Domain‐specific design of user interfaces

The use of graphical user interfaces in a computerized work environment is often considered to substantially improve the work situation. The outcome can, however, often be the opposite. Inappropriate use of windowing techniques, scrolling, and colors can result in tedious and confusing interaction with the computer. Today's standards and style guides define basic design principles but are insufficient for design of interfaces to end‐user applications. Here detailed domain knowledge is indeed essential. A domain‐specific style guide (DSSG) is an extension of today's standard with domain‐specific primitives, interface elements, and forms, together with domain‐specific guidelines. Careful dedicated analysis of information utilization in a domain is the development basis for a DSSG. The development is performed with an object‐oriented approach to facilitate the reuse of interface components and to support consistency and structure. Using a DSSG, the development of applications can be performed with a simplified information analysis. Therefore a more effective design process is possible, one in which end users can participate in the design using their own familiar domain‐related terminology. Time and costs for the development process can be drastically reduced if domain‐specific style guides, design guidelines, and development tools are used.     

Using a formal specification contractually

A commonly made criticism of formal methods is that they increase costs. Selective use of formal methods to define critical requirements can, however, lead to a significant decrease in lifecycle costs. In particular the economic and technical benefits of outsourcing the development of software can be fully realized and the cost of outsourcing slightly reduced by use of a formal specification. In this paper we describe a development in which a formal specification prepared by the customer formed part of the contract with the supplier. We conclude that this use of a formal specification can reduce risks and costs for all concerned and can help foster fruitful and co-operative relations in situations which are often fraught with confrontation.Published with the permission of the controller of Her Britannic Majesty's Stationery Office.     

A practitioner's guide to data base compression tutorial

Data compression techniques can improve information system performance by reducing the size of a database by as much as ninety percent. This paper is written to provide assistance to practitioners considering the use of data compression for the storage of a commercial database. It reviews a wealth of literature on data compression and presents facts and guidelines which will assist system designers in evaluating the costs and benefits of compression and in selecting techniques appropriate for their needs.     

End user computing in development administration: Importance of decision support systems

Abstract

Effective diffusion of microcomputers, as distinct from quick adoption, is concerned with a demand for applications. It requires a new approach on the part of information system professionals and administrators. Microcomputers will fail to contribute to the extent they should to Development if not accompanied by appropriate institutional reforms. A Decision Support System (DSS) facilitates the increasingly interdependent nature of the process, by linking information flows and organizational changes with improved decision making. The steps in the evolution of a decision support system for district administrators are discussed as a possible methodology for implementation. The paper concludes with practical guidelines for those initiating the process of end user computing, so that costly mistakes can be avoided.     

Contextual learning theory: Concrete form and a software prototype to improve early education

In ‘contextual learning theory’ three types of contextual conditions (differentiation of learning procedures and materials, integrated ICT support, and improvement of development and learning progress) are related to four aspects of the learning process (diagnostic, instructional, managerial, and systemic aspects). The resulting structure consists of 15 guidelines which are expected to improve instruction and learning across different situations. The present study was conducted to give concrete form to two general guidelines with respect to differentiation and five guidelines with respect to integrated ICT support. The products were a ‘pedagogical-didactic kernel structure’ and a general software prototype. In collaboration with three preschool teachers in The Netherlands, both products were used to give concrete form to a first guideline on improvement of development and learning progress in practice. This concerned an intake procedure on the estimation and use of children’s entry characteristics by parents and preschool teacher. Information is given about improvement experiences in early educational practice. Further research and development steps are discussed.     

An approach for incorporating quality-based cost–benefit analysis in data warehouse design

Data are considered to be important organizational assets because of their assumed value, including their potential to improve the organizational decision-making processes. Such potential value, however, comes with various costs, including those of acquiring, storing, securing and maintaining the given assets at appropriate quality levels. Clearly, if these costs outweigh the value that results from using the data, it would be counterproductive to acquire, store, secure and maintain the data. Thus cost–benefit assessment is particularly important in data warehouse (DW) development; yet very few techniques are available for determining the value that the organization will derive from storing a particular data table and hence determining which data set should be loaded in the DW. This research seeks to address the issue of identifying the set of data with the potential for producing the greatest net value for the organization by offering a model that can be used to perform a cost–benefit analysis on the decision support views that the warehouse can support and by providing techniques for estimating the parameters necessary for this model.     

