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The scarcity of professional ophthalmic equipment in rural areas and during exceptional situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for tele-ophthalmology. This late-breaking work presents a novel method for guiding users to a specific pose (3D position and 3D orientation) near the eye for mobile self-eye examinations using a smartphone. The user guidance is implemented utilizing haptic and visual modalities to guide the user and subsequently capture a close-up photo of the user's eyes. In a within-subject user study (n=24), the required time, success rate, and perceived demand for the visual and haptic feedback conditions were examined. The results indicate that haptic feedback was the most efficient and least cognitively demanding in the positioning task near the eye, whereas relying on only visual feedback can be more difficult due to the near focus point or refractive errors. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had manifold societal implications. This paper reflects on the role of visual communication for maintaining relationship stability in couple relationships during the first wave of the pandemic, which we understand as a circumstantial turning point. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with couples before, during, and after the first wave of COVID-19 in Switzerland, complemented by creative visual methods, follow-up surveys, and video calls. Our results show that visual practices are embedded in rather stable communication repertoires of couples during their relationship maintenance phase. Our study also points to the simultaneous use of a variety of visual practices, which led to a high "visual saturation". These visual practices were found to contribute to relationship stability by reinforcing intimacy, a key factor in couple relationships, thereby shielding the relationships from circumstantial change. © 2023 The Author(s).
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COVID-19 brought to the public agenda the need for disseminating reliable information on the epidemiological scenario of the disease in various regions of the world. In Brazil, several managers took on the task of informing the local population about the progression of the pandemic in their municipalities. This study aimed to reflect on the construction/design of COVID-19 bulletins/infographics and the central importance of design in disseminating health information. To this end, we analysed 133 infographics on the disease numbers published on Instagram of the Municipal Health Foundation of Rio Claro, in the interior of São Paulo state in Brazil, between March 30 and July 31, 2020. The qualitative analysis from the multimodal perspective made it possible to identify that these were built in an iterative process, with changes over time to exclude or include information as the pandemic spread in the municipality. The infographics were analysed in three dimensions: format, colour and content. We concluded that their elaboration was based on basic design concepts concerning shape and colours. In the first five months, three versions were produced to refine the design and information until attaining a more consistent format for communicating the data of the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2023, Comunicacao e Sociedade. All Rights Reserved.
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Telehealth expanded during the pandemic, but a universal definition was lacking. This concept analysis defines telehealth as the provision of patient-centered, authentic, safe, and appropriate health care for a patient between two physical locations via the use of technology.
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In a constantly evolving society where radical socio-cultural changes have been introduced in the last year, as a consequence of the world health emergency linked to the spread of the Covid 19 virus, the centrality of images in the daily life of individuals has been reconfirmed. In situations of risk for the community, such as in the case of a health emergency due to the spread of a highly contagious virus, the role of communication is particularly important for public institutions, to obtain the cooperation of the population in procedures aimed at preventing the spread or slowing down the contagion, using images that describe the recommendations to be followed. The image confirms its social role in contemporary culture, as a means of communication and a channel for the rapid and direct dissemination of information, regardless of cultural level, language, or age. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The pandemic situation (Covid 19) brought new challenges in the education sector while simultaneously presenting unique opportunities for technology enabled services. The use of Mobile Robotic Telepresence systems in educational sector is promising as it provides means to significantly enhance the involvement and benefits to stakeholders involved in such interactions. An immersive user interaction with such a system depends on many aspects which are both static and dynamic. We approach the dynamic aspect of such interactions recognizing that the video and audio aspects of such a system will require fine tuning and adaptation. Closely related is the aspect of maintaining the necessary quality of network connection. Considering each of these aspects a reinforcement learning mechanism is incorporated to improve the overall user experience with such a system. A working system is built and experiments performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. Reward generation matrix, a crucial piece of data gathering from the environment, takes about 45 minutes, offline training time is less than a second, while the robot is able to cover the workspace in slightly less than a minute. The system is not limited to educational sector alone and provides a foundational framework to extend the concepts and principles to adjacent markets. © 2023 IEEE.
