一种基于模式的界面生成方法

多设备环境下,应用程序在不同设备上用户界面的差异性导致了界面设计工作的重复和困难.应用界面模式,开发者可以脱离使用繁琐的底层控件生成用户界面的开发方法,专注于宏观的交互方案,从而为多设备界面生成问题提供一个可能的解.基于PLML,本文设计了一个设备无关的界面模式描述语言SPLML用于表示基于模式的界面元素信息,实现了不同平台上的界面模式生成框架UIPF用于支持界面自动化生成,并通过具体案例说明了该方案的可行性和有效性.     

基于UIML的多设备用户界面生成方法

多设备用户界面开发中不同类型的设备通常需要为同一应用定制不同的界面,或者通过WEB浏览器访问。这两种方法均导致大量额外的开发努力和代价。提出一种基于UIML的多设备用户界面生成方法,其特征是通过建模与设备无关的抽象界面,该方法按照不同的设备特征将其映射为具体的界面;该方法的实现利用了一个运行时机制在具体的设备上绘制出真实界面。实验表明,该方法可减轻多设备界面的开发难度,提高效率。     

移动终端智能引擎平台研究

随着移动终端的不断发展与普及,它已经变成了一个交流、传感的设备。普通市民只需要通过移动设备就可以从周围的环境中获取海量信息以及分享自己的信息。文中研究了群智感知原理,结合普适环境下情境信息的特点,提出了移动终端智能引擎平台。该平台通过接口能实时、有效地获取、处理用户的感知数据,还原用户情境,获取用户需求,并把用户需求和处理好的数据供第三方应用使用,第三方应用通过平台提供的接口提供应用服务。实验证明,该平台能够有效地获取用户情境信息,提供给第三方应用。     

Bayesian and behavior networks for context-adaptive user interface in a ubiquitous home environment

Modern home theater systems require users to control various devices simultaneously including a TV, audio equipment, DVD and video players, and a receiver. To perform the requested user functions in this situation, the user is required to know the functions and positions of the buttons on several remote controls. Users will become more confused if a ubiquitous home environment, which contains many mobile and stationary control devices, is realized. Therefore, the user interface should be adaptable for requested user functions and to fit a specific control device. This paper presents a context-adaptive user interface for the control of devices in ubiquitous home environment. First, we modeled the ubiquitous home environment in order to implement the context-adaptive user interface. We used a Bayesian network to predict the necessary devices in each situation and used a behavior network to select the functions that constitute an adaptive user interface in several conditions. The selected functions were used to generate an adaptive interface for each controller using a presentation template. In this paper, we implemented a ubiquitous home environment and generated a controller usage log for this environment. We confirmed that the Bayesian network effectively predicted the user requirements by evaluating the inferred results of the necessary devices based on several scenarios. Finally, we compared the adaptive user interface with the fixed user interface by surveying fourteen subjects. We confirmed that the generated adaptive user interface was more comfortable for use with typical tasks than was the fixed user interface.     

From user interface design to the support of intelligent and adaptive interfaces: an overhaul of user interface software infrastracture

Research on adaptive interfaces in the past has lacked support from user interface tools which allow interfaces to be easily created and modified. Also, current user interface tools provide no support for user models which can collect task-oriented information about users. Developing an adaptive interface requires a user model and an adaptation strategy. It also, however, requires a user interface which can be adapted. The latter task is often time-consuming, especially in relation to more sophisticated user interfaces.

The paper presents a user interface design environment, UIDE, which has a different software infrastracture. Designers use high-level specifications to create a model of an application and links from the application to various interface components. The model is the heart of all the design and run-time support in UIDE, including automatic dialog sequencing and help generation. UIDE provides automatic support for collecting task-oriented information about users, by the use of its high-level specifications in its application model as a basic construct for a user model. Some examples of adaptive interfaces and adaptive help are presented that use the information that is collectable in UIDE.     

MASHED: Security and privacy-aware mutual authentication scheme for heterogeneous and distributed mobile cloud computing services

ABSTRACT

Rapid development in mobile devices and cloud computing technologies has increased the number of mobile services from different vendors on the cloud platform. However, users of these services are facing different security and access control challenges due to the nonexistence of security solutions capable of providing secure access to these services, which are from different vendors, using a single key. An effective security solution for heterogeneous Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) services should be able to guarantee confidentiality and integrity through single key-based authentication scheme. Meanwhile, a few of the existing authentication schemes for MCC services require different keys to access different services from different vendors on a cloud platform, thus increases complexity and overhead incurred through generation and storage of different keys for different services.

