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Through observing the use of iPhone and iPad by a child between the ages of two and four years and a half, this study presents accounts on the child’s use of and interaction with these devices, as well as her interaction with the physical environment.

Unstructured, naturalistic observation was employed in this study. The study is grounded in theories of user engagement with digital and physical objects.

A child’s interaction with touch-based devices does not deter the child from engaging effectively with the physical environment or from activities centered on creativity and interpersonal engagement. A child is able to move back and forth seamlessly between the physical and digital environments.

Findings from this study could help parents, educators, and system designers understand why and how toddlers and preschoolers use and engage with touch-based devices, as well as the kind of tasks they perform.

Studies of toddlers’ or preschoolers’ information behavior and interaction with touch-based devices are scarce. Children born toward the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century are growing up with a propensity to using touch-based devices. This study provides a framework for effective usage of such devices while ensuring all-round cognitive and physical development of the child.

This study aims to explore consumers' vicarious experience of touch, namely, mental simulation for touch, through product pictures as visual stimuli and the use of touch devices as motion stimuli in the context of online fashion shopping.

Participants were randomly exposed to one of the two texture conditions (weak vs strong tactile sensitivity). The responses from the participants who used a laptop as a non-touch device and a touch device were considered in the analysis. A total of 179 responses were analyzed with analysis of variance and the PROCESS procedure for path analysis using SPSS 20.0.

The interaction effects of tactile sensitivity and device types on mental simulation for touch were significant; seeing a less tactile-sensitive product facilitated a greater mental simulation for touch when using a touch device; however, seeing a tactile-sensitive product produced a similar mental simulation for touch, regardless of device types. Furthermore, browsing a less tactile-sensitive product using a touch device increased favorable product attitudes, fully mediated by mental simulation for touch.

This study contributes to the literature on online shopping behaviors of fashion consumers by showing the role of mental simulation for touch that is shaped by the tactile qualities of products and device types. Exploration of this topic can contribute significantly to online fashion retailers because studies on consumers' mental simulation for touch are limited.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the application of low-end, low-fidelity (gaming/consumer-level) haptic devices for medical-based, surgical skills development (surgical bone-based drilling in particular) with serious games and virtual simulations as an affordable training solution with the potential of complementing current and traditional training methods.

The authors present the adaptation of two low-end haptic devices (Novint Falcon and Geomagic 3D Touch) to simulate a surgical drill drilling through bone for a serious game developed for total knee arthroplasty training. The implementation was possible through the analysis of the bone drilling mechanics. The authors provide a quantitative comparison of both haptic devices with respect to forces, movements, and development.

Although further testing is required, the initial results demonstrate that the low-end, consumer-level haptic devices can be incorporated into virtual environments/serious games to allow for the simulation of surgical drilling. The authors also believe that the results will generalize and allow these devices to be used to simulate a variety of technical-based medical procedures.

In contrast to previous work where the focus is placed on cost-prohibitive haptic devices, this approach considers affordable consumer-level solutions that can be easily incorporated into a variety of serious games and virtual simulations. This holds promise that haptic-based virtual simulation and serious games become more widespread, ultimately ensuring that medical trainees are better prepared before exposure to live patients.

Mobile computing devices are a significant access point for information activities. Theories and models of human information behaviour have developed over several decades but have not considered the role of the user's computing device in digital information interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the information behaviours of young adults when they are given unlimited access to mobile tablet devices.

As information tasks, behaviours and communities shift into digital environments, a researcher of these phenomena is required to mirror that movement with techniques that allow a full exploration of human behaviour and interaction in the online world. Following Kozinets (2009), “netnography” (ethnography in online communities) is applied in this study and all data are collected online from within a community of iPad users, established for the research purpose.

This study reveals that access to mobile tablet devices creates significant shifts in the behaviours of young adults whose lives are immersed in digital information. Mobile tablet devices establish the potential for constant access to digital information and that opportunity is grasped by the participants in this research. Extensive use of mobile device applications or “apps” establishes a more selected and restricted view of information than that encountered in the open and expansive World Wide Web.

This paper invites extension to human information behaviour theories and models to include a consideration of computing access device and of new mobility and constancy of access – all of which changes the circumstances and behaviour of the information actor.

The purpose of this paper is to study smartphone use and its positive and negative effects and to provide recommendations for balanced use.

To study phone use, this paper applies the uses and gratification theory and gathered interview data from 24 participants on the participants’ frequency of use, mode of communication, people contacted and the reasons for using their phones. This paper analyzes the pros and cons of using smartphones using the Yin-Yang worldview.

