Keith Nesbitt

• BMath, MComp, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Newcastle Australia

One factor that limits development of fundamental research on the influence of coke microstructure on its strength is the difficulty in quantifying the way that microstructure is both classified and distributed in three dimensions. To support such fundamental studies, this study evaluated a novel volumetric approach for classifying small (approx. 4...

In ubiquitous computing, there is a trade-off between adequate display of information and how the layering of data from multiple devices may result in increased imposition upon cognitive load. An emerging class of ubiquitous technologies referred to as ambient displays aim to reduce this imposition through trading off highly detailed visualisation...

This article presents practice-based research exploring the interplay of real-time music creation and competitive gameplay. Musically creative video games, apps, and sound art are first surveyed to highlight their characteristic avoidance of competitive game elements. The relationship between play, games, and musical activity is then examined with...

Assessing the cognitive impact of user interfaces is a shared focus of human-computer interaction researchers and cognitive scientists. Methods of cognitive assessment based on data derived from the system itself, rather than external apparatus, have the potential to be applied in a range of scenarios. The current study applied methods of analyzing...

Ambient Displays, a sub-class of ubiquitous computing, aim to present non-critical information using peripheral visualisation with minimal distraction. The utility of Ambient Displays relies on providing useful, well-designed information in a way that does not increase the users cognitive load. Assessing the cognitive load of an Ambient Display is...

A systematic review of 459 Ambient Displays, reported in 410 publications between 1996 and 2016 was used as the basis for an analysis of the high-level design features associated with the technology. An analysis of these displays considers three main aspects: the modalities used to display information, the physical form of the displays and the leve...

The usability of the human-machine interface is dependent on the quality of its design and testing. Defining clear criteria that the interface must meet can assist the implementation and evaluation process. These criteria may be based on performance, the quality of users’ experience, error prevention, or the broad utility of the interface. In this...

The detection response task (DRT) is a measure of workload that can assess the cognitive demands of real-world multitasking. It can be configured to present simple stimuli of several modalities, including auditory and visual signals. However, the concurrent presentation of the DRT stimuli alongside another task could cause dual-task interference, a...

Digital games are a fertile ground for exploring novel computer music applications. While the lineage of game-based compositional praxis long precedes the advent of digital computers, it flourishes now in a rich landscape of music-making apps, sound toys and playful installations that provide access to music creation through game-like interaction....

Defence and security organisations face increasing challenges to maximise the real-time integration of data and information for improved decision making. This is particularly true in applications of human-machine teaming. These teams create complex interaction environments for human operators that integrate autonomous systems, multi-modal displays,...

Games and immersive training environments frequently rely on user performance measures to adapt the difficulty of tasks and behaviors, responding dynamically to changes in performance. However, users may maintain task performance while experiencing increasing levels of cognitive load. These high levels of load mean the user has no spare capacity an...

This data is the result of a systematic review designed to identify published work related to the development, design and evaluation of Ambient Displays. Ambient Displays are also commonly referred to as Ambient Information Systems or Peripheral Displays and form a subset of work in the area of Ubiquitous computing These displays are designed as en...

User interfaces for games are designed not only to convey information effectively, but to do so in a usable way while engaging players in the gameworld. The interface must help users without hindering them by overloading the players' cognitive capacity. Designers currently assess usability and workload demands with both subjective and neurophysiolo...

A systematic review was designed to address the question of "What is engagement and how has the term been used, defined and measured in the context of serious games?". The goal of the review was to collect, evaluate, and analyse literature related to the definition and measurement of engagement in serious games published between in 1970 to 2015 acr...

This paper explores the design of digital, composition-based games that enable players to enact creative musical decisions via symbolic gameplay interactions with a stochastic music generation system. Digital game technologies continue to emerge as a versatile platform for researching generative music systems, with past applications ranging from th...

In this study, we examined the design of informative sound to assist timing in a simple, multimodal, game task. The game was initially designed as a series of eight-second, visual decision-making tasks. Players could respond quickly, with more risk, or wait longer for more information, thus reducing their risk of being incorrect. The player was sco...

Despite extensive research in the prediction of coke properties from the parent coals, at present, no single model exists to adequately predict coke quality from all coal basins. Whilst heavily used as a feature in early coke quality prediction models, the binding behaviour of the maceral components, termed fusibility, has had limited success in be...