Identification and use of guidelines for the design of computer supported collaborative writing tools

As groupware and workflow technologies become widely accepted, it is important to identify and clarify best practice at all stages of the development of those systems. One approach to the promulgation of best practice is to develop clear and effective guidelines for application in system development.This paper is primarily concerned with the identification of guidelines to drive the design and implementation of one class of groupware — collaborative writing systems. In particular, consideration is given to guidelines for systems which support groups of distributed collaborating authors working asynchronously.Three relevant areas are investigated. First, social and integration issues of generic groupware are presented. Second, the design of existing collaborative writing tools is addressed. Third, models of both individual writers and collaborative writing tasks are discussed. Guidelines are drawn from each area.The guidelines have been adopted in the design of MILO, a collaborative writing system. MILO is briefly described and the way in which the guidelines have been implemented in MILO is reviewed. In conclusion, insights gained from informal observations of MILO in use for both single and multiple author tasks are presented.     

Introduction to assembly features: an illustrated synthesis methodology

The article is an introduction to a new concept of assembly features able to support intelligent design and manufacturing of complex products. An assembly feature is defined as a generic solution referring to two groups of parts that need to be related by a relationship so as to solve a design problem. The concept of assembly feature encompasses the notions of design intent, technical function, technological solution and manufacturing process as well as it provides a justification for the use of part features. After a general introduction and a justification of the interest of assembly features, some guidelines are provided to show how assembly features can be characterized in any domain of application concerned with engineering design of assemblies. As an illustration of the proposed methodology, the concept is finally applied to the engineering phase of aeroplane design.     

Developing an educational software framework for distance-less learning

Abstract This paper considers educational technology as both a tool and process. The focus is on a strategy to develop a software framework with reusable components to support a specific teaching/learning (the Question-and-Answer) model. It demonstrates how such a software framework can be used for building educational software systems which can be adapted easily to different levels and subjects of education on top of Internet/Intranet and web technologies. As a result, the developed educational environment is called distance-less, allowing students to have instant support from teachers by way of an existing virtual permanent connection. An example is provided of a teaching/learning model which was built based on the development principles and guidelines proposed in the paper and which shows one possible application for use with an existing learning and teaching system.     

Introducing web service accessibility assessment techniques through a unified quality of service context

This paper introduces novel web service (WS) accessibility assessment techniques through a unified Quality of Services (QoS) context. The goal is to enable future QoS-aware service selection systems to select and provide accessible web services, ones that are properly designed so as to allow their consumption from end-user applications, used from people with disabilities. In this line, a WS accessibility assessment Framework (WSaaF) has been developed, on the basis of WS accessibility guidelines, dealing with accessibility issues that can appear both on the presentation level of content delivered through WSs and on the content level itself. The WSaaF and its guidelines follow the rationale behind W3C WCAG 2.0-based accessibility standardization of web content. It provides the basis toward building future accessible WSs, a task that can be further facilitated by the use of an appropriate Tool (WSaaT), developed with the aim to provide automatic assessment of services, against guidelines of the proposed framework. Then, the WS accessibility attribute is introduced, as a metric that can be used in conjunction to ones typically utilized so far, within QoS-aware service selection systems. As a result, a novel unified QoS framework is proposed, incorporating the notion of accessibility in the service selection process. The proposed unified QoS framework can eventually lead to the provision of services, which are selected from appropriate repositories and better suit the special needs of people with disabilities.     

Motion coordination and reactive control of autonomous multi-manipulator systems

The emerging field of service robots demands new systems with increased flexibility. The flexibility of a robot system can be increased in many different ways. Mobile manipulation—the coordinated use of manipulation capabilities and mobility—is an approach to increase robots flexibility with regard to their motion capabilities. Most mobile manipulators that are currently under development use a single arm on a mobile platform. The use of a two-arm manipulator system allows increased manipulation capabilities, especially when large, heavy, or non-rigid objects must be manipulated. This article is concerned with motion control for mobile two-arm systems. These systems require new schemes for motion coordination and control. A coordination scheme called transparent coordination is presented that allows for an arbitrary number of manipulators on a mobile platform. Furthermore, a reactive control scheme is proposed to enable the platform to support sensor-guided manipulator motion. Finally, this article introduces a collision avoidance scheme for mobile two-arm robots. This scheme surveys the vehicle motion to avoid platform collisions and arm collisions caused by self-motion of the robot. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Application of supervisory control theory to theme park vehicles

Due to increasing system complexity, time-to-market and development costs reduction, new engineering processes are required. Model-based engineering processes are suitable candidates because they support system development by enabling the use of various model-based analysis techniques and tools. As a result, they are able to cope with complexity and have the potential to reduce time-to-market and development costs. Moreover, supervisory control synthesis can be integrated in this setting, which can further contribute to the development of control systems. To evaluate the applicability of recently developed supervisor synthesis techniques and to show how they can be integrated in an engineering process, a theme park vehicle is chosen as a case study. The supervisor synthesized for the theme park vehicle has successfully been implemented and integrated in the existing resource-control platform.     