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This study analyses the visual social media communication of Italian 5-star hotel brands to investigate whether it has changed over the course of COVID-19. An AI-based image content analysis approach was used to extract the most frequently ascribed labels from 2,439 collected photos of three consecutive year samples. The results of the performed content analysis show that the visual communication of the hotel brand is mainly focused on interior design and the natural environment, with the pandemic stimulating the use of the latter. The study contributes the literature by reinforcing the importance of relative consistency in luxury brand communication even in turbulent times. © 2023, The Author(s).
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Nowadays, telepresence systems based on the Extended Reality (XR) system are actively developed and used for remote collaboration due to COVID-19. Still, several issues, such as limited traversable space in Virtual Reality (VR) and require all participants to wear head-mounted display (HMD), stop these systems from being used in our daily life. On the other hand, telepresence robots have been used in various fields before the pandemic. However, these robots also have a limitation in that the current form is incapable of delivering non-verbal expressions, which is essential for social interaction. Therefore, we present a Holobot, a telepresence robot based on the XR system. A remote user connects to the Holobot through VR HMDs, and the Holobot augments a virtual avatar that projectsusers' facial and gesture expressions.We developed a prototype and conducted a simple field test in the exhibition to receive feedback. VR participants enjoyed exploring remote spaces and interacting with each other through Holobot. Furthermore, remote space participants mentioned that a 1:1 scale avatar helped to build co-presence with the VR user. Based on these insights, we think Holobot could provide design guideline for future telepresence robot. For further approach, we plan to improve our prototype and conduct user test for structured evaluation of our system. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.
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Since the Covid-19 irruption in the 2020 designers from all over the world started to concentrate their efforts to increase the awareness of the population through visual methods and prevent the spread of the disease. As the germ itself is invisible to the naked eye, graphic designers created an iconic visual identity 3D image of a particle, which became the widespread inspiration for future propaganda and informational posters. Furthermore, the visualization of the virus particle was not enough to influence the wide scopes of people;thus, the new problem for designers became to make such posters that could reveal virus vs human "relations”, taking into account gender characteristics as well. The article consists of analytical research on gender-based graphic design's role in the prevention of viruses throughout history. The main problem is how graphic design projects influence the decrease of the virus spread and how gender equality-cantered design contribute to it. First time in the article are presented the basic principles of poster design considered for all genders to present the serious message of the urgent prevention of the virus. In the article are analysed and reviewed the works of designers as well. The significance of the article is emphasizing the importance of gender equality in design visualization to increase the influence of them on people's behaviour. © 2022 Aesthetics Media Services. All rights reserved.
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On 9 March 2020, 2 days before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, two of the authors (microbiologist and infectious diseases expert Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles and cartoonist Toby Morris) released their first output together: an animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) known as "Flatten the Curve”. The graphic went viral on Twitter with over 10 million impressions in 3 days. Flatten the Curve was the first of more than 70 graphics produced by our collaboration, all designed as accessible visual communication about COVID-19. The graphics, all released under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-4.0 license, have been translated into multiple languages, used by communities, politicians, and public health officials around the world, and the collaborators have won multiple awards for their work. Copyright © 2023 Wiles, Morris and Priestley.
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Over the last several years, remote collaboration has been getting more attention in the research community because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In previous studies, researchers have investigated the effect of adding visual communication cues or shared views in collaboration, but there has not been any previous study exploring the influence between them. In this paper, we investigate the influence of view types on the use of visual communication cues. We compared the use of the three visual cues (hand gesture, a pointer with hand gesture, and sketches with hand gesture) across two view types (dependent and independent views), respectively. We conducted a user study, and the results showed that hand gesture and sketches with the hand gesture cues were well matched with the dependent view condition, and using a pointer with the hand gesture cue was suited to the independent view condition. With the dependent view, the hand gesture and sketch cues required less mental effort for collaborative communication, had better usability, provided better message understanding, and increased feeling of co-presence compared to the independent view. Since the dependent view supported the same viewpoint between the remote expert and a local worker, the local worker could easily understand the remote expert's hand gestures. In contrast, in the independent view case, when they had different viewpoints, it was not easy for the local worker to understand the remote expert's hand gestures. The sketch cue had a benefit of showing the final position and orientation of the manipulating objects with the dependent view, but this benefit was less obvious in the independent view case (which provided a further view compared to the dependent view) because precise drawing in the sketches was difficult from a distance. On the contrary, a pointer with the hand gesture cue required less mental effort to collaborate, had better usability, provided better message understanding, and an increased feeling of co-presence in the independent view condition than in the dependent view condition. The pointer cue could be used instead of a hand gesture in the independent view condition because the pointer could still show precise pointing information regardless of the view type. © 2023 Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
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Recently, Covid-19 pandemic has introduced some disturbances in the transportation industry. As a result, some university students are now participating in online internship programs. In our laboratory, we proposed an online campus tour project where each foreign student teleoperates with a robot. The robot prepared is outfitted with a camera, laser range finder sensor, and a mobile monitor to represent the student's physical appearance. The robots and foreign students are connected through the university's internal network. During the tour, we found some flaws and improvements in the current system. Because of the time delay and other difficulties, some students are not able to follow the campus tour project at the same pace as the others. Consequently, a distributed module for automated following features with dynamic order is proposed. The following order is determined by the location of each robot. The proposed module combines ROS Navigation Stack and a novel method of robot formation. In this study, the proposed improvement is evaluated and discussed. © 2022 ICROS.
