriminatebetween nociceptive and neuropathic-like pain in patients with knee/hip osteoarthritis (OA). This studyaims to assess the structural and construct validity of this questionnaire.Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesis-testing was used. For 168 patients, predefinedhypotheses were formulated on the correlation between the modified painDETECT and several otherquestionnaires, and in a subsample of 46 with pain pressure thresholds (PPTs).Results: Two principal components were confirmed. The pain pattern item did not load on any component.Eighty per cent of the hypotheses on the correlation between modified PDQ and the questionnaireswere met, as were 50% concerning PPTs measurements.Conclusions: This study is the first to assess structural and construct validity of the modified PDQ knee/hip by using factor analysis and hypothesis-testing. This questionnaire seems to reflect neuropathic-like pain symptoms experienced by hip/knee OA-patients with adequate validity. The item on pain patternmight not reflect the construct. More than 75% of the predefined hypotheses regarding the modified PDQ and the other questionnaires were met. Only 50% of the hypotheses on PPTs measurements were met, probably due to heterogeneity and limited size of this subsample.
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This paper puts forward a conceptual proposition that ties the discourses on ‘urban memory’ (Stillman and Johanson, 2009; Ringas, Christopoulou, Stefanidakis., 2011; Loughran, Fine & Hunter, 2015), sensory ethnography (Pink 2017 ), and counter-mapping (Crampton and Krygier 2018; ) with digital methods (Rogers, Sánchez-Querubín, and Kil, 2015). As an ‘interventionist’ approach, we understand co-producing counter (dynamic) maps with local stakeholders (actors), coupled with sensory and sentient data as a way of capturing the memory of urban peripheral landscapes (through intervention and participation) and thus creating archival knowledge.Urban memory is often understood as a form of collective memory that isconstituted by individual experiences within the place itself and through its historyand social environment (Ringas et al., 2011). With rapid changes in digitaltechnologies, digital and material have become “inseparate and entangled inenvironments people move and navigate their lives through'' (Pink and Fors, 2017).Memories are “evoked with material engagement with devices” which “opens up afield of sensory and affective engagement” research (ibid). While Pink and Forspropose to follow such engagement in a mundane and everyday setting, seen as anon-representational, phenomenological approach, we put forward a mixedmethods approach that connects sensory and sentient data (as agents) with the largerenvironmental context.Urban areas are often conceptualized as sites of ‘creative destruction’, in between stability and change, space (that can be developed) and place (that is lived in), often subjected to planning, regulation, and economic forces (Batty, 2007). This is especially true for urban areas that are located outside of the ‘center’ or in the cities’ periphery. These areas have experienced an endless cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction often witnessed and captured by local inhabitants, creatives, and activists. Currently, many of the peripheral areas are emancipating, bringing forward and openly communicating their complexities, values, and engaging various stakeholders in their regeneration efforts (which happens in a broader context of many European cities repositioning themselves in more polycentric and polyphonic ways, (Scott, 2015).To be able to capture the memory of ever-changing, ‘built a new’ urban places, we put forward counter (dynamic) mapping using digital methods as complemented with sensory and sentient data generated through interactions with digital technologies. Building on Crampton’s notion of maps (Crampton and Krygier, 2018), cartography is understood as existence (becoming) rather than essence (fixed ontology). Maps are therefore taken not as ‘objects’, but as performative practices. Digital methods, on the other hand, enable us to understand dynamic place-making, through ‘tracing’ the stakeholders (actors) and their relations overtime to capture the ways the urban environment gets performed.To clarify with an example, in Spinoza Imaginaries Lab & Cafe situated inAmsterdam Southeast we have been capturing the ever changing urbanenvironment in partnership with local stakeholders (actors), mapping their evolvingrelationships (and grouping) using the IssueCrawler and sentient data co-gatheredby researchers and students, with the clear understanding that to be able to capturea place, it is important to map the vernacular knowledge of that place (imaginaries,including art, movies, unrealized plans and initiatives, etc.). We propose this mixedmethods approach as an epistemological practice geared towards archiving thedynamic state of urban peripheral landscapes.
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To reach for abstraction is a major but challenging goal in mathematics education: teachers struggle with finding ways how to foster abstraction in their classes. To shed light on this issue for the case of geometry education, we align theoretical perspectives on embodied learning and abstraction with practical perspectives from in-service teachers. We focus on the teaching and learning of realistic geometry, not only because this domain is apt for sensori-motor action investigations, but also because abstraction in realistic geometry is under-researched in relation to other domains of mathematics, and teachers’ knowledge of geometry and confidence in teaching it lag behind. The following research question will be addressed: how can a theoretical embodied perspective on abstraction in geometry education in the higher grades of primary school inform current teacher practices? To answer this question, we carried out a literature study and an interview study with in-service teachers (n = 6). As a result of the literature study, we consider embodied abstraction in geometry as a process of reflecting on, describing, explaining, and structuring of sensory-motor actions in the experienced world through developing and using mathematical artifacts. The results from the interview study show that teachers are potentially prepared for using aspects of embodied learning (e.g., manipulatives), but are not aware of the different aspects of enactment that may invite students’ abstraction. We conclude that theories on embodiment and abstraction do not suffice to foster students’ abstraction process in geometry. Instead, teachers’ knowledge of embodied abstraction in geometry and how to foster this grows with experience in enactment, and with the discovery that cognition emerges to serve action.
