User bias in online trust systems: aligning the system designers’ intentions with the users’ expectations

The advent of social networks opened a myriad opportunities for merging the social character of trust with the technical possibilities offered by the Internet and its availability as a mobile service. While most of the computational trust models aim to detect trustworthy entities, much less attention is paid to how these models are perceived by the users who are the core of the system. This paper delves into the workings of online trust systems under user bias and analyses the user behaviour through biases defined by Prospect theory. By performing empirical study on an existing system, we are able to demonstrate that there is a huge discrepancy between the aim of implementation of the online trust models and the users’ perception of those models. Understanding of this relation by the system designers can reduce complexity and improve the user experience and the system performance. The results imply that the tendency of the users to exhibit cognitive biases is not only the cause, but also the effect from the trust system design. These results and the analysis are then used to propose to the system designers a methodology for user bias identification and mitigation in the form of a Choice architecture for trust systems.     

符合28181标准的User Agent

GB/T 28181标准对安全防范视频监控联网系统提出了新的要求,该标准规定了具体的SIP交互流程,并提出了新的扩展. 其中用户代理是SIP设备、SIP客户端等规定实体的重要组成部件. 用户代理的主要任务是不仅要符合标准的SIP流程,还要作为UAC负责发起呼叫,也要作为UAS负责接收呼叫并作响应. 用户代理的研究和设计对视频监控系统是否符合GB/T 28181标准及系统性能有着重要影响. 本文设计了一个符合标准的高效的用户代理,内容主要包括整体结构设计,设计的关键思想,以及如何基于该用户代理构建SIP客户端. 本文设计的用户代理具有高度模块化、低耦合、高效率、易扩展等特点,视频监控系统可以很方便快捷地构建相应的SIP实体.     

A student oriented CAD system in APL

This paper describes a two-dimensional computer-aided design tutorial system (CADETS) modelled after Unigraphics I. Written in APL, a 3279 colour graphics terminal is used as a graphics input as well as output device. The screen is divided into five windows. The main, and the largest, window is used for graphics; the others are used for user communication. Menus are used extensively to generate, modify and manipulate the display. Within CADETS, there are currently eleven ways to create a point, thirteen ways to create a line segment, ten ways to specify a circular arc, several functions to generate common geometric objects such as triangles, rectangles, polygons, conics and ten fonts to write labels. Once created, the user may pick the geometric entities in the current model for inquiry, transformation or deletion through a series of selection menus. Manipulation of geometric entities is facilitated by transformation functions such as translation, scaling, rotation, and mirroring. Options to move, copy or duplicate the transformed entities are available. Geometric models created by the user may be stored as either TSIO or VSPC data sets. The user may retrieve, inquire or change the data set names of the models at will. The power of CADETS is further enhanced by the introduction of layers. This facility enables the user to view and draw each individual layer independently or to view selected layers simultaneously. The system has been used by several users including high school students who were unaware of even the existence of APL. The system requires minimal investment on hardware as well as software compared to sophisticated expensive systems, yet provides tools for teaching several fundamental CAD techniques.     

Ranking entities on the basis of users’ opinions

Online opinions are one of the most important sources of information on which users base their purchasing decisions. Unfortunately, the large quantity of opinions makes it difficult for an individual to consume in a reasonable amount of time. Unlike standard information retrieval problems, the task here is to retrieve entities whose relevance is dependent upon other people’s opinions regarding the entities and how well those sentiments match the user’s own preferences. We propose novel techniques that incorporate aspect subjectivity measures into weighting the relevance of opinions of entities based on a user’s query keywords. We calculate these weights using sentiment polarity of terms found proximity close to keywords in opinion text. We have implemented our techniques, and we show that these improve the overall effectiveness of the baseline retrieval task. Our results indicate that on entities with long opinions our techniques can perform as good as state-of-the-art query expansion approaches.     

