Karamanlidika Digital Library Proposal: Reconstructing the Past of a Specific Diaspora

ABSTRACT

The World Wide Web provides unlimited visibility for the personal documents and cultural artifacts that remain in the hands of families of people belonging to different diasporas. Computer mediated platforms are often the building blocks of their transcendental homelands. This article presents a study aiming to build a model and community around Karamanlides by using digital library technologies. Karamanlides is one of the many interesting communities in need of the creation of a “niche personal/community knowledge environment” as an archetype for similar conceptualizations.     

Requirements for community support systems - modularization,integration and ubiquitous user interfaces

Community support platforms are gaining more and more interest in areas ranging from leisure support and customer support in electronic commerce to knowledge management in enterprises. However, current solutions usually are built as proprietary systems or as add-ons to systems designed for other purposes. The platforms are usually not very customizable and interoperable and are not utilizing the full potential of the community support idea. We have introduced community platforms in several domains and have derived some requirements in these projects. These requirements are mainly related to different aspects of usability. In this paper we present the requirements and motivate an architecture for community support systems designed to fulfil these requirements.     

The ID-Online Asynchronous Learning Network: a 'Virtual Studio' for Interdisciplinary Design Collaboration

Starting in 1996, the authors, Surya Vanka and Jim Budd developed ID-Online, an Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN) for Industrial Design Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The primary objective of ID-Online was to deliver enhanced design instruction via asynchronous access to design resources and enhance network-based communication between instructors and students. This paper provides an historical overview of the development of ID-Online. It discusses two years of development, use and evaluations. It then leads into the authors' recent initiatives to advance the concept of a developing design community in the digital realm. The paper concludes with reflections on the benefit, and pedagogical pros and cons, of the use of asynchronous learning technologies in design education.     

Exploring design trade-offs for achieving social inclusion in multi-tiered design problems

ABSTRACT

The digital age of the future is ‘not out there to be discovered’, but it needs to be ‘designed’. The design challenge has to address questions about how we want to live, work, and learn (as individuals and as communities) and what we value and appreciate, e.g.: reflecting on quality of life and creating inclusive societies. An overriding design trade-off for the digital age is whether new developments will increase the digital divide or will create more inclusive societies. Sustaining inclusive societies means allowing people of all ages and all abilities to exploit information technologies for personally meaningful activities. Meta-design fosters the design of socio-technical environments that end-user developers can modify and evolve at use time to improve their quality of life and favour their inclusion in the society. This paper describes three case studies in the domain of assistive technologies in which end users themselves cannot act as end-user developers, but someone else (e.g.: a caregiver or a clinician) must accept this role requiring multi-tiered architectures. The design trade-offs and requirements for meta-design identified in the context of the case studies and other researchers’ projects are described to inform the development of future socio-technical environments focused on social inclusion.     

A taxonomy of design methods process models

ContextDesigners and developers are increasingly expected to deliver high quality systems, i.e. systems that are usable, robust, consistent as well as evolutionary, and that fulfill users’ needs. To produce such systems, Design Methods suggest many approaches. However, the important number of existing approaches makes the choice of a method among the others particularly difficult. In addition to this, and because of the time required for understanding (and then operationalizing) new methods, designers tend to use already known methods, even though those which sometimes may not really be adapted to their needs.ObjectiveThis paper proposes a classification of characteristics of design methods process models. In other terms, it proposes a taxonomy that aims to facilitate the discovery and the choice of methods for designers and developers.MethodFrom a study of process models of several design methods, we identify six main axes, namely Cycle, Collaboration, Artifacts, Recommended Use, Maturity and Flexibility, which are in turn divided into 34 characteristics.ResultsThis paper provides a deep theorical insight. For each characteristic identified from relevant literature, a definition and a gradation, illustrated using examples, are given. Moreover, it presents a web site that offers various tools for exploring the axes of our taxonomy. This web site provides an overview of process models as well as means for comparing them, textually or graphically. Finally, the paper relates the first evaluation conducted in order to estimate designers’ adhesion to the taxonomy in terms of easiness of learning, completeness and intention to use.ConclusionWe show, based on evaluation results, that our taxonomy of process models facilitates the discovery of new methods and helps designers in choosing suitable methods, really adapted to their needs. Therefore, it enhances chances to conduct high quality projects.     

Event detection in online social network: Methodologies,state-of-art,and evolution

Online social network such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are increasingly becoming the go-to medium for users to acquire information and discuss what is happening globally. Understanding real-time conversations with masses on social media platforms can provide rich insights into events, provided that there is a way to detect and characterise events. To this end, in the past twenty years, many researchers have been developing event detection methods based on the data collected from various social media platforms. The developed methods for discovering events are generally modular in design and novel in scale and speed. To review the research in this field, we line up existing works for event detection in online social networks and organise them to provide a comprehensive and in-depth survey. This survey comprises three major parts: research methodologies, the review of state-of-the-art literature and the evolution of significant challenges. Each part is supposed to attract readers with different motivations and expectations on the ‘things’ delivered in this survey. For example, the methodologies provide the life-cycle to design new event detection models, from data collection to model evaluations. A timeline and a taxonomy of existing methods are also introduced to elaborate the development of various technologies under the umbrella of event detection. These two parts benefit those with a background in event detection and want to commit a deep exploration of existing models such as discussing their pros and cons alike. The third part shows the development of the major open issues in this field. It also indicates the milestones of each challenge in terms of typical models. Our survey can contribute to the community by highlighting possible new problem statements and opening new research directions.     