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In this paper the Feltscaping-method is described, its characteristics and requirements, and some examples of how it was used and further developed. In doing so this paper aims at embedding feltscaping into the existing discourse of arts-based research. Furthermore, it will reflect on possibilities for further development of the Feltscaping method.The development of the method started seven years ago, as Cora Jongsma as a way of delving into the different layers of the landscape connected with the landscape. The product of this process is a feltscape, a representation of the landscape made up of several layers of wool that tells a story about a specific area. The layering in the feltscape, in the beginning, was purely the result of interaction between the creative process, conversations with land users, landscape research and visual experience, drawing a parallel to the formation process of the landscape. Starting as a personal search of the artist on how to connect the feltscapes to the landscape, after a few years, developed into an instrument to stimulate good conversation with people that in one way or another are connected to the landscape. In this way, feltscapes enable the researcher to test and exchange own sensory perceptions and to extent existing knowledge or questions about the landscape by eliciting social interactions.
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Challenging behaviour, such as aggression towards oneself, others, or objects, arises in interaction with the environment and may prevent individuals from participating in society and compromise their quality of life (QoL). Literature suggests that architects can contribute to prevention, by influencing challenging behaviour before rather than after its occurrence. By conducting a case study at a very-intensive-care facility, we explore how architecture can contribute to the QoL of intellectually impaired (and autistic) individuals showing challenging behaviour. The case study is based on interviews with residents and care providers, and direct observations of their daily life. Preliminary findings confirm the relevance of architecture in influencing challenging behaviour. They suggest that the residents are dependent on the (visual and auditory) connection with the care provider. Also, care providers confirm the importance of this connection for the quality of the care they provide. At the same time, residents may experience anxiety triggered by fellow residents and their challenging behaviour. Residents may also feel stress when faced with unexpected situations and this may lead to an onset of challenging behaviour. Sensory sensitivity, specifically to noise and heat is also relevant for their QoL.The findings will be further substantiated through multiple triangulation with available data (personal files, incident reports, photographs). Future research, specifically focused on intellectually impaired individuals showing challenging behaviour, is needed to better understand the similarities and differences between their needs and the needs of autistic people.
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In primary music education a key question is what teachers can do to stimulate students’ musical creativity. For the answer, delving into teacher-student interaction during the creative processes in the naturalistic setting of primary music lessons is required. Twenty-six music lessons from thirteen teachers and their classes of seven Dutch schools were recorded to explore the relation between teachers’ autonomy support and students’ divergent and convergent thought & action. Quantitative sequential analysis and thematic analysis were combined to examine this relation, using a framework offered by Complex Dynamic Systems theory and Enaction theory. In contrast to classical correla-tional analysis, sequential analysis focuses on the dynamics, and thus on the temporal relation in classroom interaction. The results show that mostly lower-level autonomy support was offered. Es-pecially in creative lessons, higher-level autonomy support is more likely to lead to higher-level student divergent thought and action. For convergent thought and action, the results were less con-clusive. An implication of the findings is that (research into) music education could benefit from interventions aimed at enhancing autonomy support in primary school music.
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The goal for the coming years is to get insight in the guest experience in hotels. What is guest experience? How to measure guest experience? What is the relation between guest experience and guest loyalty? And finally, what tangible elements in the physical environment of hotels and the contact with hotel employees may improve the experience of hotel guests? And in what way should these elements be changed? This paper describes the first and second step towards this goal: a theoretical background of guest experience and the development of the Guest Experience Scan for NH Hoteles. This Guest Experience Scan is a quantitative instrument trying to measure guests’ affective evaluation of the physical environment of the hotel and the contact with the hotel employees.
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This chapter describes the growing influence of point-of-care diagnostics (POCD) on the daily lives of citizens, their immediate families, and healthcare providers. With a view to the future, the most important contemporary developments in this field are discussed, such as noninvasive sensor technology in the diagnostic process, practical examples of point-of-care diagnostics (POCD), including the quantify-self movement and infrared technology. Cost-effectiveness, adoption of POCD, and the contribution of POCD innovations to self-management and health literacy are also discussed. Developments in which deep learning and artificial intelligence are used to make the diagnostic results more reliable are also conferred, such as the development of point-of-care Internet diagnostics. The discussion of professional advice dilemma’s in POCD, the patient’s appreciation of POCD, and ethical and philosophical considerations conclude this chapter.
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