A digital library content metadata generator for e-print

A Digital Library is normally consisting of or made upon a collection of digital objects plus the information and services for storing, accessing and retrieving them. Digital Libraries by nature is a very complex information system. Despite efforts being made to streamline its creation and content population into an out of the box experience, there is still room for automation. For the creation of Digital Library or Online Repositories as it also known, the availability of free open source software such as EPrints developed at University of Southampton, United Kingdom is has simplified the creation process. While the Digital Library software packages such as EPrints have made it easier to create and run Digital Libraries, optimization and customization still needs to be done in order to achieve an optimally usable solution. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a Digital Library is populating these repositories. This can be a very manual task that consumes a large amount of time without automation. One the most time consuming tasks involved in setting up a the content or collections of Digital Library is the data entry that provides detailed information on the available resources which is usually made up of metadata elements that provide information on the content stored. The Digital Library Content Metadata Generator (COMGEN) developed as a part of this project is designed to reduce the workload, time consumption and error prone manual data entry that are being done the traditional way in populating Digital Libraries. COMGEN is built to demonstrate the feasibility of automatic content generation by extracting existing metadata from the source file and transforming it into a usable format for use with the EPrints Import Tool to automatically add new content and populate the Digital Library/Repository. (Abstract by author

Experimental user interface design toolkit for interaction research (IDTR).

The research reported and discussed in this thesis represents a novel approach to User Interface evaluation and optimisation through cognitive modelling. This is achieved through the development and testing of a toolkit or platform titled Toolkit for Optimisation of Interface System Evolution (TOISE). The research is conducted in two main phases. In phase 1, the Adaptive Control of Thought Rational (ACT-R) cognitive architecture is used to design Simulated Users (SU) models. This allows models of user interaction to be tested on a specific User Interface (UI). In phase 2, an evolutionary algorithm is added and used to evolve and test an optimised solution to User Interface layout based on the original interface design. The thesis presents a technical background, followed by an overview of some applications in their respective fields. The core concepts behind TOISE are introduced through a discussion of the Adaptive Control of Thought “ Rational (ACT-R) architecture with a focus on the ACT-R models that are used to simulate users. The notion of adding a Genetic Algorithm optimiser is introduced and discussed in terms of the feasibility of using simulated users as the basis for automated evaluation to optimise usability. The design and implementation of TOISE is presented and discussed followed by a series of experiments that evaluate the TOISE system. While the research had to address and solve a large number of technical problems the resulting system does demonstrate potential as a platform for automated evaluation and optimisation of user interface layouts. The limitations of the system and the approach are discussed and further work is presented. It is concluded that the research is novel and shows considerable promise in terms of feasibility and potential for optimising layout for enhanced usability

Formalizing a Conceptual Framework of Work Domain Knowledge

Background: The failure rate of health information systems is high, partially due to fragmented, incomplete, or incorrect identification and description of specific and critical domain requirements. In order to systematically transform the requirements of work into real information system, an explicit conceptual framework is essential to summarize the work requirements and guide system design. Recently, Butler, Zhang, and colleagues proposed a conceptual framework called Work Domain Ontology (WDO) to formally represent users’ work. This WDO approach has been successfully demonstrated in a real world design project on aircraft scheduling. However, as a top level conceptual framework, this WDO has not defined an explicit and well specified schema (WDOS) , and it does not have a generalizable and operationalized procedure that can be easily applied to develop WDO. Moreover, WDO has not been developed for any concrete healthcare domain. These limitations hinder the utility of WDO in real world information system in general and in health information system in particular. Objective: The objective of this research is to formalize the WDOS, operationalize a procedure to develop WDO, and evaluate WDO approach using Self-Nutrition Management (SNM) work domain. Method: Concept analysis was implemented to formalize WDOS. Focus group interview was conducted to capture concepts in SNM work domain. Ontology engineering methods were adopted to model SNM WDO. Part of the concepts under the primary goal “staying healthy” for SNM were selected and transformed into a semi-structured survey to evaluate the acceptance, explicitness, completeness, consistency, experience dependency of SNM WDO. Result: Four concepts, “goal, operation, object and constraint”, were identified and formally modeled in WDOS with definitions and attributes. 72 SNM WDO concepts under primary goal were selected and transformed into semi-structured survey questions. The evaluation indicated that the major concepts of SNM WDO were accepted by 41 overweight subjects. SNM WDO is generally independent of user domain experience but partially dependent on SNM application experience. 23 of 41 paired concepts had significant correlations. Two concepts were identified as ambiguous concepts. 8 extra concepts were recommended towards the completeness of SNM WDO. Conclusion: The preliminary WDOS is ready with an operationalized procedure. SNM WDO has been developed to guide future SNM application design. This research is an essential step towards Work-Centered Design (WCD)

Integrating a usable security protocol for user authentication into the requirements and design process

