Despite increasing recognition of the crucial role of lived/ing experience in shaping suicide prevention policy and practice, the perspectives of people who have considered or attempted suicide by train are seldom captured in analyses of what could reduce suicides on the railways. The aim of this study was to explore lived/ing experience perceptions of what types of approaches are effective or ineffective in this context, and why. We carried out 1) in-depth qualitative interviews with 34 individuals who had attempted or contemplated suicide on the railways; 2) an online survey investigating lived/ing experiences of suicidality at rail locations (N = 269); 3) an online ethnography of content relating to train/rail suicide from different online spaces including ‘pro-choice’ forums and reddit (254 posts and 1228 associated comments). Several measures to prevent suicide on the railways were identified—and critiqued—in lived/ing experience accounts. These included strategies to challenge dominant cultural narratives around railway suicide (e.g. by shifting the focus from the lethality of this method to its impact on train drivers and others); environmental measures to restrict access to means and/or create a safer and more positive atmosphere; and increasing opportunities for help-seeking and ‘helpful’ third-party interventions. However, considering what works for whom, and when, emerged as crucial. The challenges of preventing rail suicides against a backdrop of severely stretched mental health services were also repeatedly highlighted. The perspectives of people with lived/ing experiences, whilst far from homogenous, provide crucial insights into the potential value and unintended consequences of different measures to prevent suicides on the railways. Our findings reiterate the need for comprehensive suicide prevention strategies, targeting different stages of the suicidal process.

OBJECTIVE:Suicide is the leading cause of death on the railway networks, yet little is known about the geography and socio-environmental determinants of such deaths in England. METHOD:We analyzed official records of all suspected suicides recorded on England's mainline railway from April 2019 to March 2021 (N = 436), alongside area-level data (e.g., deprivation and urbanicity) and railway characteristics (e.g., station size). We used SaTScan's Poisson discrete scan statistic to detect spatial-temporal clusters and compared suicides at station and non-station locations, including stations with no recorded suicides over the study period. RESULTS:Most railway suicides-particularly those occurring at stations-took place in urban areas, typically at locations with a very low incidence of previous suicides. A large majority (84.5%) lived within 2 miles of a station and died close to home (median 2.1 miles) or their last known location (1.5 miles). Suicides occurred most often at stations (43.3%), followed by trackside locations (37.6%), foot/level crossing (15.1%) or other rail areas (3.9%). These were often not the nearest station to the deceased (59.6%), but were generally smaller and more likely to be served by fast/non-stopping trains. Across the network, stations without suicides were far less likely to be served by such trains (66% vs. 94.3%; OR = 6.62, 95% CI 3.33-13.18). CONCLUSIONS:Urbanicity and the availability of non-stopping train services are key predictors of railway suicide. Restricting access to high-speed trains-especially at smaller urban stations and at non-station locations-could be an effective element of broader strategies and local partnership approaches to prevent suicide.

Background: Around 4 % of all suicide deaths in Great Britain occur on the railways. This exploratory study was designed to increase understanding of the individuals that take their lives in this way, and the circumstances of their death. Method: Data were obtained from fatality investigation files compiled by the British Transport Police (BTP) relating to suspected suicides on the mainline railway in England from April 2019 to March 2021. Cluster analysis was carried out to identify grouped associations of characteristics and circumstances relating to rail suicide. Results: A total of 436 files were analysed, representing 93 % of all suspected railway suicides during this period. Cluster analysis identified four groups of almost equal size, distinguished principally by age, living arrangements, employment status and location of death. The study is novel in the way it integrates individual characteristics and circumstances of death. The identified clusters may provide a multidimensional way of conceptualising suicide risk that could inform more targeted interventions at rail locations. Limitations: A high proportion of missing data means that the findings need to be interpreted with caution. It also restricted the multivariate analysis to those categories of information for which sufficient information was available. Conclusion: The characteristics and circumstances of suicide deaths on the railways are complex and multifaceted. The typology identified in this study may help to target preventative strategies prior to the incident as well as at different location types.

