Design and Query Strategies to Hypermedia Applications

In this paper we propose an object-oriented model for designing hypermedia applications. As the object-oriented paradigm allows complex and user-defined types, nonconventional and nonatomic attributes, we can take advantage of these capabilities, not only for information modelling, but also for providing alternative ways for accessing information.A query language is then presented; it is based on an Object-Oriented Database System query language. It combines features of object-oriented databases queries and primitives for hypermedia navigation. The language offers the possibility of querying both the application-domain information, and allowing the designers to obtain information about the schema of the application.We present some examples of the use of the object-oriented model and the query language.     

CRITON: A Hypermedia Design Tool

The WWW has turned into a development and run-time environment for large-scale and complex applications. Such sophisticated applications are being deployed in increasing numbers without having been developed according to appropriate methodologies, tools and quality standards. The reason is not only that the hypermedia industry resists to utilize formal methods, but also that these methods and corresponding tools are very few and of dubious standards. The consequence is that the hypermedia applications being developed are of poor functionality and lack qualities such as modifiability, usability and maintainability. Especially the design phase is one of the phases that lack sufficient support from methods and CASE tools. This paper presents CRITON, a cross platform tool, built to support a hypermedia design method within an integrated environment. CRITON manages all three aspects of hypermedia design: conceptual design, navigational design and graphical user interface design, utilizing well-established theories and practices from software as well as hypermedia engineering. It employs these designs to generate a preliminary, exemplary form of the hypermedia application for the purpose of assessing the designs before the implementation phase.     

User-Centred Design of Flexible Hypermedia for a Mobile Guide: Reflections on the HyperAudio Experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop a system based on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile museum guide developed in the late 1990s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in natural science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping define the user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers, and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques. This is a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step in an iterative design process that considers the user interaction to be the central point. This paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulating the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered from the perspective of later developments: our findings still appers to be valid despite the time that had passed. Daniela Petrelli: The work discussed in this paper was carried out when the author was at ITC-irst in Italy.     

A Comparative Study of Cost Estimation Models for Web Hypermedia Applications

Software cost models and effort estimates help project managers allocate resources, control costs and schedule and improve current practices, leading to projects finished on time and within budget. In the context of Web development, these issues are also crucial, and very challenging given that Web projects have short schedules and very fluidic scope. In the context of Web engineering, few studies have compared the accuracy of different types of cost estimation techniques with emphasis placed on linear and stepwise regressions, and case-based reasoning (CBR). To date only one type of CBR technique has been employed in Web engineering. We believe results obtained from that study may have been biased, given that other CBR techniques can also be used for effort prediction. Consequently, the first objective of this study is to compare the prediction accuracy of three CBR techniques to estimate the effort to develop Web hypermedia applications and to choose the one with the best estimates. The second objective is to compare the prediction accuracy of the best CBR technique against two commonly used prediction models, namely stepwise regression and regression trees. One dataset was used in the estimation process and the results showed that the best predictions were obtained for stepwise regression.     

Discovering and Using Design Patterns in the WWW

In this paper, we discuss how the idea of design patterns can be used in the context of the World Wide Web, for both designing and implementing web sites or more complex information systems. We first motivate our work by discussing which are the most outstanding problems in designing Web-based information systems. Then we briefly introduce design patterns and show how they are used to record and reuse design information. We next present some simple though powerful design patterns and show known uses in the WWW. Finally, we outline a process for building applications by combining a design methodology (OOHDM) with design patterns.     

Interpretation of a cross-cultural usability evaluation: A case study based on a hypermedia system for rare species management in Namibia

We present the results of a usability evaluation of a locally developed hypermedia information system aiming at conservation biologists and wildlife managers in Namibia. Developer and end user come from different ethnic backgrounds, as is common to software development in Namibia and many developing countries. To overcome both the cultural and the authoritarian gap between usability evaluator and user, the evaluation was held as a workshop with usability evaluators who shared the target users’ ethnic and social backgrounds. Different data collection methods were used and results as well as specific incidences recorded. Results suggest that it is difficult for Namibian computer users to evaluate functionality independently from content. Users displayed evidence of a passive search strategy and an expectation that structure is provided rather than self generated. The comparison of data collection methods suggests that questionnaires are inappropriate in Namibia because they do not elicit a truthful response from participants who tend to provide answers they think are “expected”. The paper concludes that usability goals and methods have to be determined and defined within the target users’ cultural context.     

基于知觉控制的用户界面设计研究

随着普适计算环境的迅猛发展,越来越多的普通大众需要自己来完成过去必须由业务人员代理才能完成的任务。这使得传统面向业务的交互设计技术不再满足大众对普适计算的可用性需求。提出一种基于知觉控制的用户界面设计技术,旨在给普通大众提供一种易于学习、理解、操作的用户界面。该用户界面设计技术采用基于知觉控制的任务分析以及“参与式设计”的方法,使得用户能够在意图层次,而非业务层次,进行交互,以满足普适环境下可用性设计的需求。     

数据库技术在模糊聚类预测中的应用研究

将数据库技术应用于模糊聚类预测中，用ＦＯＸＰＲＯ开发了模糊聚类预测软件，通过对上海水泥厂提供的实测数据的实旆计算，取得了令人满意的结果，文中提供的方法具有普遍的意义和广阔的应用前景，作为数据库技术原应用开辟了新领域。     

Dogmas in the assessment of usability evaluation methods

Usability evaluation methods (UEMs) are widely recognised as an essential part of systems development. Assessments of the performance of UEMs, however, have been criticised for low validity and limited reliability. The present study extends this critique by describing seven dogmas in recent work on UEMs. The dogmas include using inadequate procedures and measures for assessment, focusing on win–lose outcomes, holding simplistic models of how usability evaluators work, concentrating on evaluation rather than on design and working from the assumption that usability problems are real. We discuss research approaches that may help move beyond the dogmas. In particular, we emphasise detailed studies of evaluation processes, assessments of the impact of UEMs on design carried out in real-world systems development and analyses of how UEMs may be combined.     