User-author centered multimedia building blocks

The advances of multimedia models and tools popularized the access and production of multimedia contents: in this new scenario, there is no longer a clear distinction between authors and end-users of a production. These user-authors often work in a collaborative way. As end-users, they collectively participate in interactive environments, consuming multimedia artifacts. In their authors’ role, instead of starting from scratch, they often reuse others’ productions, which can be decomposed, fusioned and transformed to meet their goals. Since the need for sharing and adapting productions is felt by many communities, there has been a proliferation of standards and mechanisms to exchange complex digital objects, for distinct application domains. However, these initiatives have created another level of complexity, since people have to define which share/ reuse solution they want to adopt, and may even have to resort to programming tasks. They also lack effective strategies to combine these reused artifacts. This paper presents a solution to this demand, based on a user-author centered multimedia building block model—the digital content component (DCC). DCCs upgrade the notion of digital objects to digital components, as they homogenously wrap any kind of digital content (e.g., multimedia artifacts, software) inside a single component abstraction. The model is fully supported by a software infrastructure, which exploits the model’s semantic power to automate low level technical activities, thereby freeing user-authors to concentrate on creative tasks. Model and infrastructure improve recent research initiatives to standardize the means of sharing and reuse domain specific digital contents. The paper’s contributions are illustrated using examples implemented in a DCC-based authoring tool, in real life situations.     

Internet of Things for the Future of Smart Agriculture: A Comprehensive Survey of Emerging Technologies

This paper presents a comprehensive review of emerging technologies for the internet of things (IoT)-based smart agriculture. We begin by summarizing the existing surveys and describing emergent technologies for the agricultural IoT, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, wireless technologies, open-source IoT platforms, software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) technologies, cloud/fog computing, and middleware platforms. We also provide a classification of IoT applications for smart agriculture into seven categories: including smart monitoring, smart water management, agrochemicals applications, disease management, smart harvesting, supply chain management, and smart agricultural practices. Moreover, we provide a taxonomy and a side-by-side comparison of the state-of-the-art methods toward supply chain management based on the blockchain technology for agricultural IoTs. Furthermore, we present real projects that use most of the aforementioned technologies, which demonstrate their great performance in the field of smart agriculture. Finally, we highlight open research challenges and discuss possible future research directions for agricultural IoTs.      

The role of a location-based city exploration game in digital placemaking

ABSTRACT

Many digital technologies, such as social media, community systems, and public displays, have been studied to explore how people engage with each other in their community. Yet little is known about how one form of technology, location-based games (LBGs), can support urban residents in community awareness, city exploration, and placemaking as they navigate spaces and places in their cities. To explore this topic, we investigated the challenges urban residents faced in finding information about their community along a transit network. We then designed, developed, and evaluated an LBG called City Explorer that supports city exploration using gamification and the viewing and sharing of community information. We found that residents valued the fun, competition, and rewards afforded through play in public spaces, creating opportunities for placemaking through location services and knowledge sharing. Players also wanted additional knowledge about their transit commutes, including data about the frequency and routines of their transit rides. Collectively, such ridership data offers potential for smart city initiatives and illustrates that careful design considerations are required to balance people’s needs for play, personal data, privacy, and community information acquisition.     

Toolkit Support for Integrating Physical and Digital Interactions

ABSTRACT

There is great potential in enabling users to interact with digital information by integrating it with everyday physical objects. However, developing these interfaces requires programmers to acquire and abstract physical input. This is difficult, is time-consuming, and requires a high level of technical expertise in fields very different from user interface development—especially in the case of computer vision. Based on structured interviews with researchers, a literature review, and our own experience building physical interfaces, we created Papier-Mâché, a toolkit for integrating physical and digital interactions. Its library supports computer vision, electronic tags, and barcodes. Papier-Mâché introduces high-level abstractions for working with these input technologies that facilitate technology portability. We evaluated this toolkit through a laboratory study and longitudinal use in course and research projects, finding the input abstractions, technology portability, and monitoring facilities to be highly effective.     