A significant cost of system operation is the training required for the end users to achieve and maintain competence. The training need is partially determined by user interface properties that make it harder or easier to learn. This article explores improving system learnability through human-machine interface design. A design pattern of Progressive Disclosure through Layered Interfaces is proposed to improve learnability (time taken to learn) by presenting users with a subset of functionality. An experimental study supported tentative conclusions. Interesting differences between experiment participants suggest a customised approach, including Progressive Disclosure, to reduce the training burden.

BACKGROUND:Choice of suicide method can strongly influence the outcome of suicidal behaviour, and is an important aspect of the process and planning involved in a suicide attempt. Yet, the reasons why individuals consider, choose or discard particular methods are not well understood.AIMS:This is the first study to explore method choices among people with a history of suicidal behaviour and individuals who have experienced, but not enacted, suicidal thoughts.METHOD:Via an online survey, we gathered open-ended data about choice of methods in relation to suicidal thoughts and behaviours, including reasons for and against specific means of harm.RESULTS:A total of 712 respondents had attempted suicide, and a further 686 experienced suicidal thoughts (but not acted on them). Self-poisoning was the most commonly contemplated and used method of suicide, but most respondents had considered multiple methods. Method choices when contemplating suicide included a broader range of means than those used in actual attempts, and more unusual methods, particularly if perceived to be lethal, 'easy', quick, accessible and/or painless. Methods used in suicide attempts were, above all, described as having been accessible at the time, and were more commonly said to have been chosen impulsively. Key deterrents against the use of specific methods were the presence of and impact on other people, especially loved ones, and fears of injury and survival.CONCLUSIONS:Exploration of method choices can offer novel insights into the transition from suicidal ideation to behaviour. Results underscore the need for preventative measures to restrict access to means and delay impulsive behaviour.

Background There is a suicide on the British railways every 36 hours. However, the reasons why people choose to die by train are not well understood. Aims To explore factors influencing and discouraging the decision to attempt suicide on the railway networks. Method We conducted an online survey and qualitative interviews with individuals who had contemplated or attempted suicide by train. Results A total of 353 survey responders had considered and 23 had attempted suicide at rail locations (including railways and metro/underground); a third of these cases were impulsive. The most frequently reported motivations for contemplating or attempting suicide were perceptions of quick and certain lethality (54 and 37%, respectively) and easy access to rail settings (33 and 38%, respectively). The main factor discouraging people from rail suicide was its wider impact, especially on train drivers (19%). In qualitative interviews ( N = 34) the desire to avoid intervention from others was also a common motivating factor for attempting suicide on the railway networks. Conclusions People attempt suicide by train because railway settings are easy to access and because of an inaccurate perception of certain and quick lethality. Tackling exaggerated perceptions of lethality may help reduce suicides by train. Declaration of interest None.

During legal investigations, analysts typically create external representations of an investigated domain as resource for cognitive offloading, reflection and collaboration. For investigations involving very large numbers of documents as evidence, creating such representations can be slow and costly, but essential. We believe that software tools, including interactive visualisation and machine learning, can be transformative in this arena, but that design must be predicated on an understanding of how such tools might support and enhance investigator cognition and team-based collaboration. In this paper, we propose an approach to this problem by: (a) allowing users to visually externalise their evolving mental models of an investigation domain in the form of thematically organized Anchored Narratives; and (b) using such narratives as a (more or less) tacit interface to cooperative, mixed initiative machine learning. We elaborate our approach through a discussion of representational forms significant to legal investigations and discuss the idea of linking such representations to machine learning.

In the field of naturalistic decision making, the data–frame model (DFM) has proven to be a popular and useful way of thinking about sensemaking. DFM provides a parsimonious account of how ‘sensemakers’ interact with the data in their environment to make sense of what is happening. In this paper, however, we argue that it is useful to elaborate DFM in several ways. We begin by arguing for the idea of sensemaking as a quest for coherence, an idea that we see as consistent with the DFM. We then present some examples of sensemaking studies and use these to motivate a ‘distributed resources’ model of sensemaking. This model uses the notion of resources for action, as resources that can be flexibly drawn upon in both choosing courses of action and accounting for the actions of oneself and of others (as opposed to prescriptions or mechanisms that determine behaviour in any strict way). The model describes resources involved in sensemaking in terms of three domains: knowledge and beliefs, values and goals, and action. Knowledge and beliefs are concerned with how things are, values and goals are concerned with how things are desired to be and action provides the means for redressing the gap. Central to the model is the idea that these resources can be distributed across a cognitive work system including actors and representational media. Hence, the model aims to provide a framework for analysing sensemaking as distributed cognition.

