Online chronemics convey social information

Chronemic research explores the involvement of time-related messages in communication, and has shown that time is an important component of the message in both traditional and online communication. Social information processing (SIP) theory posits that online communicators exchange social information through chronemic cues. This study points to a gap in SIP theory research, and proceeds to close the gap by demonstrating that changes in socially important attributes are reflected in measurable chronemic changes. A two-person social dilemma online game is used to demonstrate that changes in a simple chronemic variable, interpost pause, reflect differences in the players’ personality (level of extraversion), as well as differences in trust within the dyad. These findings support SIP theory by showing how online chronemics provide cues to important personal and situational information.     

Using gestures to convey internal mental models and index multimedia content

Gestures can serve as external representations of abstract concepts which may be otherwise difficult to illustrate. Gestures often accompany verbal statement as an embodiment of mental models that augment the communication of ideas, concepts or envisioned shapes of products. A gesture is also an indicator of the subject and context of the issue under discussion. We argue that if gestures can be identified and formalized they can be used as a knowledge indexing and retrieval tool and can prove to be useful access point into unstructured digital video data. We present a methodology and a prototype, called I-Gesture that allows users to (1) define a vocabulary of gestures for a specific domain, (2) build a digital library of the gesture vocabulary, and (3) mark up entire video streams based on the predefined vocabulary for future search and retrieval of digital content from the archive. I-Gesture methodology and prototype are illustrated through scenarios where it can be utilized. The paper concludes with results of evaluation experiments with I-Gesture using a test bed of design-construction projects.

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A semiotic framework to understand how signs in construction process simulations convey information

Planning the production sequence for a construction project requires the combination and transfer of information and knowledge from a large variety of areas. To support this knowledge combination and transfer, construction process visualizations, also referred to as 4D CAD, have proven to be valuable tools. Within these visualizations, signs, such as icons, indexes, or symbols, are often used to visualize contextual information related to the different construction activities. To understand the mechanisms of how these signs meaningfully convey such contextual information, this paper introduces a semiotic framework consisting of semiotic concepts, their definitions and relations. This paper also illustrates the power of the framework by applying it for analyzing the signs used in two construction process visualizations.     

Using a SAT-solver to schedule sports leagues

Tournament schedules of sports leagues have to satisfy several types of constraints such as stadium unavailability, fixed matches, forbidden matches, minimum number of breaks. Usually, there is no schedule satisfying all given constraints and, hence, some of the constraints are considered as ‘soft’ ones. There are various models appropriately describing the environment of sport leagues. Only heuristic methods are known from the literature for solving instances of real life dimensions. We consider here a model which satisfies the demands of many sports leagues. We solve our model by reduction to series of instances of the propositional satisfiability problem and adaption of a satisfiability solver for these specific instances. We test our method on two real life examples and solve the problem optimally within our model in each case. Our solver shows good computational results also on generated test instances, which are motivated by real life requirements. It can be easily extended to meet the demands of other sports leagues.     

Using stereokinetic effect to convey depth: computationally efficient depth-from-motion displays.

Recent developments in microelectronics have encouraged the use of 3D data bases to create compelling volumetric renderings of graphical objects. However, even with the computational capabilities of current-generation graphical systems, real-time displays of such objects are difficult, particularly when dynamic spatial transformations are involved. In this paper we discuss a type of visual stimulus (the stereokinetic effect display) that is computationally far less complex than a true three-dimensional transformation but yields an equally compelling depth impression, often perceptually indiscriminable from the true spatial transformation. Several possible applications for this technique are discussed (e.g., animating contour maps and air traffic control displays so as to evoke accurate depth percepts).     

On the memorability of icons in an information retrieval task

Information retrieval involves the balance of two mnemonic processes: recognition of items presented to the user, and recall of where wanted documents might be. Iconic methods of human-computer interaction are seen to assist the recognition processes by virtue of the enrichment of cues provided. However, the principle of cue enrichment could apply equally to the process of recall, which is arguably a process more needing of support. This paper reports two exploratory experiments using icons to support the recall process in information retrieval. The results indicate no exceptional levels of recall. However, some aspects of users' performance suggest icons used in this way have some interesting and exploitable mnemonic properties. In particular, they may be useful in enhancing and supporting the search process by rapidly limiting the number of documents through which a user might be asked to search.     