The accurate prediction of coke quality is important for the selection and valuation of metallurgical coals. Whilst many prediction models exist, they tend to perform poorly for coals beyond which the model was developed. Further, these models general fail to directly account for physical interactions occurring between the blend components, through...

Within the coke making industry, the ability to accurately predict the quality of the coke produced from a variety of global coal basins is critical in both coal selection and blast furnace control. However, due to the complexity of the coke making process, the prediction of the resulting coke properties is a difficult task. This review analysed pu...

The prediction of coke quality from global coal basins is critical to coke producers and steel makers for both the selection and effective utilisation of coals. This review analysed the methods described within published models for the prediction of coke quality. Of particular focus were methods that sought to predict coke strength after reaction (...

Growing interest in the study of video game music has led an increasing base of scholars to pursue a multi-faceted investigation of music-based games. Within this domain, a distinct subset of 'creative-based' music games are emerging as a fertile new ground for the examination of music in interactive gaming environments. This paper aims to analyse...

Vitrinite reflectance is an important property of coal, and can be used in the prediction of the quality of coke derived from coal blends. However, limited methods that incorporate the associated reflectance distributions within prediction models exist. We present a novel method of classifying vitrinite reflectance distributions using self organizi...

The human aspects of the community pharmacy work system are vulnerable to medication-related errors. Established models of human error can identify actual or potential hazards, and are important in our understanding the interaction between human and system factors that influence performance. The software, hardware, environment and liveware (SHELL)...

Over the past two decades a number of public, real time visualization systems, referred to as Ambient Information Systems have been developed. These systems often have a focus on both aesthetics and information relevance while being intended to function in the periphery of a user's attention. In this paper we report on the evaluation of an Ambient...

We provoked cybersickness in participants by immersing them in one of two virtual roller coaster rides using a head-mounted display. As simulation technology is often used in training, our main intention was to examine the effect of the experience on their cognitive function. Participant reaction times before and after the experience were measured...

This article describes the iterative development, deployment and evaluation of a novel Ambient Display called the WaveWatch. Employing the concepts of Calm Computing [1] and Informative Art [2] the WaveWatch aims to balance its goals of being minimally attentive while also being a visualisation device. The WaveWatch presents a real-time visualisati...

Our aim was to expand knowledge of cybersickness - a subtype of motion sickness provoked by immersion into a moving computer-generated virtual reality. Fourteen healthy subjects experienced a 15-min rollercoaster ride presented via a head-mounted display (Oculus Rift), for 3 consecutive days. Heart rate, respiration, finger and forehead skin conduc...

This research presents a think-aloud study examining issues of engagement and usability in relation to a serious game and a more traditional online program. Results from twenty concurrent think aloud sessions involving a serious game called Shadow and its more traditional counterpart called SHADE are reported. Both programs are designed to help cou...

In this paper we examined the role of informative sound in a simple decision-making game task. A within-subject experiment with 48 participants measured the response time, success rate and number of timeouts of the players in a number of eight-second decision tasks. As time proceeds, the task becomes easier at the risk of players timing out and red...

Although post-error slowing and the ``hot hand'' (streaks of good performance) are both types of sequential dependencies arising from the differential influence of success and failure, they have not previously been studied together. We bring together these two streams of research in a task where difficulty can be controlled by participants delaying...

The widespread popularity of computer games have led to their expanded use in more serious applications for training and education. In many cases serious games are being advanced as more compelling than traditional face-to-face or interactive online training. A typically reported motivation for developing serious games is to try and increase engage...

Human startle reflex has been identified as a valid physiological measure of valence and arousal, providing a useful mechanism for evaluating player engagement in video games. In this research, we use electromyography (EMG) recording of the startle reflex of participants to explore the impact of playing, versus watching a play through, of a game. P...

A frequent motivation behind the development of serious games is the notion that game play provides a greater level of motivation or engagement that encourages players to perform better or complete more difficult challenges. There are in truth many aspects to concepts such as engagement, immersion, flow or other terms used to motivate the use of ga...

Ambient Information Systems are designed as everyday, peripheral information sources that visualise useful data in a way that can be attended to when possible. Importantly these displays need to be designed to seamlessly fit into their environment and should not interrupt an individual from their primary task. The first Ambient Information System,...

Evidence from studies of provocative motion indicates that motion sickness is tightly linked to the disturbances of thermoregulation. The major aim of the current study was to determine whether provocative visual stimuli (immersion into the virtual reality simulating rides on a rollercoaster) affect skin temperature that reflects thermoregulatory c...

