Information Systems - Theses
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ItemAudience experience in domestic videogaming( 2014)Videogames are frequently played socially, but not all participants actively play. Audience members observe gameplay, often participating and experiencing the game indirectly. While the existence of non-playing audience members has been previously acknowledged, there have been few attempts to understand what activities audience members engage in while watching videogames, or how their experience is affected by different aspects of the game and social situation. This thesis presents the first substantial body of empirical work on audience behaviour and experience in social videogaming sessions. Existing work was reviewed in a number of areas of literp.ature including the sociality of gameplay, the increasing role of physicality and physical actions in gameplay, and the role of audiences in HCI. Three studies were then conducted based on the research question: How do the sociality and physicality of videogaming sessions influence audience experience? An initial exploratory observational study (N = 6 families) examined the types of activities that audiences engage in while watching highly physical videogames in their homes. This study indicated that audience members can adopt a variety of ephemeral roles that provide them with opportunities to interact with one another, the players, and the game technology. Additionally, participants reported that the physicality of the gameplay heavily influenced their experience. The second study, a naturalistic experimental study (N = 134) consisted of a mixed-model analysis of the factors of game physicality and turn anticipation. Study 2 found that anticipation of a turn affects experience of both audience and player, and similarly found that highly physical games result in more positive audience experiences, although the relationship between physicality and experience is not straightforward. A third study, also an experiment (N = 24), examined the influence of game physicality and visual attention on audience experience within a mediated setting, and a cross-study comparison identified that there appears to be a strong interplay between social context and the experience of physicality. Overall, this thesis contributes an understanding of how sociality, physicality, and the interplay between the two can influence audience behaviour and experience. These findings can be used to inform the design of novel game and interactive experiences that incorporate physicality, turn anticipation, and opportunities for different types of participation in order to influence and enhance audience experience.
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ItemStrategies to manage the influences from persuasive technologies: the case of self-monitoring and social comparison( 2014)Persuasive technologies are systems designed to support and motivate people to adopt, maintain or change their behaviours. Persuasive systems deliver influences to the user containing information that aims to: 1) trigger the user’s emotions, 2) convince the user with information, and/or 3) raise the user’s awareness of the importance of changing a behaviour. Though it is generally expected that the influences delivered by a persuasive technology will trigger motivation; the theory of cognitive appraisal and coping with stress, proposed by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) shows that when people are exposed to influences they can also experience undesired pressure. When individuals experience such undesired pressure they will often implement personal strategies that are attempts to avoid, control, tolerate and/or accept the influence, and the effects that the influence can cause. Whilst the persuasive technology literature reports on how users of persuasive systems interpret an influence as either motivating or adverse, there is a lack of understanding in the current literature on how users can employ strategies to manage the influences from persuasive systems. The aim of this thesis is to explore the strategies that users employ when interacting with a persuasive technology. The present research uses the case of sports technologies that combine the persuasive design principles (PDPs) of self-monitoring and social comparison. Using the aforementioned case allows this research to better understand the use of strategies when persuasive systems deliver influences in two different conditions. The first condition being when a system delivers the influences from self-monitoring and social comparison in different times and contexts, and the second condition being when a single technological platform simultaneously delivers the influences from self-monitoring and social comparison. Through two qualitative studies this research discovered the use of 12 strategies that aimed to 1) manage the influences delivered by the persuasive systems and, 2) manage the effects caused by the influences. The strategies that were used to manage the influences were aimed at preventing the user from experiencing the side effects that the influence could cause. The strategies that were used to manage the effects caused by the influences aimed at alleviating the unpleasant feelings and effects caused by the influences. The findings of the present research have contributed to a better understanding of how users employed strategies to manage the influences from persuasive systems and, the effects that the influences can generate. Furthermore, this thesis explains the use of strategies as a form of appropriating the persuasive system, where users had to perform additional tasks to avoid adverse effects from the influences. The findings extend current knowledge of the design of persuasive technologies by using strategies as a design tool to identify flaws in the persuasive design. Finally this research highlights the importance of tailoring the persuasive system to both the user and the specific physical activity to be performed.