Networking made simpler: Using icons in LAN management

Rapidly following the mass introduction of personal computors into organizations has come the realisation that users quickly outgrow the resources available. Providing a hard disc to all users is prohibitively expensive. An alternative is a local area network that allows resource-sharing. Two products developed by a UK company offer this service, together with an icon-based user interface to make the system's use as easy as possible.     

用蚂蚁算法进行网格任务调度的研究

将蚂蚁算法用于网格环境任务调度,测试和选取了蚂蚁算法的各种参数,设计和实现了基于蚂蚁算法的网格任务调度策略,将任务调度和资源管理相结合,兼顾系统的负载平衡和QoS,取得了较理想的实验结果。     

Product attributes and user experience design: how to convey product information through user-centered service

The user experience (UX) is a critical issue in both the product design and service sector. Ensuring that customers can easily understand a product or service and thus ensuring higher satisfaction with the customer–product (service) interaction process is essential for survival among competitive industries. However, few studies have attempted to integrate all relevant factors into a comprehensive model of UX. The present study addresses this need by proposing a conceptual UX interaction model that incorporates the characteristics of usability and user interaction level based on quality of experience. A method to apply the model and the steps to implement the data collection and analysis are also proposed. The UX interaction model requires a systematic approach to: (1) decompose the product or service characteristics during a UX interaction process; (2) determine typology of UX items of each characteristic; and (3) select appropriate and feasible strategies to improve these UX items. A quantitative survey for mobile phone users was developed to investigate differences among types of UX and product characteristics. This study provides valuable empirical evidence on the UX interaction model for particular industries where superior quality service experiences are to be achieved.     

Designing haptic icons to support collaborative turn-taking

This paper describes research exploring the use of haptics to support users collaborating remotely in a single-user shared application. Mediation of turn-taking during remote collaboration provides a context to explore haptic affordances for background communication as well as control negotiation in remote collaboration: existing turn-taking protocols are rudimentary, lacking many communication cues available in face-to-face collaboration. We therefore designed a custom turn-taking protocol that allows users to express different levels of urgency in their request for control from a collaborator; state of control and requests are communicated by touch, with the intent of offloading visual attention. To support it, we developed a set of haptic icons, tangible stimuli to which specific meanings have been assigned.Because we required an icon set which could be utilized with specified, varying levels of intrusiveness in real attentionally challenged situations, we used a perceptually guided procedure that consisted of four steps: initial icon set design, perceptual refinement, validation of learnability and effectiveness under workload, and deployment in an application simulation. We found that our haptic icons could be learned to a high degree of accuracy in under 3 min and remained identifiable even under significant cognitive workload. In an exploratory observational study comparing haptic, visual, and combined haptic and visual support for our protocol, participants overall preferred the combined multi-modal support, and in particular preferred the haptic support for control changes and the visual support for displaying state. In their control negotiation, users clearly utilized the option of requesting with graded urgency. The three major contributions in this paper are: (1) the introduction and first case study using a systematic process for refining and evaluating haptic icons for background communication in a primarily visual application; (2) the usability observed for a particular set of icons designed with that process; and (3) the introduction of an urgency-based turn-taking protocol and a comparison of haptic, visual and multi-modal support of our implementation of that protocol.     

Using music to communicate computing information

The audio channel remains little used in most computing applications, often its use being relegated to providing trivial sound effects whose novelty value soon wears off. Nevertheless, in principle sound offers much to the process of human–computer interaction as for most people the notion of auditory imagery is easily accepted.In this paper we explore how sound, specifically musical sound, can be used to communicate computing information. The findings of two studies are presented. The first investigated how pitch intervals and musical phrases of complex (non-sinusoidal) tones can be recognised. The second study aimed to demonstrate that musical structures could communicate information about high-level programming language structures and program run-time behaviour. Both studies showed that music could successfully be used as a communication medium and that listeners did not need to be musically trained to benefit from the audio signals. Finally, recommendations for further work are made.     

A comparison of words and icons as external memory aids in an information retrieval task

Enrichment is a process whereby computer-based information is tagged with additional attributes which can be used in an information retrieval system to increase the speed and accuracy of access. In this way, the additional attributes act as external memory aids. Lansdale (1988a) evaluated such a system by looking at the memorability of coloured shapes, placed in different locations on a document, which were used as enrichers in a simple information retrieval task. This paper extends that study to look at memory for labels used in an identical way. Verbal and visual enriching attributes were studied under two conditions: one in which they were assigned to documents automatically by the system, and one in which the users made their own choice. Results indicate a strong trend in which recall was higher when subjects made their own selection of enriching attributes as opposed to having them selected for them. In the comparison of words and icons, there was no evidence that the modalities of the enrichers were a significant factor in recall. Recall performance seems to be primarily related to the 'semantic fit' of the documents and the attributes selected to enrich them. The extent to which this implies potential differences in the utility of visual and verbal methods in future applications is discussed.     