In this paper, an efficient mutual authentication scheme for accessing heterogeneous MCC services is proposed. The proposed scheme combines the user’s voice signature with cryptography operations to evolve efficient mutual authentication scheme devoid of key escrow problem and allows authorized users to use single key to access the heterogeneous MCC services at a reduced cost.     

MobiTran:一种面向智能手机的PC版Web应用转化技术

随着移动互联网的快速发展,人们可以通过包括智能手机和平板电脑在内的移动计算设备来访问和使用Web应用。然而,目前已有的Web应用大多是针对PC设计的,因此通过移动计算设备直接访问时,可能出现信息显示不全、界面布局混乱、用户体验变差、需要耗费较多流量等问题。重新开发符合移动设备特性的Web应用是一种最直接的解决方案,但是开发成本和代价较大,并且同时维护PC版和移动版两个不同的应用版本也会带来更高的成本。提出一种面向开发者的Web应用移动版本半自动转化技术并实现了支持工具MobiTran:首先,对PC版本Web应用的界面进行自动转化,使之适应移动设备的屏幕尺寸;然后,通过支持开发者手工对界面的样式和布局进行修改,定制拆分子页面以控制数据流量,同时加入适应移动设备操控特点的元素;最终,生成一个供移动设备访问的移动版本Web应用。对主流网站的测试结果表明:MobiTran可以将原网页自动地转化为适合移动设备宽度的新网页,转化后的网页清晰无溢出并可以较大限度地维持新页面与原页面风格一致;在自动转化过程中,可以较少地丢失页面信息并较大限度地保证原页面的功能;转化后的新页面相比原页面消耗数据流量较小。     

一种面向普适计算的适应性软件体系结构风格

普适计算软件需要适应用户需求和运行环境的动态变化.这一特点使得软件复杂度空前增加,迫切需要以软件体系结构为代表的架构/设计层面重用手段来支持其高效开发.在以适应性为中心的普适计算空间抽象模型基础上,提出了一种面向普适计算的软件体系结构风格UbiArch,并从概念视图、运行视图和开发视图这3个维度对该软件体系结构风格进行了阐述.UbiArch支持软件实体按需加入应用、主动适应环境的行为模式,实现了软件适应能力的高层次重用,同时与构件等成熟软件技术的紧密结合也保证了其可实践性.支撑该体系结构风格的软件平台原型系统及其上的应用验证了UbiArch的有效性和通用性.     

面向移动云计算弹性应用的安全模型

根据云计算资源建立了资源受限设备弹性应用的安全模型。首先介绍了由一个或多个Weblet组成的一个弹性应用程序,每个Weblet可在移动设备端或云端启动,Weblet之间可根据所处的计算环境的动态变化或用户的配置进行迁移。分析了该模式的安全性,提出建立弹性应用程序的安全设计模型,包括实现Weblet运行所在的移动设备端和云端之间的身份验证、安全会话管理和通过外部网络的访问服务。该模型解决了Weblet之间的安全迁移和授权云Weblet通过外部Web网络去访问敏感用户数据的问题。该方案能应用在云计算场景,如在企业应用环境下的私有云和公有云之间的应用集成。     

EWS-Based Management Application Interface and Integration Mechanisms for Web-Based Element Management

Web-based network element management provides an administrator with the ability to configure and monitor network devices over the Internet using a Web browser. The most direct way to accomplish this is to embed a Web server [Embedded Web Server (EWS)] into a network device, and use that server to provide a Web-based management user interface constructed with HTML, graphics, Java and other features common to Web browsers. In this paper we present EWS-based management application interface mechanisms for use between embedded management applications and embedded Web servers. We propose a guideline for choosing an efficient interface mechanism, which is based on the characteristics of management information and Web documents. A Web-based management user interface through embedded Web servers has many advantages such as ubiquity, platform independence and user-friendliness. In order to be truly useful, a Web-based management user interface must have a low development cost and a short development time. We provide effective integration mechanisms for each interface. We validate these mechanisms by implementing them in an Internet router.     