This paper finds that people use their smartphones for communication, entertainment and other specific functions. Ease of communication and multitasking are the key benefits, and overuse and disconnect from the real world are the detriments in smartphone use.

The findings can enable future researchers and practitioners to view smartphones and their effects more holistically, rather than seeing it only from the negative or the positive lens.

The proposed framework can help the reader to consider their daily use of smartphones and their ways of balancing their presence in the virtual and the real worlds.

This paper proposes the Yin-Yang framework of smartphone use and provides recommendations for effective usage.

In May 2013, Jack Russo, a Chicago-based tech entrepreneur, had to choose one of four possible product concepts to use as the starting point for his new K–8 educational learning company, TabletTeach LLC. At the time, the K–12 education market in the United States was experiencing major disruption due to print-to-digital transformation, new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core (rolling out in most states in the 2014–2015 school year), and increasing pressure from parents for schools to incorporate technology in their children's learning. Based on his first-hand experience and research, Russo knew there was a significant opportunity for a company that brought to market a tablet-enabled learning solution focusing on grades K–8, which made learning Common Core math and/or language arts fun for every student and engagingly simple for all teachers.

This case provides an interesting example of something typically hard to teach: transitioning from the fuzzy front end of a market opportunity analysis to a specific product opportunity. The case bounds the problem by outlining four potential product concepts, which students will then evaluate and rank using their own sets of criteria.

Define evaluation criteria for an opportunity analysis of a tech startup in a dynamic market; use these criteria to evaluate a set of product concepts and their business opportunities; refine a set of product concepts to develop and present a recommendation; understand the importance of the problem-persona-product fit and “jobs to be done” data in identifying high-value opportunities; present findings in an opportunity brief and a market opportunity hypothesis statement

This study investigates how federated learning (FL) and human–robot collaboration (HRC) can be used to manage diverse industrial environments effectively. We aim to demonstrate how these technologies not only improve cooperation between humans and robots but also significantly enhance productivity and innovation within industrial settings. Our research proposes a new framework that integrates these advancements, paving the way for smarter and more efficient factories.

This paper looks into the difficulties of handling diverse industrial setups and explores how combining FL and HRC in the mark of Industry 5.0 paradigm could help. A literature review is conducted to explore the theoretical insights, methods and applications of these technologies that justify our proposal. Based on this, a conceptual framework is proposed that integrates these technologies to manage heterogeneous industrial environments.

The findings drawn from the literature review performed, demonstrate that personalized FL can empower robots to evolve into intelligent collaborators capable of seamlessly aligning their actions and responses with the intricacies of factory environments and the preferences of human workers. This enhanced adaptability results in more efficient, harmonious and context-sensitive collaborations, ultimately enhancing productivity and adaptability in industrial operations.

This research underscores the innovative potential of personalized FL in reshaping the HRC landscape for manage heterogeneous industrial environments, marking a transformative shift from traditional automation to intelligent collaboration. It lays the foundation for a future where human–robot interactions are not only more efficient but also more harmonious and contextually aware, offering significant value to the industrial sector.

Learning Chinese is unquestionably very important and popular worldwide with the fast economic growth of China. To most foreigners and also local students, one of the major challenges in learning Chinese is to write Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences that are considered as significant in the Chinese culture. However, due to the potentially complicated structures of Chinese characters together with their stroke sequences, there are very few character recognition techniques that can effectively tackle the involved training task in an efficient and flexible manner. The purpose of this paper is to propose an intelligent and flexible e‐learning software based on learning objects to facilitate the learning of writing Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences.

The paper adopts an incremental approach in designing the overall system architecture to emphasize on extendibility of the system. The basic features of the system including the evolution and pronunciation of each Chinese character can be embedded as a part of the learning object metadata to enhance students' understanding of Chinese characters. To demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, a prototype of the proposed e‐learning software was built on smartphones such that students can learn anytime and anywhere.

From the empirical evaluation of the e‐learning prototype for learning to write correct Chinese characters on mobile devices, it was found that foreign students can learn and practise the writing more effectively anytime and anywhere on their mobile devices after classes. Some initial positive feedback was collected. Furthermore, a more careful and thorough evaluation is planned to be conducted in relevant courses for foreign students in the upcoming Fall semester.

This proposal represents the first attempt to reduce the complexity while increasing the extendibility of the e‐learning software to learn Chinese through learning objects running on smartphones or mobile devices in general. More importantly, it opens up numerous opportunities for further investigations including possible integrations with other existing Chinese e‐learning systems.