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Item Ask away : digital infrastructure for a 21st century democracy : to what extent can design facilitate youth political engagement : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2015) Howie, MegThe number of young people turning out to vote is declining in Western democracies (Sheerin, 2007; Donald, 2010). This issue is symptomatic of the growing gap between traditional political systems and the 21st century citizen. However, the emergence of internet technology makes large-scale participation easier, which presents an opportunity to change citizens’ relationship with government (Tapscott in Gormley, 2009). This research applies design processes to the way young people engage with candidates in elections. It suggests that an online platform can be an effective piece of infrastructure for alternative political participation. Ask Away is an open source question and answer web application for people to ask questions, vote for the ones they want answered and then compare responses from political candidates. Through participating on Ask Away, citizens are able to engage candidates in direct dialogue, shape discussions and set agendas. Human-centred, collaborative design thinking and making were used to develop the platform, which was used by 22,000 New Zealanders in the period leading up to the 2014 New Zealand General Election. Learning through doing was core to this research. By designing, creating and releasing a working prototype, this thesis not only makes a proposition, but demonstrates the impact initiatives like this can have on civic participation.Item Exploring transactions : art museums, access and the Web : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Museum Studies at Massey University(Massey University, 2000) Barnicoat, WallisThis thesis examines the way in which art museums develop and use Web sites to promote greater access to their resources. It does this by considering the type of transactions that occur between the museum and its visitors in the physical and virtual location. The thesis is based on an investigation of three San Francisco Bay Area art museums, (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). The thesis illustrates the attempts of art museums to adopt innovative approaches to the provision of access through the virtual environment of the World Wide Web. The thesis concludes that art museums are unsure of their place in the technological foundations of the Internet. Furthermore, museums are unclear in their vision of the purpose of virtual environments. Unlike the world of education, which is familiar with the theory and practice of distance learning, and the world of private enterprise, which focuses, increasingly, on e-commerce, museums lack a singular, clear vision of how best to adapt the user-centric foundation of the Web to provide greater access to their resources. Not until art museums successfully evaluate the needs of their virtual visitors and create a transactional base that caters to those needs, will museums find their place in the Information Age.Item The AudioGraph Web-based lecturing system : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2004) Slusanschi, Horia CristianIn recent years, the pace of technological development has grown tremendously. As a result, the half-life of knowledge has decreased from hundreds and tens of years to just a few years or even mere months in certain fields. In order to be able to adapt efficiently to this unprecedented wave of knowledge, organizations and individuals must adopt new ways of learning and training. Web-based education is a viable solution to the problem of quickly disseminating fresh knowledge as it emerges. However, one of the main challenges of effective web-based education remains the application of sound educational principles in the design and delivery of technology-enabled courses. Our primary aim has been to provide lecturers with an effective and easy to use system that would assist web-based teaching and learning, allowing them to focus on the application of relevant educational principles rather than requiring them to master arcane technical complexities. To enhance our perspective and better inform our design decisions, we explore the factors contributing to effective web-based education and examine a number of existing lecturing systems applicable to the development and distribution of educational content over the Web. We then investigate means of preparing and presenting educational content. We place particular emphasis on the guiding principles of human interface design that have permeated our work, and have contributed to the enhanced usability characteristics of our system. We then discuss the challenges of data compression and review the technologies we chose to help make our approach viable and efficient. In describing the software architecture of the system, we introduce the various design patterns that have helped our successful implementation gain robustness and flexibility, and discuss various tradeoffs encountered throughout the design and development of the system. Finally, we present the conceptual and technical conclusions we have reached and we briefly explore future avenues of research and indicate a number of particularly interesting and potentially fruitful areas.