Modeling collaboration for large-scale software system integration by formal communication models

In the development of large software systems, several synchronization points have to be passed successfully in order to achieve high-end user acceptance of the final system. In particular, the integration of conceptual design entities has turned out to be the most crucial step in software development. At this point, an explicit representation of the organizational knowledge, namely how the integration can be performed, is required. The overall organization of the integration of design entities is a set of knowledge, action (including communication), and time. The knowledge part comprises the integration procedure itself as well as the design entities. Actions are performed by the members of the project team (project leaders, developers). Each integration step has to be performed synchronized, so that each member of the development team knows concurrently the status of the integration procedure. All other individual design activities are usually performed asynchronously. According to the need for an explicit representation of the organizational knowledge for large software system design, this paper attempts tounderstand the nature of large software system integration and formallydescribes the coordination of a dispersed set of software developers. The organizational knowledge is represented by processes that occur in an asynchronous development environment. The design knowledge is assigned to logical formulas that are processed as exchanged messages among developers. Hence, the activities for integration are based on the transmission of messages. Time-critical events, such as the integration of a particular design entity into the final conceptual design of the software system, have to become common knowledge concurrently for all developers. This organizational constraint has been formalized in the communication model. Not only can the proposed framework be adapted to organizational changes in a flexible way, it can also be applied to any specific development strategy for the integration of conceptual design entities. Thus, such kind of formal communication models may provide a sound basis for cooperative CASE (computer-aided software engineering) tools.This work has been sponsored by the Max Kade Foundation, New York.     

B-hist: Entity-centric search over personal web browsing history

Web Search is increasingly entity centric; as a large fraction of common queries target specific entities, search results get progressively augmented with semi-structured and multimedia information about those entities. However, search over personal web browsing history still revolves around keyword-search mostly. In this paper, we present a novel approach to answer queries over web browsing logs that takes into account entities appearing in the web pages, user activities, as well as temporal information. Our system, B-hist, aims at providing web users with an effective tool for searching and accessing information they previously looked up on the web by supporting multiple ways of filtering results using clustering and entity-centric search. In the following, we present our system and motivate our User Interface (UI) design choices by detailing the results of a survey on web browsing and history search. In addition, we present an empirical evaluation of our entity-based approach used to cluster web pages.     

SOFSPEC: A pragmatic approach to automated specification verification

This paper describes a system for the automatic verification of commerical application specifications—SOFSPEC. After having established a relationship to the other requirement specification approaches, the user interface and the database schema are presented. The database schema is based on the entity/relationship model and encompasses four entities and six relationships with a varying number of attributes. These are briefly outlined. Then, the paper describes how these entities and relations are checked against one another in order to ascertain the completeness and consistency of the specification before it is finally documented.     

Cooperative user–network interactions in next generation communication networks

Next Generation Communication Networks employ the idea of convergence, where heterogeneous access technologies may coexist, and a user may be served by anyone of the participating access networks, motivating the emergence of a Network Selection mechanism. The triggering and execution of the Network Selection mechanism becomes a challenging task due to the heterogeneity of the entities involved, i.e., the users and the access networks. This heterogeneity results in different and often conflicting interests for these entities, motivating the question of how they should behave in order to remain satisfied from their interactions. This paper studies cooperative user–network interactions and seeks appropriate modes of behaviour for these entities such that they achieve own satisfaction overcoming their conflicting interests.     

基于字典技术的本体整合系统

针对本体整合中缺少语义理解的问题，使用字典技术对同义词进行识别，并使用启发式规则计算本体中实体间的相似度。以此为基础，开发了一个半自动化的本体整合系统。该系统为用户整合本体提供帮助，减轻了手工整合本体的工作量，同时提高了本体整合的准确性。     

A framework for rapid computational prototyping of manufacturing entities

A framework for enhancement of conceptual tools for rapid computational prototyping of manufacturing entities is presented. A typical manufacturing entity (i.e. manufacturing system and/or individual part) is hierarchically represented in a computer and coupled with applications by dividing its information content into three computational elements: data, drawing and user interface. The information content is divided in this way because each of the above elements has a sufficiently distinct requirement for an efficient computer implementation. Although independent advances have taken place in computer data representation by highly efficient and focused data structures, in drawing representation by sophisticated computer graphics, as well as in user interface by a variety of interface media, these advances cannot be directly utilized in the design of a manufacturing entity unless they are efficiently integrated by relatively small programming effort as is deseribed in this rapid prototyping framework. The framework is implemented in object-oriented programming. A breadth of application areas for the framework is illustrated, and specific details are illustrated with reference to depth in one application area.     