Status and trends of mobile-health applications for iOS devices: A developer's perspective

Modern smart mobile devices offer media-rich and context-aware features that are highly useful for electronic-health (e-health) applications. It is therefore not surprising that these devices have gained acceptance as target devices for e-health applications, turning them into m-health (mobile-health) apps. In particular, many e-health application developers have chosen Apple's iOS mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch as the target device to provide more convenient and richer user experience, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing number of m-health apps in Apple's App Store. In this paper, the top two hundred of such apps from the App Store were examined from a developer's perspective to provide a focused overview of the status and trends of iOS m-health apps and an analysis of related technology, architecture, and user interface design issues. The top 200 apps were classified into different groups according to their purposes, functions, and user satisfaction. It was shown that although the biggest group of apps was medical information reference apps that were delivered from or related to medical articles, websites, or journals, mobile users disproportionally favored tracking tools. It was clear that m-health apps still had plenty of room to grow to take full advantage of unique mobile platform features and truly fulfill their potential. In particular, introduction of two- or three-dimensional visualization and context-awareness could further enhance m-health app's usability and utility. This paper aims to serve as a reference point and guide for developers and practitioners interested in using iOS as a platform for m-health applications, particular from the technical point of view.     

Environment Analysis as a Basis for Designing Multimodal and Multidevice User Interfaces

In this article, we present a practical approach to analyzing mobile usage environments. We propose a framework for analyzing the restrictions that characteristics of different environments pose on the user's capabilities. These restrictions along with current user interfaces form the cost of interaction in a certain environment. Our framework aims to illustrate that cost and what causes it. The framework presents a way to map features of the environment to the effects they cause on the resources of the user and in some cases on the mobile device. This information can be used for guiding the design of adaptive and/or multimodal user interfaces or devices optimized for certain usage environments. An example of using the framework is presented along with some major findings and three examples of applying them in user interface design.     

基于遗传算法的网络安全配置自动生成框架

合理配置网络安全设备以对信息系统实施必要的访问控制,是网络安全管理的一项重要任务。随着网络规模的不断扩大,各种用户权限之间会形成复杂的依赖关系,传统基于人工的方式配置网络访问控制策略,主要是依据业务系统的实际需求,按照最小权限的原则进行分配,这种分配方式忽略了权限之间的依赖关系,容易产生过授权的现象,从而为网络带来安全隐患。为解决该问题,提出了一个基于遗传算法的安全配置自动生成框架。首先,以网络规划信息和配置信息为基础,确定用户可能的权限,提取网络基础语义,构建相应的网络安全风险评估模型,实现不同安全配置的安全评估;然后,对网络中所有可能的安全配置进行合理编码,确定遗传算子和算法参数,生成初始种群;最后,通过遗传算法,自动选取较优个体来生成子代个体。该框架能够通过自动比较不同的安全配置下的网络安全风险,以及在可能的配置空间内自动搜索安全配置的最优解,来实现网络安全设备访问控制策略的自动生成。构造一个拥有20个设备、30个服务的模拟网络环境对该框架进行验证,在该模拟环境下,该框架能够在种群样本数目为150的条件下,不超过10次迭代即可找到较优的安全配置。实验结果充分表明,该框架能够根据网络的安全需求,自动生成合理的网络安全配置。     

基于CAFISE Framework的高适应性面向服务软件开发

在企业及电子政务应用中,由资源分布异构及需求动态变化而产生的问题越来越严重,如何让应用快速适应这些变化一直是人们关注的一个研究难题.首先给出了一个面向服务的支持业务端编程的适应性软件结构框架CAFISE(convergent approach for information system evolution)Framework,然后给出了基于该框架的面向服务的适应性软件开发方法.CAFISE Framework对异构资源的服务化、业务化及开放动态的面向服务软件体系结构提供了较好的支持.基于该结构框架的开发方法,从对影响软件的环境要素分析入手,通过质量属性驱动的体系结构分析,重点针对应用要适应的变化进行结构设计,最终通过以体系结构为基础的业务端编程,实现面向服务应用的即时开发与演化.在实际项目中的使用及实验证明:用该框架和方法开发的面向服务应用,能够较好地适应异构资源的动态变化及用户业务变更,能以较低的代价实现企业及电子政务面向服务应用的持续演化.     

Designing an MOOC as an agent-platform aggregating heterogeneous virtual learning environments

ABSTRACT

With the emergence of cloud technologies, on the one hand, and social networks, on the other hand, the possibilities for e-learning have been drastically enhanced in the latest years. Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) can now indeed contain a huge amount of learning resources; in parallel, large user communities are available in social networks. These nevertheless remain different systems but, by using these heterogeneous software environments together, the possibilities for interaction could be multiplied. That is why, this paper suggests to build a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) environment through a Multi-Agent System (MAS) working as a virtual abstraction layer over heterogeneous software platforms. The idea is to aggregate different traditional VLE to dispose of the learning objects they own as well as other platforms such as social networks to furnish an easy access to the MOOC of their large user communities. The MAS design has been architectured around a real-life organisational pattern – the joint venture – allowing one to deal with the complexity of heterogeneous software environments in a manner that real-life companies set up joint governance. Communication scenarios issued of a field analysis are pointed out in the paper; these are supported by the MOOC platform in the native environment as well as in Facebook. The proposal is indeed validated through the development of a prototype using Facebook as a case study for third-party platform interfacing. We finally highlight the benefits for the user experience.     