This first-of-its-kind reference moves the concepts and methodologies of game analytics and learning analytics into the emerging field of serious games. The book calls for more validated and standardized research into serious games analytics, backing up this demand with ways that player data can be transformed into information of value to the acade...

Childhood obesity is becoming increasingly prolific and problematic. Contributors to childhood obesity include decreased levels of physical activity and increased sedentary behavior. Screen-based entertainment may be an important factor in the development of childhood obesity as children and adolescents prefer to spend time using electronic devices...

A key motivator for the use of serious games has been the notion that “gamification” provides users with an additional level of engagement. This study examines a traditional model of usability in terms of engagement and efficacy, presenting the results obtained from a formative evaluation of a serious game prototype that has been developed to assis...

Sound in video games is often used by developers to enhance the visual experience on screen. Despite its importance in creating presence and improving visual screen elements, sound also plays an important role in providing additional information to a player when completing various game tasks. This preliminary study focuses on the use of informative...

There has been an increasing interest in the debate on the value and relevance using video games for learning. Some of the interest stems from frustration with current educational methods. However, some of this interest also stems from the observations of large numbers of children that play video games. This paper finds that children can learn basi...

The rapid changes occurring in the higher education domain are placing increasing pressure on the actors in this space to focus efforts on identifying and adopting strategies for success. One particular group of interest are academics or scientists, and the ways that these individuals, or collectives as institutional or discipline-based science sys...

In-match player performance, measured by data from Geographical Positioning System (GPS) devices, was predicted with a correlation coefficient of greater than 0.7. Predictions were based on heart rate variability measures and used advanced regression techniques based on machine learning. These techniques included methods for the selection of variab...

Serious game analytics share many of the challenges of data analytics for computer systems involving human activity. Key challenges include how to collect data without influencing its generation, and more fundamentally, how to collect and validate data from humans where a primary emphasis is on what people are thinking and doing. This chapter prese...

Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Interactive Entertainment. ACM, New York. 25:1-25:10. 2014 (Conference) . In this paper, we describe a case study that compares the use of animation and video for teaching communication skills to pharmacy students. We present an appropriate framework outlining the key communication criteria that were used to de...

The uptake of new interface technologies, such as the Oculus Rift have generated renewed interest in virtual reality especially for private entertainment use. However, long standing issues with unwanted side effects, such as nausea from cybersickness, continue to impact on the general use of devices such as head mounted displays. This in turn has s...

MySteps is an inspiring acronym for a novel active living framework detailed in this paper. Managing Youth Screen Time and Exercise Performance Statistics (MySteps) is a cohesive collection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) integrated in a unique way for specific application in the adolescent demographic health domain. Specificall...

In an era of increasing technology use, it has been recognized that children and adolescents have become more sedentary and engage in less physical activity. Motivating children to be more physically active is not an easy task given their preference for seated leisure activities. Video games are a favorite leisure activity amongst children and adol...

Abstract— This paper reports on the development of a virtual tour of a community pharmacy. The interactive walkthrough was designed to be used as an adjunct to placement training for Pharmacy students. This paper reports on the limitations and issues associated with developing a virtual tour using currently available hardware such as the GigaPan Pr...

Childhood obesity is a phenomenon that is of great concern in many communities. Decreased levels of physical activity and increased levels of sedentary behavior are two of the major contributors to the increasing rates of obesity among children and adolescents. Nowadays a majority of children's leisure time is spent engaged in screen-based activiti...

Improving the US healthcare system requires not only providing care to the uninsured but also addressing a set of linked organizational and motivational issues, including enhancing the role of wellness and prevention. It is widely acknowledged that system organization is key to healthcare improvement [1]. Previous studies [2, 3] have pointed to sep...

Nature is composed of many complex systems. No system is more complex than the nature that governs the creation of ideas. Yet how many patterns are needed to model such complexity? The search for common patterns that govern the nature of complex systems is a fundamental goal of both science and art. New ideas may provide solutions to such problems...

The importance of sound is quite well known in video games. Although frequently in the past sound was simply used to increase the immersion of the player. Now there is a growing interest in using sound as a means for providing the player with additional information. While the use of sound for displaying information has been a topic of research for...

