LoRaWAN is widely used for large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, but real-world reliability is often affected by high packet error rate. Existing optimization methods, such as heuristics or supervised learning, cannot fully capture the effects of environment, spatial layout, and network dynamics, which limits their adaptability. In this paper, we present LORADOCTOR, the first framework that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to optimize LoRaWAN. LORADOCTOR performs causal analysis, generates adaptive transmission policies, and predicts network performance in an interpretable way. We perform simulation-based evaluations using a year-long dataset collected from eight sensors deployed in East London. The results show that LORADOCTOR can significantly reduce packet error rates compared to both the default LoRaWAN settings and standard machine learning methods. Our evaluation also identifies distance-based path loss, temperature effects, and human activity as the main causes of packet error rate, showing its potential to support more reliable and adaptive LoRaWAN deployments in future urban environments.

Secondhand retail in the UK charity sector plays a number of important social and economic roles: charity shops are community focal points; money is generated for good causes; and goods are re-circulated that might otherwise be discarded as abject and unwanted. However, like much of the UK high street, the prosperity of charity shops is under significant threat from the rise of internet shopping. Access to online markets via smart phones equips customers to check prices for secondhand items, some customers then deploy information, usually from eBay, to haggle with shop staff. The Haggle-o-Tron playfully subverts both normative and emerging secondhand retail valuation practices by revealing secondhand goods' financial, moral, social and aesthetic properties. This paper reports on how we employ vibrant yet uncomplicated design interventions that embed the charity's values and ethos to reconfigure store-based economic transactions.

Whilst empathy is considered an essential component of what it means to be human, it is frequently absent as a design objective when creating modern communication systems. This paper presents an approach to designing for, as opposed to with, empathy using the example of two design interventions to create embodied rituals reflecting prayers and worries of individuals within a church community. The aim of these interventions is to facilitate conversation and support within the community, thus generating empathy between community members, and inciting prosocial behaviour through embodied cognition.

As IoT (Internet of Things) technologies and infrastructures become more mature, opportunities for engagement with representations of digital object memories (DOM) in the real world increase. Digital object memories can provide added value and pave the way for new consumer-oriented IoT products and services. However, our research experience of employing digital object memories in different systems for reminiscing, mediation of second-hand retail environments and augmenting digital heritage experiences (e.g. in museums) also point to some significant challenges as to how people can interact with DOMs in situ. Based on this work we will put forth some of the key user experience challenges that we encountered when employing representations of DOMs in the real world in the course of the last two and a half years and discuss some alternative routes we wish to explore through future research.

Emergent Internet of Things (IoT) based technologies offer the potential for new ways in engaging with places, spaces and objects. The use of mobile and tablet computing linked specifically to objects and memory, comment and narrative creation opens up a potentially game-changing methodology in user interaction above and beyond the traditional 'kiosk' type approach. In this position statement we detail the QRator project in the Grant Museum at University College London. The QRator project explores how handheld mobile devices and Internet enabled interactive digital labels can create new models for public engagement, personal meaning-making and the construction of narrative opportunities inside museum spaces. The project won the United Kingdom National Museum and Heritage Award for Innovation for exploring the cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves to a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is 'on', and every device is connected in some way to the Internet.

For a long time, the second-hand retail market was the preserve of the charity shop. However, the advent of services like eBay has massively increased its prominence. In this paper we describe a novel Internet of Things-based approach to enhancing the second-hand retail experience by augmenting items with their provenance. After a discussion of the underlying technology, we shall describe its deployment in two related case studies conducted in collaboration with Oxfam charity retail outlets in which we tagged donated items with RFID and QR codes, allowing shoppers to hear the story behind the donated items. Finally, we discuss the impact of the deployments and their implications for the second-hand retail sector.