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Discussion of the value of image, metaphor and creative principles to good consulting skill and patient education within the Primary Care setting is important in enhancing improved patient-physician interactions. A broad-based view of the techniques used in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching within Medical Education in the UK and US are canvassed to establish the best practices and efficacy of using drawings and images as communication tools between physicians and patients. A descriptive analysis of the author's use of image and metaphor is analysed to assess how such convey medical information and help in the improvement of consultation and patient understanding.
Subject(s)
Education, Medical , Referral and Consultation , Communication , Humans , Physician-Patient Relations , Primary Health CareABSTRACT
The outbreak of COVID-19 forced schools to swiftly transition from in-person classes to online or remote offerings, making educators and learners alike rely on online videoconferencing platforms. Platforms like Zoom offer audio-visual channels of communication and include features that are designed to approximate the classroom experience. However, it is not clear how students' learning experiences are affected by affordances of the videoconferencing platforms or what underlying factors explain the differential effects of these affordances on class experiences of engagement, interaction, and satisfaction. In order to find out, we conducted two online survey studies: Study 1 (N = 176) investigated the effects of three types of videoconferencing affordances (i.e., modality, interactivity, and agency affordances) on class experience during the first two months after the transition to online learning. Results showed that usage of the three kinds of affordances was positively correlated with students' class engagement, interaction, and satisfaction. Perceived anonymity, nonverbal cues, and comfort level were found to be key mediators. In addition, students' usage of video cameras in class was influenced by their classmates. Study 2 (N = 256) tested the proposed relationships at a later stage of the pandemic and found similar results, thus serving as a constructive replication. This paper focuses on reporting the results of Study 1 since it captures the timely reactions from students when they first went online, and the second study plays a supplementary role in verifying Study 1 and thereby extending its external validity. Together, the two studies provide insights for instructors on how to leverage different videoconferencing affordances to enhance the virtual learning experience. Design implications for digital tools in online education are also discussed. © 2022 ACM.
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In this study, we present a visual servo control framework for fully automated nasopharyngeal swab robots. The proposed framework incorporates a deep learning-based nostril detection with a cascade approach to reliably identify the nostrils with high accuracy in real time. In addition, a partitioned visual servoing scheme that combines image-based visual servoing with axial control is formulated for accurately positioning the sampling swabs at the nostril with a multi-DOF robot arm. As the visual servoing is designed to minimize an error between the detected nostril and the swab, it can compensate for potential errors in real operation, such as positioning error by inaccurate camera-robot calibration and kinematic error by unavoidable swab deflection. The performance of the visual servo control was tested on a head phantom model for 30 unused swabs, and then compared with a method referring to only the 3D nostril target for control. Consequently, the swabs reached the nostril target with less than an average error of 1.2±0.5 mm and a maximum error of 2.0 mm via the visual servo control, while the operation without visual feedback yielded an average error of 10.6±2.3 mm and a maximum error of 16.2 mm. The partitioned visual servoing allows the swab to rapidly converge to the nostril target within 1.0 s without control instability. Finally, the swab placement at the nostril among the entire procedure of fully automated NP swab was successfully demonstrated on a human subject via the visual servo control. © 2022 IEEE.