Controlling Home and Office Appliances with Smart Phones

Most home and office appliances contain microprocessors. All these appliances have some user interface, but many users become frustrated with their appliances' difficult, complex functions. However, a new framework, the personal universal controller (PUC), lets users interact with appliances through a separate user interface device that they carry. Smart phones are good candidates for providing interfaces because they're common, their communication capabilities connect users to appliances, and they're already being used for a wide range of applications. The framework includes an abstract specification language for describing appliances, a two-way communication protocol, and automatic interface generation software that customizes user interfaces. This article overviews the PUC system and describes in detail the design and implementation of automatic interface generation for Microsoft's Smartphone platform.     

Distributed interface bits: dynamic dialogue composition from ambient computing resources

This paper discusses a particular issue in the context of disappearing computing, namely, user mobility. Mobile users may carry with them a variety of wireless gadgets while being immersed in a physical environment encompassing numerous computing devices. In such a situation, it is most likely that the number and type of devices may dynamically vary during interactions. The Voyager development framework supports the implementation of ambient dialogues, i.e., dynamically distributed user Interfaces, which exploit, on-the-fly, the wireless devices available at a given point in time. This paper describes the Voyager implementation, focusing on: device discovery and registry architecture, device-embedded software implementation, ambient dialogue style and corresponding software toolkit development, and a method for dynamic interface adaptation, ensuring dialogue state persistence. Additionally, this paper presents two ambient dialogue applications developed using Voyager, namely, a game and a navigator.     

XCML: providing context-aware language extensions for the specification of multi-device web applications

There is a vast body of research dealing with the development of context-aware web applications that can adapt to different user, platform and device contexts. However, the range and growing diversity of new devices poses two significant problems to existing approaches. First, many techniques require a number of additional design processes and modelling steps before applications can be adapted. Second, the new generation of platforms and technologies underlying these devices as well as upcoming web standards HTML5 and CSS3 have partly changed the way in which web applications are implemented nowadays and often limit the way in which they can be adapted. In this paper, we present XCML as one example of a domain-specific language that tightly integrates context-aware concepts and adaptivity mechanisms to support developers in the specification and implementation of multi-channel web applications. In contrast to most existing approaches, the objective is to use a more lightweight approach to adaptation that can dynamically evolve and support new requirements as they emerge. Our solution builds on versioning principles in combination with a context matching process based on a declaration of context-dependent variants of content, navigation and presentation in terms of context expressions at different levels of granularity that are specific to the application. To support this, a formally defined context algebra is used to parse and resolve the context expressions at compile-time and to determine the best-matching variants with respect to the client context at run-time. We present the language concepts and a possible execution environment together with context-aware developer tools for the authoring and testing of adaptive features and behaviour. We also report on two case studies: the first shows how our general approach allows for integration with existing technologies to leverage advanced context-aware mechanisms in applications developed using other platforms and languages and the second how existing web interfaces can be systematically extended to support new adaptation scenarios.     

Unified user interface development: the software engineering of universally accessible interactions

In the information society, the notion of “computing-platform” encompasses, apart from traditional desktop computers, a wide range of devices, such as public-use terminals, phones, TVs, car consoles, and a variety of home appliances. Today, such computing platforms are mainly delivered with embedded operating systems (such as Windows CE, Embedded/ Personal Java, and Psion Symbian), while their operational capabilities and supplied services are controlled through software. The broad use of such computing platforms in everyday life puts virtually anyone in the position of using interactive software applications in order to carry out a variety of tasks in a variety of contexts of use. Therefore, traditional development processes, targeted towards the elusive “average case”, become clearly inappropriate for the purposes of addressing the new demands for user- and usage-context diversity and for ensuring accessible and high-quality interactions. This paper will introduce the concept of unified user interfaces, which constitutes our theoretical platform for universally accessible interactions, characterized by the capability to self-adapt at run-time, according to the requirements of the individual user and the particular context of use. Then, the unified user interface development process for constructing unified user interfaces will be described, elaborating on the interactive-software engineering strategy to accomplish the run-time self-adaptation behaviour.