System design and user evaluation of Co-Star: An immersive stereoscopic system for cable harness design

The system design and results of a user evaluation of Co-Star an immersive design system for cable harness design is described. The system used a stereoscopic head mounted graphical display, user motion tracking and hand-gesture controlled interface to enable cable harnesses to be designed using direct 3D user interaction with a product model. In order to determine how such a system interface would be used by a designer and to obtain user feedback on its main features a practical user evaluation was undertaken involving ten participants each completing three cable harness design tasks with the system. All user interactions with the system were recorded in a time stamped log file during each of the tasks, which were also followed by questionnaire (5 point scale) and interview sessions with each participant. The recorded interaction data for the third task was analysed using functional decomposition techniques and used to construct a single activity profile for the task based on the mean results obtained from the participant group. The goal was to identify in general terms the relative distribution of user activity between specific purposes during practical system operation, and it was found that in this task Navigation accounted for 41%, Design 27%, System Operation 23% and looking at Task Instructions 9% of all user activity. The scored questionnaire data collected immediately after the completion of each task was used to rank the major features of the system according to user opinion. This was further enhanced by also collecting real interview comments from the user group about these same features. The combination of both quantitative performance analysis and subjective user opinion data obtained during a practical design exercise has enabled an in depth evaluation of the system, leading to a much greater understanding of many of the key user and interface requirements that should be considered during the development of immersive interfaces and systems for practical engineering applications.     

A Visual Database Environment for Scientific Research

This paper describes a visual database environment designed to be used for scientific research in the imaging sciences. It provides hierarchical relational structures that allow the user to model data as entities possessing properties, parts and relationships, and it supports multi-level queries on these structures. A schema constructor interface allows users to define for each structure, not only its components, but also its visualization, which is built from its components using graphical primitives. Finally, an experiment management subsystem allows users to construct and run computational experiments that apply imaging operators to data from the database. The experiment management system keeps track of the experimental procedures developed by the user and the results generated by executing these procedures.     

In-Vehicle Information Systems to Meet the Needs of Drivers

In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVISs) integrate most of the secondary functions available within vehicles. These secondary functions are aimed at enhancing the driving experience. To successfully design and evaluate the performance of these systems, a thorough understanding of the task, user, and system is required. This article presents a review of these three variables in the context of IVISs, which aims to enhance understanding of this specific task–user–system interaction. A framework for modeling system performance for the task–user–system interaction is also proposed. This will allow designers and evaluators of IVISs to make predictions about system performance and to design systems that meet a set of criteria for usable IVISs.     

A function-based user authority delegation model

User authority delegation is granting or withdrawing access to computer-based information by entities that own and/or control that information. These entities must consider who should be granted access to specific information in the organization and determine reasonable authority delegation. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) delegation management, where user access authority is granted for the minimum resources necessary for users to perform their tasks, is not suitable for the actual working environment of an organization. Currently, RBAC implementations cannot correctly model inheritance and rules for different delegations are in conflict. Further, these systems require that user roles, positions, and information access be continuously and accurately updated, resulting in a manual, error-prone access delegation system. This paper presents a proposal for a new authority delegation model, which allows users to identify their own function-based delegation requirements as the initial input to the RBAC process. The conditions for delegations are identified and functions to implement these delegations are defined. The criteria for basic authority delegation, authentication and constraints are quantified and formulated for evaluation. An analysis of the proposed model is presented showing that this approach both minimizes errors in delegating authority and is more suitable for authority delegation administration in real organizational applications.     