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ItemA model for digital forensic readiness in organisations( 2014)Organisations are increasingly reliant upon information systems for almost every facet of their operations. As a result, there are legal, contractual, regulatory, security and operational reasons why this reliance often translates into a need to conduct digital forensic investigations. However, conducting digital forensic investigations and collecting digital evidence is a specialised and challenging task exacerbated by the increased complexity of corporate environments, diversity of computing platforms, and large-scale digitisation of businesses. There is agreement in both professional and academic literature that in order for organisations to meet this challenge, they must develop ‘digital forensic readiness’ – the proactive capability to collect, analyse and preserve digital information. Unfortunately, although digital forensic readiness is becoming a legal and regulatory requirement in many jurisdictions, studies show that most organisations have not developed a significant capability in this domain. A key issue facing organisations intending to develop a forensic readiness capability is the lack of comprehensive and coherent guidance in both the academic and professional literature on how forensic readiness can be achieved. A review of the literature conducted as part of this study found that the academic and professional discourse in forensic readiness is fragmented and dispersed in that it does not build cumulatively on prior knowledge and is not informed by empirical evidence. Further, there is a lack of maturity in the discourse that is rooted in the reliance on informal definitions of key terms and concepts. For example, there is little discussion and understanding of the key organisational factors that contribute to forensic readiness, the relationships between these factors and their precise definitions. Importantly, there is no collective agreement on the primary motivating factors for organisations to becoming forensically ready. Therefore, this research project proposes the following research questions: Research Question 1. What objectives can organisations achieve by being forensically ready? Research Question 2. How can forensic readiness be achieved by organisations? Which in turn suggests the following sub-questions: Sub-Question 2. What factors contribute to making an organisation forensically ready? Sub-Question 3. How do these factors interact to achieve forensic readiness in organisations? A systematic review approach and coding techniques have been utilised to synthesise key elements of the vast and largely fragmented body of knowledge in forensic readiness towards a more holistic and coherent understanding. This led to the development of a comprehensive model that explains how forensic readiness can be achieved and what organisations can achieve by being forensically ready. The proposed model has been extensively validated through multiple focus groups and a multi-round Delphi survey, which involved experienced computer forensic experts from twenty countries and diverse computer forensic backgrounds. The study found there to be four primary objectives for developing a forensic readiness capability: 1) to manage digital evidence; 2) to conduct internal digital forensic investigations; 3) to comply with regulations; and 4) to achieve other non-forensic related objectives (e.g. improve security management). The study also identified the factors that contribute to forensic readiness. These are: 1) a strategy that draws the map for a forensically ready system; 2) human expertise to perform forensic tasks; 3) awareness of forensics in organisational staff; 4) software and hardware to manage digital evidence; 5) system architecture that is tailored for forensics; 6) policies and procedures that outline forensic best practice; and 7) training to educate staff on their forensic responsibilities. Further, the study found three additional organisational factors external to the forensic program: 1) adequate support from senior management; 2) an organisational culture that is supportive of forensics; and 3) good governance. This study makes significant theoretical contributions by introducing a more comprehensive model for forensic readiness that is characterised by the following: 1) providing formal definitions to key concepts in forensic readiness; 2) describing the key factors that contribute to forensic readiness; 3) describing the relationships and interactions between the factors; 4) defining a set of dimensions and properties by which forensic readiness is characterised; and 5) describing the key objectives organisations can achieve by being forensically ready. The study also makes significant contributions to practice. A key attribute of the digital forensic readiness model is its depth (in terms of the various dimensions and properties of each factor), which enables its use as an instrument to assess and guide organisational forensic readiness. Furthermore, this research increases the marketability of forensic readiness by introducing a well-defined list of objectives organisations can achieve by developing a forensic capability.