The user’s strategy and their approach to decisionmaking are two important concerns when designing user-centric software. While decision-making and strategy are key factors in a wide range of business systems from stock market trading to medical diagnosis, in this paper we focus on the role these factors play in a serious computer game. Players may...

An interesting area of study in management concerns the behavior and performance of enterprises under different operating conditions. Unfortunately it can be difficult to gather real world data to test the many theories in this area. Therefore we have developed an agent-based simulation that lets us experiment within an artificial market environmen...

Electrical disturbances can have an adverse affect on people, businesses and other systems, and increased understanding of such events has huge potential benefits. Clustering or unsupervised learning is a technique of computational intelligence that can be used to identify natural clusters or groups of disturbances. The understanding of disturbance...

In this paper we set out to verify the existence of Miles and Snow strategy types in Australian small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) through objective classification. Australian SMEs, in particular, are interesting as they are reported to have some unique characteristics, with as many as 70% following a low growth or life-style pathway. While...

Encouraging physical activity amongst children and adolescents is becoming an increasingly relevant issue in modern society. Studies have shown that involving children and adolescents in physical activity is essential for their physical, mental and social development. However, with technology playing an increasingly important role in reducing physi...

Many psychological experiments require participants to complete lots of trials in a monotonous task, which often induces boredom. An increasingly popular approach to alleviate such boredom is to incorporate gamelike features into standard experimental tasks. Games are assumed to be interesting and, hence, motivating, and better motivated participan...

Recommended clinical preventive services are not being delivered despite well-documented benefits. Here we show that transferring simple and repetitive preventive services to nurse-staffed retail clinics provides an opportunity for dramatically improving their delivery. For each of 35 high-benefit, cost-effective preventive services, we identify re...

Dynamic balancing of game difficulty can help cater for different levels of ability in players. However, performance in some game tasks depends on not only the player's ability but also their desire to take risk. Taking or avoiding risk can offer players its own reward in a game situation. Furthermore, a game designer may want to adjust the mechani...

This study compares previous analytical findings in the area of cultural web design using Hofstede's dimensions with findings from a three year case study. This case study used an ethnographic and user-centric approach to better integrate cultural requirements into the website for a specific Indigenous community. We overview this design process and...

Human movement is a "natural skill" employed to solve difficult problems in dynamics concerning the manipulation of a complex biomechanical system, the body, in an ever-changing environment. Continuous Interactive Simulation (CIS) is a technique that attempts to use this human capacity to solve problems in movement dynamics to solve problems concer...

This paper explores the issue of player risk-taking and reward structures in a game designed to investigate the psychological phenomenon known as the 'hot hand'. The expression 'hot hand' originates from the sport of basketball, and the common belief that players who are on a scoring streak are in some way more likely to score on their next shot th...

This paper describes a research model, known as Practitioner Based Enquiry (PBE), now being used in academic disciplines exploring the creative industries. We propose that it would form a useful additional methodology in the arsenal of ICT researchers. It allows the research process to penetrate the privacy of the office cubicle to uncover what sof...

Humans have a natural ability to cope with the problems of moving in a changing environment. The motivation for our work is to engage our natural ability to move in the understanding of more abstract problems associated with dynamical systems. The question we address is: "Can human movement be coupled to simulations of arbitrary dynamical systems t...

This paper reports on part of a user-centred study examining the design of a website for an Indigenous Australian community. It focuses on the capture of culturally relevant design features and describes the outcomes from a focus group undertaken with 12 members of the community stakeholders. Key cultural themes to emerge from the focus group were...

This paper examines literature concerning the design of culture into websites and in particular indigenous websites. The intention is to identify design requirements as the first phase of building an indigenous website for the Wollotuka Institute located in the Awabakal nation and situated at the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. The aim of...

In this paper, we describe the development of tutorial levels for navigation challenges requiring a 3D mini-map. Navigation in 3D game worlds is a common challenge for players, and it often forms a significant part of the game play in RPG and Adventure games. Navigation of the game world is typically supported by a mini-map which provides a 2D, top...

We use an agent-based computer simulation to examine the impact of organizational strategy on enterprise performance within a turbulent operating environment. The models consumers and four types of small-medium sized enterprises that behave with different strategies (Defender, Analyser, Prospector and Static .These agent-based organizations operate...

Managing attrition rates and completion times of higher degree research students are key considerations for Universities as they are directly tied to future funding for research places. Even where higher degree research students are focused within a single discipline there are a number of risks that can impact on completion. However, there is also...