基于Web的三维协同设计模型及其关键技术

为在虚拟环境下进行产品异地实时设计和装配,提出一种基于Web的三维协同设计模型.该模型使用户既可以通过浏览器在客户端的虚拟场景中进行个性化设计,也可以与其他用户进行协同设计.通过详细分析协同设计过程,研究任意形状基本实体的表征、零件扩展属性的描述、基本操作的表示、零件之间装配关系和部件运动仿真属性等的建立.基于ACIS和ECSG的三维造型技术和层次细节模型的生成算法,研发以某产品为对象的原型系统,证实该三维协同设计模型的可行性和先进性.     

SIP UA与STUN CLIENT互通的新方案

针对SIP用户代理和STUN客户端互通方案的不足,提出了一种新的互通方案.该方案设计了一个SIP用户代理和STUN客户端都可以访问的配置文件作为接口文件,从而使二者成为相互独立的实体.SIP用户代理不需要嵌入STUN客户端,也无需改造其整体架构,仅需读取接口文件的配置信息来完成其系统的初使化,并以文件读取的方式实现SI...     

引入属性和分组概念的ARBAC扩展模型

通过考察基于角色的访问控制RBAC模型,提出了一个实用的扩展模型.扩展模型主要引入属性和分组的概念,将具有相同角色的用户定义为一个组,按用户组指派相应的角色.并对权限和属性分组,按组为角色指派相应的属性和权限,解决了原模型在用户指派时不易表达对用户特征的限制.实体分为用户组、权限组、属性组等,简化了对RBAC系统中大量实体的管理,减轻了安全管理员进行用户指派、权限指派和属性指派时的工作量,增强了实用性.扩展模型中的实体与面向对象的编程方法OOP中的概念存在对应关系,软件开发人员很容易理解和实现.     

Semantic feedback in the Higgens UIMS

Almost all applications using interactive graphics contain important structures and concepts which are deeper than the geometres used to display them to the user. One of the major tasks of the system implementer is to cause the user interface to reflect this deeper structure accurately so that it may be directly manipulated by the user. The authors describe a tool, the Higgens user interface management system (UIMS), which can automate much of this task for a wide class of systems using interactive graphics. It is able to generate graphical user interfaces automatically from a high-level interface specification. These specifications are primarily nonprocedural in nature. They describe how graphical images can be automatically derived and updated based on applications entities, and how graphical inputs can be translated back into terms which are appropriate to the application     

NERank+: a graph-based approach for entity ranking in document collections

Most entity ranking research aims to retrieve a ranked list of entities from a Web corpus given a user query. The rank order of entities is determined by the relevance between the query and contexts of entities. However, entities can be ranked directly based on their relative importance in a document collection, independent of any queries. In this paper, we introduce an entity ranking algorithm named NERank+. Given a document collection, NERank+ first constructs a graph model called Topical Tripartite Graph, consisting of document, topic and entity nodes. We design separate ranking functions to compute the prior ranks of entities and topics, respectively. A meta-path constrained random walk algorithm is proposed to propagate prior entity and topic ranks based on the graph model.We evaluate NERank+ over real-life datasets and compare it with baselines. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of our approach.     

Bridging the Information Transfer Gap: Measuring Goodness of Information Fit

The ability to determine, a priori, how well an interface design meets the information needs of a user—that is, to ‘bridge the information transfer gap’—is a critical component of any intelligent interface design system. Yet most current approaches either sidestep the problem of computationally measuring ‘goodness of fit’ by compiling design knowledge into a set of pattern matching rules or, at best, use a very limited set of parameters in scoring. We describe a formal representation for capturing the information needs associated with user tasks and the information conveying capabilities of interface elements. A multifaceted scoring technique, using this representation, is presented for assessing a design's goodness of fit against current user requirements. The hallmarks of this approach are the explicit representation of the goals of good user interface design, evaluation of a proposed design against these goals and a computational approach to performing tradeoffs among these goals when incompatible. Finally, we report on the implementation and user acceptance of this design in an adaptive interface application for military attack/scout helicopters.