OBJECTIVES:Suicides by train have devastating consequences for families, the rail industry, staff dealing with the aftermath of such incidents and potential witnesses. To reduce suicides and suicide attempts by rail, it is important to learn how safe interventions can be made. However, very little is known about how to identify someone who may be about to make a suicide attempt at a railway location (including underground/subways). The current research employed a novel way of understanding what behaviours might immediately precede a suicide or suicide attempt at these locations.DESIGN AND METHODS:A qualitative thematic approach was used for three parallel studies. Data were gathered from several sources, including interviews with individuals who survived a rail suicide attempt (n=9), CCTV footage of individuals who died by rail suicide (n=16) and qualitative survey data providing views from rail staff (n=79).RESULTS:Our research suggests that there are several behaviours that people may carry out before a suicide or suicide attempt at a rail location, including station hopping and platform switching, limiting contact with others, positioning themselves at the end of the track where the train/tube approaches, allowing trains to pass by and carrying out repetitive behaviours.CONCLUSIONS:There are several behaviours that may be identifiable in the moments leading up to a suicide or suicide attempt on the railways which may present opportunities for intervention. These findings have implications for several stakeholders, including rail providers, transport police and other organisations focused on suicide prevention.

This paper introduces the Middlesex RoboTic platfOrm (MIRTO), an open-source platform that has been used for teaching First Year Computer Science students since the academic year 2013/2014, with the aim of providing a physical manifestation of Software Engineering concepts that are often delivered using only abstract or synthetic case studies. In this paper we provide a detailed description of the platform, whose hardware specifications and software libraries are all released open source; we describe a number of teaching usages of the platform, report students' projects, and evaluate some of its aspects in terms of effectiveness, usability, and maintenance.

Panoramic 360 video is a rapidly growing part of interactive TV viewing experience due to the increase of both production by consumers and professionals and the availability of consumer headsets used to view it. Recent years have also seen proposals for the development of home systems that could ultimately approximate CAVE-like experiences. The question arises as to the nature of the user experience of viewing panoramic video in head mounted displays compared to CAVE-like systems. User preference seems hard to predict. Accordingly, this study took a qualitative approach to describing user experience of viewing a panoramic video on both platforms, using a thematic analysis. Sixteen users tried both viewing conditions and equal numbers expressed preferences for each display system. The differences in user experience by viewing condition are discussed in detail via themes emerging from the analysis.

This paper presents a fusion of ideas across disciplines to study and conceptualize decision making. Typically, decision making is approached as a cognitive process. Nevertheless, there is a growing shift in perception towards decision making as more than a cerebral activity to one being situated, embedded and embodied in the social landscape of work activities. Research addressing these aspects is still in its infancy and more work is required to develop the notions. The research presented in here makes a theoretical contribution to this shift. Taking a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) perspective, this paper explores how decision making is articulated in the cooperative arrangement of a complex work setting. In the process, it explicates the situated, embedded and embodied nature of decision making. The paper reflects on conventional notions of decision making and demonstrates its differentiated nature during every day work performance in a real-world complex work setting.

Panoramic video arises at the convergence of TV and virtual reality, and it is necessary to understand how these technologies interact to affect user experience in order to produce useful content. TV and film makers have developed a sophisticated language and set of techniques to achieve directed linear story telling on fixed screens, whereas virtual worlds more often emphasise user led exploration of possibly non-linear narrative and aspects such as presence and immersion in navigable 3D environments. This study focused on the user experience of panoramic video as viewed over two conditions, on a VR headset and using a handheld phone, and compared this to watching on a static screen thus emphasising the differences between traditional and panoramic TV. A qualitative approach to analysis was taken where users participated in semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis was performed which produced thematic maps describing user experience for each condition. A detailed and nuanced account of emerging themes is given. Subsequently, key themes were identified and graphed to produce user response profiles to the three viewing conditions that highlight differences in user experience in terms of presence, attention, engagement, concentration on story, certainty, comfort and social ease.