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ItemStrategic information security policy quality assessment: a multiple constituency perspective( 2010)An integral part of any information security management program is the information security policy. The purpose of an information security policy is to define the means by which organisations protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and its supporting infrastructure from a range of security threats. The tenet of this thesis is that the quality of information security policy is inadequately addressed by organisations. Further, although information security policies may undergo multiple revisions as part of a process development lifecycle and, as a result, may generally improve in quality, a more explicit systematic and comprehensive process of quality improvement is required. A key assertion of this research is that a comprehensive assessment of information security policy requires the involvement of the multiple stakeholders in organisations that derive benefit from the directives of the information security policy. Therefore, this dissertation used a multiple-constituency approach to investigate how security policy quality can be addressed in organisations, given the existence of multiple stakeholders. The formal research question under investigation was: How can multiple constituency quality assessment be used to improve strategic information security policy? The primary contribution of this thesis to the Information Systems field of knowledge is the development of a model: the Strategic Information Security Policy Quality Model. This model comprises three components: a comprehensive model of quality components, a model of stakeholder involvement and a model for security policy development. The strategic information security policy quality model gives a holistic perspective to organisations to enable management of the security policy quality assessment process. This research contributes six main contributions as stated below: This research has demonstrated that a multiple constituency approach is effective for information security policy assessment This research has developed a set of quality components for information security policy quality assessment This research has identified that efficiency of the security policy quality assessment process is critical for organisations This research has formalised security policy quality assessment within policy development This research has developed a strategic information security policy quality model This research has identified improvements that can be made to the security policy development lifecycle The outcomes of this research contend that the security policy lifecycle can be improved by: enabling the identification of when different stakeholders should be involved, identifying those quality components that each of the different stakeholders should assess as part of the quality assessment, and showing organisations which quality components to include or to ignore based on their individual circumstances. This leads to a higher quality information security policy, and should impact positively on an organisation’s information security.
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ItemSeamless proximity sensing( 2013)Smartphones are uniquely positioned to offer a new breed of location and proximity aware applications that can harness the benefits provided by positioning technologies such as GPS, and advancements in radio communication technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth low energy (BLE). The popularity of location aware applications, that make use of technologies such as GPS, Wi-Fi and 3G, has further strained the already frail battery life that current generation smartphones exhibit. This research project is aimed to perform a comparative assessment of NFC, BLE and Classic Bluetooth (BT) for the purpose of establishing proximity awareness in mobile devices. We demonstrate techniques; in the context of a mobile application to provide seamless proximity awareness using the three technologies, with focus on accuracy and operational range. We present the results of our research and experimentation for the purpose of creating a baseline for proximity estimation using the three technologies. We further investigate the viability of using BT as the underlying wireless technology for peer to peer networking on mobile devices and demonstrate techniques that can be applied programmatically for automatic detection of nearby mobile devices.
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ItemA conceptual framework for competitive mobile content provision( 2012)Content provision via mobile technology platforms (such as smart mobile phones and tablet computers) raises interesting practical and research challenges for the field of Information Systems (IS). Much of the IS literature about mobile content provision is concerned with the ‘user experience’, with a particular focus on technology. In contrast, there is limited academic work looking at the ‘content’ component of the mobile experience. Quite often in information system development the content is seen as separate to the system and does not receive as much consideration. This study is specifically interested in how providers (such as newspapers, media companies and universities) can understand and then tailor content for delivery to users of mobile devices in ever-changing life contexts. This study proposes that it is the content that users come to the mobile platform to consume and which gives the experience much of its value and meaning. It is therefore through the development of appealing content offerings that content providers stand their best chance of establishing a competitive advantage on the mobile platform. In the mobile sphere content providers are observed focusing their efforts upon the development of micro information systems (in the form of mobile content offerings) which contain everything required by, and of value to the mobile technology user in the moment of use. These offerings are modular in nature (self-sufficient, but able to be associated with other systems) and geared towards helping users to optimize their quality of life. This study puts forward a theoretical framework for mobile content provision which describes and supports this modular, content-driven approach. This framework is both descriptive (detailing what providers are actually doing in relation to mobile content provision) and prescriptive, because the observations are taken further and a set of concepts, constructs and principles defined, to inform future IS research and to aid strategic decision-making about competitive content offering development and provision on the mobile platform. In particular, current IS theoretical frameworks and models, based on utility and user satisfaction, are no longer adequate ways for providers, researchers or developers to conceive the needs and expectations of mobile information system users. Instead, qualitative evidence shows that providers expect people to value and bond with mobile content offerings that help them to resolve everyday predicaments and contribute to their quality of life. This study therefore proposes the Continuous Quality of Life Optimization Principle as a better way to understand the complex, deeply personal, mobile content experience — and the predicament and bondability constructs as more effective ways to understand and then tailor content for delivery to users of mobile devices in ever-changing life contexts.