运用跳端口技术进行信息隐藏

针对Internet的信息安全问题,介绍了一种新的信息隐藏技术--跳端口技术,它利用扩频通信中的跳频思想,通过变更数据包接收端口实现数据信息的隐藏,可以广泛地应用在民用和军事领域中.分析了这种技术的原理和实现方法,并指出需要进一步解决的问题.     

Using partial information to update materialized views

This paper lays the theoretical foundations for identifying classes of views and data partitioning strategies that allow efficient incremental view maintenance using “partial information” about the underlying base relations. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for determining how a materialized select-project-join view can be updated using only the view definition, the current view materialization, and the update (i.e., no base relations); and also how to update views using only the view definition, the update, and the updated base relation (i.e., not the other base relations). We generalize the above results to use an arbitrary subset of the base relations and the current view materialization. Our results are especially useful in distributed databases, in disconnected and mobile computing environments where the underlying database is not always accessible, and in data warehousing applications. Our techniques can be used to minimize remote data access and often to completely avoid remote access. This paper gives the intuition and theory necessary for identifying and designing views that are efficiently maintainable using partial information.     

使用信息增益方法选择分类器

为了减少表现差的个体分类器对集成器分类性能的影响,提高集成器分类效果及稳定性,提出了基于信息增益的分类器选择方法。该方法将高维分类器空间压缩至低维分类器空间,并在该空间内学习集成器。在多个数据集上的比较实验结果表明,该方法可行,其集成性能较理想。     

Using non-speech sound to overcome information overload

With ever increasing amounts of visual information to take in when interacting with computers, users can become overloaded. One reason is that computers communicate solely by graphical output. This paper suggests the use of non-speech sound output to enhance the graphical display of information to overcome overload. The question is how to integrate the display of sound and graphics to capitalise on the advantages each offers. The approach described here is to integrate sound into the basic components of the human-computer interface. Two experiments are described where non-speech sounds were added to buttons and scrollbars. Results showed sound improved usability by increasing performance and reducing time to recover from errors. Subjective workload measures also showed a significant reduction. Results from this work show that the integrated display of graphical and auditory information can overcome information overload.     

Using a sparse promoting method in linear programming approximations to schedule parallel jobs

In this paper, we tackle the well‐known problem of scheduling a collection of parallel jobs on a set of processors either in a cluster or in a multiprocessor computer. For the makespan objective, that is, the completion time of the last job, this problem has been shown to be NP‐hard, and several heuristics have already been proposed to minimize the execution time. In this paper, we consider both rigid and moldable jobs. Our main contribution is the introduction of a new approach to the scheduling problem, based on the recent discoveries in the field of compressed sensing. In the proposed approach, all possible positions and shapes of the jobs are encoded into a matrix, and the scheduling is performed by selecting the best columns under natural constraints. Thus, the solution to the new scheduling formulation is naturally sparse, and we may use appropriate relaxations to achieve the optimization task in the quickest possible way. Among many possible relaxation strategies, we choose to minimize the ℓ_p‐quasi‐norm for p∈(0,1). Minimization of the ℓ_p‐quasi‐norm is implemented via a successive linear programming approximation heuristic. We propose several new algorithms based on this approach, and we assess their efficiency through simulations. The experiments show that the scheme outperforms the classic Largest Task First list based algorithm for scheduling small to medium instances but needs improvements to compete on larger numbers of jobs. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Context aware messaging service: A dynamical messaging delivery using location information and schedule information

This paper describes a context-based dynamic messaging system. It uses schedule information and location information of the message addressee. According to the addressee's communication context (schedule, location, and available media), the system selects the most suitable telephone number or e-mail address, and redirects each incoming message dynamically. It also writes the schedule and location information of users into an HTML file which users can share on the WWW. It will work as mobile groupware for mobile workers. Evaluating the system during a two-month experiment in Tokyo, we found that our system produced smooth communication and a greater feeling of teamwork.     

Using document access sequences to recommend customized information

WordSieve, a text analysis algorithm, uses a competitive-network-learning approach to learn topic-relevant keywords in real time with no predetermined corpus. You can use these keywords to form search engine queries to suggest relevant documents to the user.