Players of computer games tend to be discerning about game quality. So, to be successful, game designers need to ensure that players receive the best possible experience. A growing trend in the design of game interfaces is the use of multi-sensory (visual, auditory and haptic) interfaces to broaden the experience for players. The assumption is that...

This study examines the relevant issues and required practices for designing a website that best reflects the identity and culture of an Indigenous Australian community. We ground the study using previous work in cultural design, considering general issues related to the representation and capture of Indigenous knowledge. We adopt a user-centric pr...

The multi-sensory display of abstract data is a new and emerging area of study in the area of computer interfaces. Unfortunately the design of multi-sensory displays is complex and it is necessary to carefully consider the perceptual capabilities of humans. Therefore we aim to both collect useful guidelines that help designers of multi-sensory disp...

When designing multi-sensory displays it is necessary to consider human perceptual capabilities and understand how people find patterns and how they organise individual elements into structures and groups. Gestalt theory, originally described in 1910, attempts to explain the way people perceive and recognise patterns. The early studies of Gestalt p...

The multi-sensory display of abstract data is a new and emerging area of study in the area of computer interfaces. One broad application of multi-sensory displays is to display abstract data using multiple senses in such a way that the user might detect useful patterns in the data. Gestalt theory explains how humans organize individual elements int...

This paper discusses the emerging area of tactile and haptic display and some of the breadth of applications of tactile/haptic interactions. While many research studies have provided ergonomic insights into the design of tactile/haptic interactions, the many dimensions and properties of these interactions make it especially difficult to combine the...

Multi-sensory displays try to take advantage of a range of human senses, for example, displaying information visually and also with sound and haptic feedback. Designing multi-sensory displays is complex and needs to carefully consider human perceptual capabilities. Developing guidelines to support designers of multi-sensory displays is an important...

Information Visualisation is an emerging discipline that concerns the design of interactive computer systems that provide the user with a visual model of abstract data. Information Visualisation implies a mapping from the data attributes to the units of visual perception. Information Sonification is an embryonic field that uses sound rather than im...

This chapter has described some of the new algorithms and technologies for information display. In most cases, these are untested outside universities and research laboratories. However, it is clear that a number of them will eventually find their way into commercial tools. As more novel concepts in information display are invented and tested, the...

The design process of any visualisation involves many design decisions. One way to assist with these design decisions is to provide guidelines. This paper introduces the MS-Guidelines and the rationale behind them. The MS-Guidelines form a group of structured guidelines intended to help in designing not just visual but also multi-sensory displays o...

A multisensory human perceptual tool for the real-world task domain of stock market trading was designed and evaluated. The data mined is bid-and-ask data from the Australian Stock Exchange. Nonexperts were tested on their ability to use the tool to predict the future direction of stock prices. The experiment's null hypothesis was that nonexperts c...

Comparing designs of sonifications is difficult enough but comparing a visual display with a sound display is much harder. Yet the designer of multi-sensory displays would like to make sensible decisions about when to use each modality. This paper describes a classification of abstract data displays that is general for all senses. This allows the s...

One important task that the designer of multi-sensory displays must perform is the comparison of displays designed for the different senses. Comparing designs for different visualisations is difficult enough but comparing a visual display with an auditory display, or haptic display is harder still. Yet the designer of multi-sensory displays would l...

The network map of the London underground is often put forward as a good example of information visualisation. Certainly this style of metro map has been adopted in many cities to assist train travellers understand the various routes and network connections. This work reports on a preliminary investigation into the question: Can the metro map metap...

Research into the visualization of abstract data has resulted in a number of domain specific solutions as well as some more generic techniques for visualising information. Similarly, the field of sonification has explored the display of information to the human auditory sense. As haptic displays such as force-feedback devices become more readily av...

Graphs are a commonly used data structure for representing relational information. Drawings of these structures, as node and link diagrams, can provide a useful visualization of the underlying abstract data. This makes drawings of graphs a useful tool in information visualization. Indeed graph drawing has been applied in many application areas incl...

Virtual Environment technology enables new styles of user interfaces that provide multi-sensory interactions. For example, interfaces can be designed which immerse the user in a 3D space and provide multi-sensory feedback. Many information spaces are multivariate, large and abstract in nature. It has been a goal of Virtual Environments to widen the...