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ItemComputing relationships and relatedness between contextually diverse entities( 2011)When presented with a pair of entities such as a ball and a bat, a person may make the connection that both of these entities are involved in sport (e.g., the sports baseball or cricket, based on the individual's background), that the composition of the two entities is similar (e.g., a wooden ball and a wooden stick), or if the person is especially creative, a fancy dress ball where someone has come dressed as a bat. All of these connections are equally valid, but depending on the context the person is familiar with (e.g., sport, wooden objects, fancy dress), a particular connection may be more apparent to that person. From a computational perspective, identifying these relationships and calculating the level of relatedness of entity pairs requires consideration of all ways in which the entities are able to interact with one another. Existing approaches to identifying the relatedness of entities and the semantic relationships that exist between them fail to take into account the multiple diverse ways in which these entities may interact, and hence do not explore all potential ways in which entities may be related. In this thesis, I use the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia as the basis for the formulation of a measure of semantic relatedness that takes into account the contextual diversity of entities (called the Related Article Conceptual Overlap, or RACO, method), and describe several methods of relationship extraction that utilise the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia to identify pieces of text that describe relations between contextually diverse entities. I also describe the construction of a dataset of museum exhibit relatedness judgements used to evaluate the performance of RACO. I demonstrate that RACO outperforms state-of-the-art measures of semantic relatedness over a collection of contextually diverse entities (museum exhibits), and that the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia provides a basis for identifying valid relationships between contextually diverse entities. As this work is presented in regard to the domain of Cultural Heritage and using Wikipedia as a basis for representation, I additionally describe the process for adapting the principle of conceptual overlap for calculating semantic relatedness and the relationship extraction methods based on taxonomic links to alternate contextually diverse domains, and for use with other representational resources.
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ItemInformation categorisation: an emergent approach( 2011)The explosion of information and of naive users on the Internet has highlighted problems of effective access to information. One response to the problem of effective access to information is to classify the information into categories based on the nature of the information being classified. Existing information classifications are typically developed by committees or imposed by organisations and have proved difficult to maintain. This investigation developed a two phase method to systematically determine and analyse information categories in a specific domain as perceived by domain experts. The initial phase, the Term Extraction Phase, applied the librarianship approach of literary warrant guided by Ingarden’s Ontology of Literature to research papers from a specific domain to discover what is studied in the domain. The approach is significant in that it draws upon rigorous and philosophically compatible bodies of work in two areas. Firstly, from work addressing the nature, existence, and categorisation of literary expression found in research papers. Secondly, from qualitative research methods addressing how meaningful terms can be analysed in text and related to each other. We have found that such a guiding ontological theory can be used to seed coding families giving rise to a viable method for generating categorisations for further research. We have also found that the key guiding unit of analysis operationalising Ingarden’s approach is the “reported research activity” and that the process is practical although labour intensive. The second phase, the Term Categorisation Phase, used the librarianship approach of consensus to have domain experts form categories from the terms generated in the first phase. Examining those categories using pairwise comparisons allowed the identification of similar categories based on the common categorisation of terms in the coding family. The pairwise comparisons were undertaken manually, but the development of an automated tool to perform these comparisons would enhance this aspect of the phase. Boisot’s Social Learning Cycle (SLC) was used as a model with which to explain category variations. The single performance of the Term Categorisation Phase undertaken in this investigation demonstrated the value of the SLC for explaining the variations between domain experts, and showed the potential for explaining category changes over time using the SLC and repeated performances of the Term Categorisation Phase. This investigation makes a number of contributions. The investigation demonstrated that the two librarianship approaches of literary warrant and consensus are not necessarily mutually exclusive and that both have much to offer at different stages of the categorisation process. A method was devised which provides a more rigorous and systematic approach to analysing and categorising text. The method consists of two phases which are loosely coupled and could be used independently. A very significant aspect is the ability to view categorisation as a dynamic process. That enables the examination of categorisation and classification schemes and for the identification of areas within those schemes which require attention. The method is not a tool to develop a complete classification scheme, but seeks to contribute insights on how to progress the development of mature schemes.