This paper reports an empirical exploration of how different configurations of collaboration technology affect peoples' ability to construct and maintain common ground while conducting collaborative intelligence analysis work. Prior studies of collaboration technology have typically focused on simpler conversational tasks, or ones that involve physical manipulation, rather than the complex sensemaking and inference involved in intelligence work. The study explores the effects of video communication and shared visual workspace (SVW) on the negotiation of common ground by distributed teams collaborating in real time on intelligence analysis tasks. The experimental study uses a 2×2 factorial, between-subjects design involving two independent variables: presence or absence of Video and SVW. Two-member teams were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental media conditions and worked to complete several intelligence analysis tasks involving multiple, complex intelligence artefacts. Teams with access to the shared visual workspace could view their teammates' eWhiteboards. Our results demonstrate a significant effect for the shared visual workspace: the effort of conversational grounding is reduced in the cases where SVW is available. However, there were no main effects for video and no interaction between the two variables. Also, we found that the \"conversational grounding effort\" required tended to decrease over the course of the task.

In this paper, we examine the role of representational artefacts in sensemaking. Embodied within representational media, such as maps, charts and lists, are a number of affordances, which can furnish sensemakers with the ability to perform tasks that may be difficult to do inside the head. Presented here is a study of sensemaking in action. We conducted a study of military intelligence analysts carrying out a training exercise, the analysis of which focuses on the use of external task-specific representations. We present a discussion of the findings of our study in the form of a model of distributed sensemaking. Our model concentrates on the interaction of information and various representational artefacts, leading to the generation of insights and a situation picture. We also introduce a number of levels of description for examining the properties and affordances offered by representational artefacts and their role in the sensemaking process.

Sensemaking is described as the process of comprehension, finding meaning and gaining insight from information, producing new knowledge and informing further action. Understanding the sensemaking process allows building effective visual analytics tools to make sense of large and complex datasets. Currently, it is often a manual and time-consuming undertaking to comprehend this: researchers collect observation data, transcribe screen capture videos and think-aloud recordings, identify recurring patterns, and eventually abstract the sensemaking process into a general model. In this paper, we propose a general approach to facilitate such a qualitative analysis process, and introduce a prototype, SensePath, to demonstrate the application of this approach with a focus on browser-based online sensemaking. The approach is based on a study of a number of qualitative research sessions including observations of users performing sensemaking tasks and post hoc analyses to uncover their sensemaking processes. Based on the study results and a follow-up participatory design session with HCI researchers, we decided to focus on the transcription and coding stages of thematic analysis. SensePath automatically captures user's sensemaking actions, i.e., analytic provenance, and provides multi-linked views to support their further analysis. A number of other requirements elicited from the design session are also implemented in SensePath, such as easy integration with existing qualitative analysis workflow and non-intrusive for participants. The tool was used by an experienced HCI researcher to analyze two sensemaking sessions. The researcher found the tool intuitive and considerably reduced analysis time, allowing better understanding of the sensemaking process.

Advances in smartphones and wearable biosensors enable real-time psychological, behavioural, and physiological data to be gathered in increasingly precise and unobtrusive ways. Thus, moment-to-moment information about an individual's moods, cognitions, and activities can be collected, in addition to automated data about their whereabouts, behaviour, and physiological states. In this report, we discuss the potential of these new mobile digital technologies to transform mental health research and clinical practice. By drawing on results from the INSIGHT research project, we show how traditional boundaries between research and clinical practice are becoming increasingly blurred and how, in turn, this is leading to exciting new developments in the assessment and management of common mental disorders. Furthermore, we discuss the potential risks and key challenges associated with applying mobile technology to mental health.