Fostering knowledge sharing: Design principles for persuasive digital technologies in open innovation projects

Integrating knowledge is crucial for open innovation, and digital technologies can play a central role because they support knowledge sharing. In open innovation projects, in particular, little is known about the role of technology. Here, the individual behaviour of users is taken into account concerning the extent to which knowledge is shared. Therefore, persuasive technologies offer the potential to foster sharing. In particular, to facilitate the construction of future digital technologies, this study applies a design science research approach to create and analyse artefacts as a research contribution and develop design principles as a step towards a nascent design theory. We present insights from the design and application of three artefacts in different stages of open innovation processes. Results show that digital technologies can be used for various purposes: to build a common understanding, support design phases, communicate ideas and simplify the application of the technology for the user. Our research provides insights into the role of digital technologies for knowledge sharing in open innovation projects, and four design principles are found to facilitate the construction of future persuasive digital technologies for open innovation projects.     

Wired mobile phones: the case of community technology centers in favelas of Brazil*

ABSTRACT

The growing spread of mobile phones and internet has some practitioners and scholars arguing about the possible irrelevance of community technology centers (CTCs) serving low-income communities. However, although mobile internet is making great strides, it does not yet substitute for public access; in actuality, mobile phones and computers at CTCs complement each other in providing those who face digital inequalities with a broader sociotechnical experience. In order to explore this problem, this paper explores this experience by investigating how favela residents appropriate mobile phones, posing the question, “how do marginalized populations perceive CTCs in the mobile internet era?” To address this question, I draw on a 10-month ethnography in the favelas of Vitória, Brazil which examines slum residents’ uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as computers and smartphones. Through this research, I demonstrate how marginalized people take advantage of smartphones and computers in a complementary way, using these ICTs to best meet their needs as they experience daily life in a relatively severe environment.     

Special issue on hybrid pedagogies editorial

ABSTRACT

An increasing awareness of the potential biases and problematic impacts of digital technologies is driving a renewed focus on social responsibility and ethical considerations within the fields of engineering and the computer and data sciences. Similarly, a renewed sense of complicity in our socio-technical environments has encouraged scholars from a range of design, humanities, and social science disciplines to engage more directly in public-facing work, often through prototyping, exhibitions, and hands-on educational activities. This special issue on hybrid pedagogies contributes to this developing and ongoing conversation in a resolutely interdisciplinary way.     

Taxonomy for visualizing location-based information

Location-based data is digital information that has a real-world location. Location-based data can be used for many purposes, such as providing additional information on real-world objects or helping a user in a specific task. Access to such data can be provided in many ways, for example, with augmented reality (AR) systems. AR techniques can help its user in various tasks and the AR data can be presented to the user in various ways, depending on the task at hand. The different visualizations that can be used are heavily dependent on the hardware platform and, thus, all technologies are not suitable for every situation. This paper studies two factors that affect the visualization of location-based data. The two factors are the environment model they use, ranging from three dimensions (3D) to no dimensions (0D) at all; and the viewpoint, whether it is a first-person or a third-person view. As a result, we define a taxonomy for visualizing location-based data, where each model–view (MV) combination is referred to using its MV number. We also present numerous case studies with different MV values.     

Obsolete software requirements

ContextCoping with rapid requirements change is crucial for staying competitive in the software business. Frequently changing customer needs and fierce competition are typical drivers of rapid requirements evolution resulting in requirements obsolescence even before project completion.ObjectiveAlthough the obsolete requirements phenomenon and the implications of not addressing them are known, there is a lack of empirical research dedicated to understanding the nature of obsolete software requirements and their role in requirements management.MethodIn this paper, we report results from an empirical investigation with 219 respondents aimed at investigating the phenomenon of obsolete software requirements.ResultsOur results contain, but are not limited to, defining the phenomenon of obsolete software requirements, investigating how they are handled in industry today and their potential impact.ConclusionWe conclude that obsolete software requirements constitute a significant challenge for companies developing software intensive products, in particular in large projects, and that companies rarely have processes for handling obsolete software requirements. Further, our results call for future research in creating automated methods for obsolete software requirements identification and management, methods that could enable efficient obsolete software requirements management in large projects.     

Bringing Commercial Games into the Classroom

One of the challenges facing us when we try to bring commercial materials such as video games into the classroom to be used as educational tools is to identify appropriate strategies of collaboration with teachers, families, and even industries. This paper explores how multimedia contexts can be created in which children become active participants in a digital universe where multiple technologies are present (so that video games are just one of several digital tools). We present several examples derived from specific projects carried out in formal and informal educational contexts, in action research and from ethnographical perspectives. As participant observers in and outside the classroom, we designed workshops as innovative educational contexts; all the sessions were video and audio recorded. Our analysis adopted a socio-cultural perspective. Several preliminary results clearly appeared: (a) Children playing commercial games inside and outside classrooms produce different writing texts depending of the context in which they are generated; (b) using video games combined with other digital technologies seems to be an effective way of introducing children to the content and structure of games considered as dynamic systems; (c) using and reflecting on video games in and outside the school, via discussions in digital media such as blogs or pictures, can contribute to the development of digital literacies as a way of using multimodal discourses. Our main goal at this moment is to design digital materials capable of supporting teachers’ and families’ use of games and in particular, to reveal the rules that organize their structure, codes and symbolic universe.