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ItemDesigning sports: exertion games( 2010)Exertion games are computer games that require intense physical effort from its users. Unlike traditional computer games, exertion games offer physical health benefits in addition to the social benefits derived from networked games. This thesis contributes an understanding of exertion games from an interaction design perspective to support researchers analysing and designers creating more engaging exertion games. Playing with other participants can increase engagement and hence facilitate the associated benefits. Computer technology can support such social play by expanding the range of possible participants through networking advances. However, there is a lack of understanding how technological design can facilitate the relationship between exertion and social play, especially in mediated environments. In response, this thesis establishes an understanding of how mediating technology can support social exertion play, in particular when players are in geographically distant locations. This understanding is forged through the design of three “sports over a distance” games. The experience of engaging with them was studied qualitatively to gain a rich understanding of how design facilitates social play in exertion games. The three games “Jogging over a Distance”, “Table Tennis for Three”, and “Remote Impact - Shadowboxing over a Distance” allow investigating different perspectives of mediated exertion play, since they represent three categories of richness on a social play continuum across both the virtual and the physical world. Studies of the experience of engaging with the three games resulted in an exertion framework that consists of six conceptual themes framed by four perspectives on the body and three on games. A fourth study demonstrated that the understanding derived from the investigation of the use and design of the games can support designers and researchers with the analysis of existing games and aid the creative process of designing new exertion games. This thesis provides the first understanding of how technology design facilitates social play in exertion games. In doing so, it expands our knowledge of how to design for the active body, broadening the view of the role of the body when interacting with computers. Offering an increased understanding of exertion games enables game designers to create more engaging games, hence providing players more reasons to exert their bodies, supporting them in profiting from the many benefits of exertion.
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ItemUnderstanding participation in passion-centric social network sites( 2011)Passion describes a strong inclination towards an activity that people like and find important. It provides people with meaningful goals, facilitates personal development, and enriches their social lives. On the other hand, passion can be a source of tension with other areas of everyday life, which demands sacrifices, risks, and sometimes even suffering. The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between technology and passion. In particular, this thesis addresses a gap in our understanding of participation in social network sites designed to support people’s passions. While related work indicates the potential of passion-centric social network sites to enhance passion, little is known about how participation in these sites may complicate or otherwise influence passion. I conducted three empirical studies to address this gap. Study 1 and 2 examined bodybuilding and the social network site BodySpace, whereas study 3 focussed on analogue photography and Flickr. In all three studies I used a field research approach to examine passion and participation in social network sites as well as related offline settings. Study 1 identified three different categories of online participation: tool, community, and theatre. These three categories showed how passion-centric social network sites both support and constrain the development of skills, social relations, and identities related to passion. Study 2 expanded on these findings, showing how online participation and passion vary between amateurs and related professionals. Study 3 evaluated the findings from study 1 and 2 in a different context. This study refined earlier findings on participation and its influence on passion, and it showed which of these findings are applicable to different domains. Through these studies, this thesis contributes to current research in three distinct, but interrelated ways. First, the findings extend existing models of online participation by showing variations between the different categories of participation of amateurs and professionals. Second, this thesis extends current understanding of social relations on passion-centric social network sites by showing how and why users connect with different kinds of strangers as well as with groups of friends and peers. Finally, this thesis extends current understanding of passion in the context of social network sites. While existing sites support people in achieving their goals, they appear limited in mitigating sacrifices and risks, and thus they may adversely complicate passion. This thesis discusses practical implications emerging from these findings that address this challenge. It concludes with a call for novel technologies to mitigate sacrifices and to facilitate harmonious passion.