软件可用性工程方法应用研究与实例

介绍了可用性的概念 ,讨论了特殊的设计问题和解决方案。着重介绍了交互设计 ,以及它在每个周期中如何充分利用可用性方法。并列举了实例进行说明     

Integration of usability evaluation and model-based software development

Model-based software development is carried out as a well defined process. Depending on the applied approach, different phases can be distinguished, e.g. requirements specification, design, prototyping, implementation and usability evaluation. During this iterative process manifold artifacts are developed and modified, including, e.g. models, source code and usability evaluation data. CASE tools support the development stages well, but lack a seamless integration of usability evaluation methods. We aim at bridging the gap between development and usability evaluation, through enabling the cooperative use of artifacts with the particular tools. As a result of integration usability experts save time to prepare an evaluation and evaluation results can be easier incorporated back into the development process. We show exemplary our work on enhancing the Eclipse framework to support usability evaluation for task model-based software development.     

浅谈可用性的GUI设计

GUI设计已成为软件设计中最为重要的部分之一。本文阐述了GUI在设计上的发展及其趋势,并以提升可用性为目的对GUI设计的基本要素进行了分析。     

并行工程环境下设计任务调度原理与实现方法的研究

并行工程ＣＥ环境下,设计任务被分解为若干子任务,然后进行协同求解,因此各子任务的调度是实现产 品并行设计的关键．该文提出了设计任务调度的“均衡一适度”法,分析了其调度策略,研究了其算法实现,最后给出 了应用实例。     

产品设计中的易用性研究

易用性以人机工程学和心理学为理论基础,强调用户在产品使用过程中的心理变化。它逐渐成为评价产品设计好坏的标准,是目前产品设计的新趋势,新方向。     

Boundary Objects and Prototypes at the Interfaces of Engineering Design

The primary hypothesis of this paper is thatinternal and external changes in design andmanufacturing organizations affect theviability of boundary objects (representations,drawings, models – virtual and physical) andrequire changes in the underlying distributedcognitive models. Internal and external factorsinclude new advances in technologies, insightsinto organizational processes, organizationalrestructuring and change of market focus. Ifthe above hypothesis is true, then there areconsequences for the methodologies of designingcomputational support systems for co-operativeengineering work. We provide evidence bydescribing three empirical studies ofengineering design we have performed in largeorganizations. We investigate how changingtechnologies disrupt the common grounds amonginterfaces and how this opens debate onthe role of boundary objects, especially in theproduct visualization and analysis arena. Wethen argue that changes in market forces andother factors leading to changes inorganizational structures often lead to erosionof common understanding of representations andprototypes, above all at the interfaces. Weconclude by making the case that everystructural and information flow change inengineering organizations is accompanied by thepotential deterioration of the common ground.This requires the synthesis of new commongrounds to accommodate the needs of newinterfaces.     

产品设计之善

产品设计不仅要重视产品自身更要让人在使用过程中感受使用的乐趣。产品的自身善表现在它的自身美与价值美上,艺术与技术共同塑造着人们的生活方式。产品设计的过程中的善是人机的有机统一,也是可用性的解决。论述情感化设计与设计善的区别与联系,反思层面的设计是最难把握的善因,也是设计师应该把握住的。总之,产品设计之善是人机之间的无形价值纽带。     

Principles of Context-Based Machine Translation Evaluation

This article defines a Framework for Machine Translation Evaluation( FEMTI) which relates the quality model used to evaluate a machinetranslation system to the purpose and context of the system. Ourproposal attempts to put together, into a coherent picture, previousattempts to structure a domain characterised by overall complexity andlocal difficulties. In this article, we first summarise theseattempts, then present an overview of the ISO/IEC guidelines forsoftware evaluation (ISO/IEC 9126 and ISO/IEC 14598). As anapplication of these guidelines to machine translation software, weintroduce FEMTI, a framework that is made of two interrelatedclassifications or taxonomies. The first classification enablesevaluators to define an intended context of use, while the links tothe second classification generate a relevant quality model (qualitycharacteristics and metrics) for the respective context. The secondclassification provides definitions of various metrics used bythe community. Further on, as part of ongoing, long-term research, weexplain how metrics are analyzed, first from the general pointof view of meta-evaluation, then focusing on examples. Finally, weshow how consensus towards the present framework is sought for, andhow feedback from the community is taken into account in the FEMTIlife-cycle.     

用户体验设计——网页界面设计的重中之重

国内目前的网页设计,大多以视觉效果作为网页界面设计的首要考量,因而容易忽视网页设计的可用性。而网页界面设计,不仅应当给使用者带来视觉上的愉悦,更应当很好地帮助用户浏览网页内容,引导用户操作以完成网页服务。转变设计师以视觉效果为首要考量的固有设计习惯,将用户体验作为设计的重点,才是设计出具有良好互动性的网页的开端。