Improving physicians' performance with a stroke CDSS: A cognitive fit design approach

A large body of evidence over many years suggests that clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) can be helpful in improving both clinical outcomes and adherence to evidence-based guidelines. CDSSs have however failed to show their effectiveness due to poor ease of use and integration within clinical workflows. This research therefore emphasizes a cognitive fit design approach to developing an effective CDSS to solve those issues. According to the cognitive fit theory CDSS should align with the problem and task representation in order to match the physician's mental model to reduce cognitive effort. Several guidelines based on the cognitive fit design are proposed. A stroke CDSS prototype following the design guidelines is developed to demonstrate its feasibility. The system usability test results showed that the developed stroke CDSS was acceptably accurate, able to lessen the cognitive effort as desired, and preferable for use due to the significant reduction in cognitive load. The developed artifact has shown the potential to benefit physicians. Finally, implications and conclusions are discussed.     

Comparative Evaluation of Model Transformation Specification Approaches

Model transformations have become a key element of model-driven software development, being used to transform platform-independent models to platform-specific models, to improve model quality, to introduce design patterns and refactorings, and to map models from one language to another. A large number of model transformation notations and tools exist. However, there are no guidelines on how to select appropriate notations for particular model transformation tasks, and no comprehensive comparisons of the relative merits of particular approaches. In this paper we provide a unified semantic treatment of model transformations, and show how correctness properties of model transformations can be defined using this semantics. We evaluate several approaches which have been developed for model transformation specification, with respect to their expressivity, complexity and support for verification, and make recommendations for resolving the outstanding problems concerning model transformation specification.     

Design and validation of a knowledge-based system for screeningproduct innovations

The authors' research goal is to develop and validate an expert system that screens innovations prior to commercialization. This is an important research issue because business corporations are highly dependent on innovations for their growth and profitability, yet most corporations suffer from a high rate of new product failure. Few of the existing decision support systems have alleviated this problem, partly because of their inability to deal with nonmathematical (logical) relationships. An expert system for new product planning could save organizations tremendous amounts of resources (such as dollars, time and scientific talent) spent on product failures. The design of the proposed knowledge-based system is built upon the authors' earlier work in this area. The authors have addressed several critical research issues in the development of such a system: choice of the appropriate sources of knowledge, resolution of conflict among human experts chosen for knowledge acquisition, use of knowledge programming techniques that can accommodate uncertainty, and multiple methods of system validation. The research makes several contributions to marketing theory and practice. Most notably, the development of such systems contributes to effective product planning in organizations and enhances resource efficiency. Further, it generates guidelines for capturing and using expertise in highly unstructured decision-making situations such as product management     

Bayesian threshold selection for extremal models using measures of surprise

Statistical extreme value theory is concerned with the use of asymptotically motivated models to describe the extreme values of a process. A number of commonly used models are valid for observed data that exceed some high threshold. However, in practice a suitable threshold is unknown and must be determined for each analysis. While there are many threshold selection methods for univariate extremes, there are relatively few that can be applied in the multivariate setting. In addition, there are only a few Bayesian-based methods, which are naturally attractive in the modelling of extremes due to data scarcity. The use of Bayesian measures of surprise to determine suitable thresholds for extreme value models is proposed. Such measures quantify the level of support for the proposed extremal model and threshold, without the need to specify any model alternatives. This approach is easily implemented for both univariate and multivariate extremes.     

Towards evidence-based guidelines for wise use of computers by children

This paper argues for the systematic development and presentation of evidence-based guidelines for appropriate use of computers by children. The currently available guidelines are characterised and a proposed conceptual model presented. Five principles are presented as a foundation to the guidelines. The paper concludes with a framework for the guidelines, key evidence for and against guidelines, and gaps in the available evidence, with the aim of facilitating further discussion.

Relevance to industry

The current generation of children in affluent countries will typically have over 10 years of computer experience before they enter the workforce. Consequently, the primary prevention of computer-related health disorders and the development of good productivity skills for the next generation of workers needs to occur during childhood.     

Forecasting demand for educational material for adult learners in Mexico

This paper is about the development of a forecasting model that has been used in the Mexican Institute for Adult Education. This institute is in charge of an adult education program that is based on 42 modules, each of which requires books and materials each year. Accurate forecasts are needed to reduce the costs of wastage and shortages. Using data from previous years, the structure of the program, and interviews with officials in the Institute, we have developed a forecasting model based on Bayesian estimation. We further developed an approach that combines simulation with forecasting techniques, which may be appropriate when using a complex forecasting model. The initial results are encouraging, and we believe that the approach can be used in other situations, especially those concerned with service encounters. Our model also helps officials to understand several aspects of the education program.