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In this paper we introduce novel Virtual Reality (VR) and Aug-mented Reality (AR) treatments to improve the psychological well being of patients in palliative care, based on interviews with a clin-ical psychologist who has successfully implemented VR assisted interventions on palliative care patients in the Hong Kong hospital system. Our VR and AR assisted interventions are adaptations of traditional palliative care therapies which simultaneously facilitate patients communication with family and friends while isolated in hospital due to physical weakness and COVID-19 related restrictions. The first system we propose is a networked, metaverse platform for palliative care patients to create customized virtual environments with therapists, family and friends which function as immersive and collaborative versions of 'life review' and 'reminiscence therapy'. The second proposed system will investigate the use of Mixed Real-ity telepresence and haptic touch in an AR environment, which will allow palliative care patients to physically feel friends and family in a virtual space, adding to the sense of presence and immersion in that environment. © 2022 IEEE.
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The Covid-19 outbreak has caused disruptions in the education sector, making remote education the dominant mode for lecture delivery. The lack of visual feedback and physical interaction makes it very hard for teachers to measure the engagement level of students during lectures. This paper proposes a time-bounded window operation to extract statistical features from raw gaze data, captured in a remote teaching experiment and link them with the student's attention level. Feature selection or dimensionality reduction is performed to reduce the convergence time and overcome the problem of over-fitting. Recursive feature elimination (RFE) and SelectFromModel (SFM) are used with different machine learning (ML) algorithms, and a subset of optimal feature space is obtained based on the feature scores. The model trained using the optimal feature subset showed significant improvement in accuracy and computational complexity. For instance, a support vector classifier (SVC) led 2.39% improvement in accuracy along with approximately 66% reduction in convergence time. © 2022 IEEE.
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Due to the coronavirus's enormous spread and effect, a robotic arm system is designed such that doctors can perform contact-less surgery to minimize risk to their health. Modern robotic aided surgery frequently employs remote operation. The surgeon sits beside the console, guided by visual feedback, and utilises an input control panel to direct the slave robotic equipment doing the procedure. The study discusses a potential surgical robotic system that can be used in surgery. The first robotic arm, out of two, is capable of performing various operations: marking, incision and gluing, using a unique concept of multi-gripper introduced in this paper. The second one has an end-effector that is used for removing a specific part of the body. A camera like endoscopy micro usb camera is used to provide visual assistance to the surgeon. Designing is carried out on AutoCAD, and the components are 3D printed to construct the robot. Robotic arm is operated using a control panel consisting of joysticks and potentiometers. Wireless communication is achieved through NodeMCUs, which are used for interfacing actuators and sensors. This multi gripper will help in saving time as switching to different grippers is not needed for various operations. The robotic system design performs the operation efficiently, resulting in less blood loss and quicker recovery time while allowing the surgeon to control it remotely. © 2022 IEEE.
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced university lecturers to reinvent themselves in their teaching practice in a non-classroom environment. This meant a forced learning of digital tools and methodologies in class for a scenario that, fortunately, is now beginning to subside as the pandemic is overcome. Through a very experimental proposal, we have combined a formula that combines the photographic/visual and textual dimensions. To this end, we adapted the contents of two text and image courses at the University of Seville and the University of Malaga, which then revolved around a practical delivery based on a dialogue between photography and text as an expressive vehicle. A survey allowed us to measure the degree of satisfaction of the 120 students. © 2022 Universidad Complutense de Madrid. All rights reserved.
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COVID-19 has brought a number of changes in people’s lifestyles as well as in business strategies. The consumers are moving towards social media and brands are forced to adjust their positioning strategies to retain existing and attract new customers. In generating the customer engagement, the brand content must match the visual preferences of its target group. This paper reviews a relevant literature of visual communication in the context of branding focusing on changes in terms of redesign and rebranding imposed by a crisis. The aim is to identify how companies successfully developed memorable, contextually-relevant and public-educational visual brand communication and strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The content analysis method was used in order to create a synthesized overview of brands' visual communication and their creative solutions during the pandemic. The results of this study highlight the importance of visual communication that can be taken by brands in dealing with crisis situations such as pandemic, and its effects on consumer behaviour in the new-normal era. © 2022 Authors.