Innovating Contract Practices: Merging Contract Design with Information Design

The work and expertise of contracts professionals are vital to the operations of modern organizations and the global economy. Strategic planning as well as everyday transactions can be conceived, developed, secured, and implemented through contractual relationships. This accelerating importance and functionality of contracts is not matched, however, by their traditional format or drafting process. Indeed, their mission-critical value is not fully appreciated by decision makers. Many opportunities offered by contracts remain unexplored if contracts are seen merely as legal tools needed only in case a dispute arises. A fresh approach to contracts and contracting is called for. Drawing on the Authors’ research into user-centered contract design, contract visualization, and proactive contracting, this paper explores how contract practices can be innovated. The early results of our work in progress indicate that information design, embedded into contract design, has the potential to change fundamentally the way organizations define, shape and manage their trading relationships, offering unexplored opportunities for both research and practice

Innovating Contract Practices: Merging Contract Design with Information Design

The work and expertise of contracts professionals are vital to the operations of modern organizations and the global economy. Strategic planning as well as everyday transactions can be conceived, developed, secured, and implemented through contractual relationships. This accelerating importance and functionality of contracts is not matched, however, by their traditional format or drafting process. Indeed, their mission-critical value is not fully appreciated by decision makers. Many opportunities offered by contracts remain unexplored if contracts are seen merely as legal tools needed only in case a dispute arises. A fresh approach to contracts and contracting is called for. Drawing on the Authors’ research into user-centered contract design, contract visualization, and proactive contracting, this paper explores how contract practices can be innovated. The early results of our work in progress indicate that information design, embedded into contract design, has the potential to change fundamentally the way organizations define, shape and manage their trading relationships, offering unexplored opportunities for both research and practice

Data journalism visualization in Ukraine and in Europe: a comparative analysis

The article aims to investigate the peculiarities of data visualization in Ukrainian and European data media, which will help outline trends and development tendencies in data journalism. The research results will form a list of promising methods and forms of data visualization in journalistic practice. The research used the method of content analysis of journalistic materials and comparative analysis of Ukrainian and European data media. The use of such a methodological toolkit is due to the visual component of the analyzed objects and the need to fill a gap in data journalism research as a comparative analysis of the Ukrainian and European practice of visualizing materials in data media has not been conducted before. The study results showed common trends in using visual resources as the most common way of visualizing data. The European edition uses more types of visual objects in the same material. It was also found that the European data media pay more attention to the text, while the Ukrainian one focuses on the visual component. Common trends are observed when analyzing visualization and interactivity functions. Both editions mostly use visualization to reinforce and supplement textual information, and the hypothesis of a fading trend toward interactivity is confirmed

Activity Report 2012. Project-Team RMOD. Analyses and Languages Constructs for Object-Oriented Application Evolution

Activity Report 2012 Project-Team RMOD Analyses and Languages Constructs for Object-Oriented Application Evolutio

Fouille de données de santé

Dans le domaine de la santé, les techniques d’analyse de données sont de plus en plus populaires et se révèlent même indispensables pour gérer les gros volumes de données produits pour un patient et par le patient. Deux thématiques seront abordées dans cette présentation d'HDR.La première porte sur la définition, la formalisation, l’implémentation et la validation de méthodes d’analyse permettant de décrire le contenu de bases de données médicales. Je me suis particulièrement intéressée aux données séquentielles. J’ai fait évoluer la classique notion de motif séquentiel pour y intégrer des composantes contextuelles, spatiales et sur l’ordre partiel des éléments composant les motifs. Ces nouvelles informations enrichissent la sémantique initiale de ces motifs.La seconde thématique se focalise sur l’analyse des productions et des interactions des patients au travers des médias sociaux. J’ai principalement travaillé sur des méthodes permettant d’analyser les productions narratives des patients selon leurs temporalités, leurs thématiques, les sentiments associés ou encore le rôle et la réputation du locuteur s’étant exprimé dans les messages

OptiqueVQS: A visual query system over ontologies for industry

An important application of semantic technologies in industry has been the formalisation of information models using OWL 2 ontologies and the use of RDF for storing and exchanging application data. Moreover, legacy data can be virtualised as RDF using ontologies following the ontology-based data access (OBDA) approach. In all these applications, it is important to provide domain experts with query formulation tools for expressing their information needs in terms of queries over ontologies. In this work, we present such a tool, OptiqueVQS, which is designed based on our experience with OBDA applications in Statoil and Siemens and on best HCI practices for interdisciplinary engineering environments. OptiqueVQS implements a number of unique techniques distinguishing it from analogous query formulation systems. In particular, it exploits ontology projection techniques to enable graph-based navigation over an ontology during query construction. Secondly, while OptiqueVQS is primarily ontology driven, it exploits sampled data to enhance selection of data values for some data attributes. Finally, OptiqueVQS is built on well-grounded requirements, design rationale, and quality attributes. We evaluated OptiqueVQS with both domain experts and casual users and qualitatively compared our system against prominent visual systems for ontology-driven query formulation and exploration of semantic data. OptiqueVQS is available online and can be downloaded together with an example OBDA scenario

Molecular Modeling with Augmented Reality (MMAR): An Educational Web System for the Learning of Molecular Structures

Learning about molecular structures often becomes abstruse, due to its complex compositions, being aggravated by the restricted interactivity provided by the software commonly used. This difficulty can also be attached to the fact that most of the students do not present the necessary knowledge to work with biomolecular systems, affecting also the motivation in the object of study. In this context, the objective of this work is to analyze the influences related to interactivity, usability and motivation, provided by a web system called MMAR (Molecular Modeling with Augmented Reality), designed to support the learning of three-dimensional (3D) molecular structures. The system was applied to twenty-five students in the Chemistry discipline, from a technical course in a public school from basic education in Brazil. The results show that it was possible to assist students in the gain of knowledge, while simultaneously allowing them to enjoy themselves, providing unconventional learning, by increasing attractiveness, curiosity, attention, enthusiasm and relevance of such a complex subject in Chemistry