Style synthesis and analysis of car designs for style quantification based on product appearance similarities

Understanding how similar design appears is a key element to understanding companies’ design strategies. However, it is difficult to evaluate companies’ design strategies with conventional style measurement methods since they only taxonomically measure whether a specific characteristic is included in a specific style. This study numerically measured car design similarities to synthesize and analyze car brand styles, thereupon discovering the design trends among car brands for strategic design positioning. This paper aims to find methods for quantifying style differences and identifying unique design elements of car designs among 23 automobile manufacturers based on design similarities of a large quantity of car designs (N = 119). To achieve this goal, a hybrid style quantification methodology – a mixture of Fourier decomposition, eye tracker, and shape grammar – was created to evaluate similarities, visual significance, and combinations of 19 car design elements. Fourier decomposition was incorporated to find the quantifiable values of design similarities of car design elements. Visual significance analysis was also conducted for each car design element through eye tracker to measure the importance of certain design elements for weighting factors. Then, each combination of design elements was compared with car design elements of other cars for similarity calculations. Finally, car design alternatives were synthesized, and transitions of design positioning were analyzed based on the similarity values weighed by the visual significance results. Using the suggested methods, alternate designs can be synthesized while preserving brands’ design styles, and design trends can be analyzed for strategic evaluation.     

宁夏司法警官职业学院学生信息管理系统研究

长期以来,宁夏司法警官职业学院各种信息通过Office软件来存储,处理,在信息的更新,共享,查询,版本控制上等方面存在很多问题,管理这些信息比较繁琐,并且信息很难共享,因此学院急需一套信息管理系统来管理这些信息。该文对宁夏司法警官职业学院学生信息管理系统的项目立项、用户需求征询、设计开发、测试实施做了一个比较全面的概述。     

信息安全策略实施困难的原因与对策分析

随着企业生产规模的扩大,其所掌控的资产也越来越多。信息作为企业重要的资产,其安全性正得到越来越多的企业的关注,很多企业为了保证自身信息的安全与保密性,也制订了自身的信息安全策略。然而,很多企业的信息安全策略常常形同虚设,没有发挥其应有的作用,甚至存在着严重的漏洞,为企业的健康发展埋下了不小的隐患。笔者结合自身多年的工作经验,就企业信息安全策略实施过程中存在的问题进行分析,并针对性的提出几点对策,希望对相关人士能有所帮助。     

浅谈信息技术与数学学科的整合

信息技术的发展,使人们的学习和交流打破了过去的时空界限,为人类能力的提高和发挥作用带来了新的空间。通过信息技术与数学学科的整合,让数学更贴近生活,突破教学重点难点,提高了学生的发散性思维能力,让我们看到信息技术在教学中的重要性。     

Building Trust and Cooperation through Technology Adaptation in Virtual Teams: Empirical Field Evidence

Abstract

This article reports findings of a study of how leaders of virtual information systems development teams improve team trust and cooperation by managing adaptation of information and communications tools. Results indicate how Theory X (command and control) and Theory Y (facilitate and support) styles of leadership enable and hinder effective outcomes.     

The Buck Stops Where?

SUMMARY

University students-whether adult, distance learner, or traditional age-need access to university services and quick accurate answers to their questions beyond traditional “business” hours. Students' busy schedules and changing life patterns dictate that university services meet their needs. At DePaul University in Chicago, student focus groups repeatedly pointed to the need for one central place to get an answer or solve a problem. DePaul Central was created as an information and referral service to satisfy that student need, at the same capitalizing on the value of the librarian skill set.     

Research Partners,Teaching Partners: A Collaboration between FYC Faculty and Librarians to Study Students’ Research and Writing Habits

In Spring 2012, instruction librarians collaborated with first year composition (FYC) faculty to study students’ research habits as they related to writing. We collected process narratives from students in the introductory FYC course at the beginning and end of the fall semester, and a group of librarians and FYC faculty coded them together. Although we did not achieve one of our initial research goals, we still gained valuable insight into how our students perceive sources and the research process. We applied what we learned to create new instructional materials and developed a valuable relationship with FYC faculty.     

A Proposal for Implementing Multi-User Data Base (MUD) Technology in and Academic Library

Multi-user Data base (MUD) technology, and its object-oriented descendant (MOO), is one of the most exciting tools to surface on the Internet, and offers libraries and librarians a unique opportunity to participate in creating user-friendly standardized interfaces to many of our most frequently used resources. These resources include those we access through the Internet already, using gopher, telnet, WWW, and FTP, and also those proprietary databases that we currently access through leased lines such as OCLC First Search, Prism, DIALOG, and many others. MOO technology is already being used successfully to create user-extensible collaborative professional environments for educators, astronomers, and computer network systems administrators. With the growing relevance of the Internet for libraries and other information professionals, it behooves the library community to engage those emerging technologies which will aloow us to interface most effectively with the Internet and its many resources, with the proprietary databases which we depend on, and with one another.     

More of the Same? Understanding Transformation in Tablet-based Academic Library Instruction

Academic librarians have shared their experiences with tablet computers, but few examine how librarians use tablets in their instruction design. While the education literature provides technology integration models, the nature of library instruction requires adapting these models to the library classroom. After reviewing literature related to tablets in library instruction and a number of technology integration frameworks, this article demonstrates an application of the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition framework to analyze observations of an iPad-equipped classroom at a university library. Demonstrating this use of a framework provides an approach to technology integration and continues the discussion about tablets’ potential to promote innovative pedagogy.     

EDITORIAL

The process undertaken by an information seeker, in order to form relevance decisions regarding documents, is defined as “Document Triage.” To better facilitate users’ needs in their triage activities, interactive interfaces have begun to evolve within on-line academic repositories. In order to complement current work on interface design and interaction, and produce custom guidelines to inform the creation of triage interfaces, we examine how interfaces that alter the document presentation and structure affect information seekers’ visual and navigational attention. We present a set of heuristics for both creating and evaluating such interfaces.