Abstract

Abstract
É discutida a emergência da arte digital e das suas diversas variantes tais como a arte computacional e a média-arte digital. E de como esta forma de expressão artística e cultural se vem afirmando numa contemporaneidade caracterizada pela revolução tecnológica digital. É analisada a natureza da criação e fruição da arte e cultural digital, as práticas artísticas relacionadas e como nestas, o artefacto computacional assume um papel central. Apresentam-se, em contexto, exemplos de artefactos, promovendo-se a sua recensão à luz da arte e cultura digital contemporânea, enquanto se discutem alguns elementos de uma estética dos artefactos computacionais.

Abstract
The exponential growth of mobile usage in developing countries, the tendencies between the usage of Apps and Responsive Websites, the characteristics as well as advantages and disadvantages between the two, urge this study to be conducted. This study aims to compare the effectiveness, the efficiency, and satisfaction (usability) between different mobile solution: the Apps and the Responsive Website. User-Centered Design Methodology was used in this study with an example of street food in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Some of the ethnographic methods are field observation, semi-structured interviews, and the creation of personas. These methods collect information to determine motivations and needs of the user. A mobile solution which will be created and evaluated as a prototype in its different stages of development is also proposed. It will also take into consideration the connection between social network sites and the platform because Facebook has lately become the second most important source of information after television in Cambodia. Eventually, a suggested prototype for this sort of street food in a developing country will be proposed as well as a robust framework comparing this prototype as Mobile Application and Mobile Responsive website platforms.

Abstract
The ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education) pictograms, a system that emerged as a response to a society driven by science and industrialization, as well as imbued with the belief that the modern spirit had what it takes to pursue the universal theories: The will to do a "utopia" universal communication. Otto Neurath (1882- 1945), developed the isotype in the early 20s of twentieth century, with the help of Gerd Arntz (1900-1988) and Marie Neurath (1898-1986). The frame used simplified forms to transmit social and economic information to the general public and applied in museums, books, posters, and educational material. Neurath hoped to create a global standard for education and unite humanity through an ordered, and universally readable language of vision. Their core principles: reduction, to determine the individual style signs; consistency, to give the whole an appearance of a coherent system. The reduction suggests that the "image has a natural, scientific relationship to its object" (Lupton 1989, 54), and formal consistency is linked to mass production, enabling the user to create a habit of how the information is presented. However, isotype did not advance "because of the difficulties related to the sheer size and complexity of the iconic representation" (Rajamanickam, 2005, 7) and tend to ignore the socio-economic and cultural contexts. The creation of language should rely on the context. And considering the context, currently, many of the 17 million Europeans who suffer from food allergies could benefit from a more direct information system in the identification of the fourteen allergens regulated by the Parliament and Council Regulation (EU) n° 1169/2011 in food products' packages. This study is aimed at creating pictograms representing these fourteen allergens along visual and tactile lines, through relief printing. Based on an Inclusive Design approach, the project is meant to overcome restrictions such as sight impairment or illiteracy. Making use of User Centered Design (UCD) methodology, and with the support of the SAED (Disabled Students Support Services of the University of Porto) and GAENEE-UP (Support Office for Students with Special Educational Needs of the University of Porto), it employed field observation processes, in which potential users recorded their tactile perception of the basic elements of visual communication. The result is the creation of a universal code, which is meant to satisfy the expectations and needs of potential users, namely people with impaired sight with a framework that systematize guidelines to support the development of new relief pictograms in the food allergies context. This project was developed with the purpose of creating a unique and universal code that could help two special groups of disabled people: Those,both adults and children, that suffer from food allergies and the visually impaired. The leading goal was the creation of relief signs that represent the fourteen allergens regulated by the European Union, under the Parliament and Council (EU) Regulation n° 1169/2011, as well as the development of a guideline framework to support future relief pictograms' designs. In this paper we explain the process of creating those, presenting some of the results, semiotic and technical requirements that underlie the framework that systematize the relief pictograms guidelines to visual impaired users. © Common Ground Research Networks, Bruno Giesteira, João Mesquita.

Abstract

Abstract
By rethinking how digital information and media have evolved, we intend to discuss how Information Visualization is performing an essential role in the field of newspapers, and how it can evolve with particular emphasis on content archiving for future access. The presence of new visual structures used in fields such as digital archiving, have questioned digital methods of preservation and how the interrelation between information and access to knowledge is revealed. In digital newspapers, the development of access and information retrieval processes has become an essential part of their duties, but it is still in it’s infancy and dependent on text search rather then content awareness. By outlining the links between Visual Archives and Information Visualization, with focus on online press, we venture in a path of trial and error. This is present by the recognition of lack of efficient articulation between different types of contents, as well as between the user interaction and the contents outcomes. Thus proposing a visual lexicon that can adjust to the constraints of technology, different user devices, and the promptitude of publication that a Web context demands it is utmost relevant. A combination of fields, with attention to visual perception and arbitrary conventions in relation to image and content awareness, grants the association of concepts such as big data and thick data description, being part of the outcomes of this research a proposal to a theoretical model grounded on prototyping testing in a newsroom office.      This empirical methodological approach is supported by a low-fidelity prototype, for iterative formative evaluations, fostering field’s observations with potential users in order to identify the best visual components of a digital visual archive for online newspapers. The challenge is to develop visual structures that preserve and present the interconnections of news, information and knowledge to be seen, accessed and linked. By making use of a lo-fi prototype of a visual digital archive we aimed, to test, re-test, and find responses in dialogue, failure and retrial. The body of work shown here presents the practical outcomes of the theoretical model.