L'utilisabilité et la sécurité sont des éléments cruciaux dans le processus d'authentification des utilisateurs. L'un des défis majeurs auquel font face les organisations aujourd'hui est d'offrir des systèmes d'accès aux ressources logiques (par exemple, une application informatique) et physiques (par exemple, un bâtiment) qui soient à la fois sécurisées et utilisables. Afin d'atteindre ces objectifs, il faut d'abord mettre en œuvre les trois composantes indispensables que sont l'identification (c.-à-d., définir l'identité d'un utilisateur), l'authentification (c.-à-d., vérifier l'identité d'un utilisateur) et l'autorisation (c.-à-d., accorder des droits d'accès à un utilisateur). Plus particulièrement, la recherche en authentification de l'utilisateur est essentielle. Sans authentification, par exemple, des systèmes informatiques ne sont pas capables de vérifier si un utilisateur demandant l'accès à une ressource possède les droits de le faire. Bien que plusieurs travaux de recherche aient porté sur divers mécanismes de sécurité, très peu de recherches jusqu'à présent ont porté sur l'utilisabilité et la sécurité des méthodes d'authentification des utilisateurs. Pour cette raison, il nous paraît nécessaire de développer un protocole d'utilisabilité et de sécurité pour concevoir les méthodes d'authentification des utilisateurs. La thèse centrale de ce travail de recherche soutient qu'il y a un conflit intrinsèque entre la création de systèmes qui soient sécurisés et celle de systèmes qui soient facile d'utilisation. Cependant, l'utilisabilité et la sécurité peuvent être construites de manière synergique en utilisant des outils d'analyse et de conception qui incluent des principes d'utilisabilité et de sécurité dès l'étape d'Analyse et de Conception de la méthode d'authentification. Dans certaines situations il est possible d'améliorer simultanément l'utilisabilité et la sécurité en revisitant les décisions de conception prises dans le passé. Dans d'autres cas, il est plus avantageux d'aligner l'utilisabilité et la sécurité en changeant l'environnement régulateur dans lequel les ordinateurs opèrent. Pour cette raison, cette thèse a comme objectif principal non pas d'adresser l'utilisabilité et la sécurité postérieurement à la fabrication du produit final, mais de faire de la sécurité un résultat naturel de l'étape d'Analyse et de Conception du cycle de vie de la méthode d'authentification. \ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : authentification de l'utilisateur, utilisabilité, sécurité informatique, contrôle d'accès

Integrating Usability Models into Pervasive Application Development

This thesis describes novel processes in two important areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and demonstrates ways to combine these in appropriate ways. First, prototyping plays an essential role in the development of complex applications. This is especially true if a user-centred design process is followed. We describe and compare a set of existing toolkits and frameworks that support the development of prototypes in the area of pervasive computing. Based on these observations, we introduce the EIToolkit that allows the quick generation of mobile and pervasive applications, and approaches many issues found in previous works. Its application and use is demonstrated in several projects that base on the architecture and an implementation of the toolkit. Second, we present novel results and extensions in user modelling, specifically for predicting time to completion of tasks. We extended established concepts such as the Keystroke-Level Model to novel types of interaction with mobile devices, e.g. using optical markers and gestures. The design, creation, as well as a validation of this model are presented in some detail in order to show its use and usefulness for making usability predictions. The third part is concerned with the combination of both concepts, i.e. how to integrate user models into the design process of pervasive applications. We first examine current ways of developing and show generic approaches to this problem. This leads to a concrete implementation of such a solution. An innovative integrated development environment is provided that allows for quickly developing mobile applications, supports the automatic generation of user models, and helps in applying these models early in the design process. This can considerably ease the process of model creation and can replace some types of costly user studies.Diese Dissertation beschreibt neuartige Verfahren in zwei wichtigen Bereichen der Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation und erläutert Wege, diese geeignet zu verknüpfen. Zum einen spielt die Entwicklung von Prototypen insbesondere bei der Verwendung von benutzerzentrierten Entwicklungsverfahren eine besondere Rolle. Es werden daher auf der einen Seite eine ganze Reihe vorhandener Arbeiten vorgestellt und verglichen, die die Entwicklung prototypischer Anwendungen speziell im Bereich des Pervasive Computing unterstützen. Ein eigener Satz an Werkzeugen und Komponenten wird präsentiert, der viele der herausgearbeiteten Nachteile und Probleme solcher existierender Projekte aufgreift und entsprechende Lösungen anbietet. Mehrere Beispiele und eigene Arbeiten werden beschrieben, die auf dieser Architektur basieren und entwickelt wurden. Auf der anderen Seite werden neue Forschungsergebnisse präsentiert, die Erweiterungen von Methoden in der Benutzermodellierung speziell im Bereich der Abschätzung von Interaktionszeiten beinhalten. Mit diesen in der Dissertation entwickelten Erweiterungen können etablierte Konzepte wie das Keystroke-Level Model auf aktuelle und neuartige Interaktionsmöglichkeiten mit mobilen Geräten angewandt werden. Der Entwurf, das Erstellen sowie eine Validierung der Ergebnisse dieser Erweiterungen werden detailliert dargestellt. Ein dritter Teil beschäftigt sich mit Möglichkeiten die beiden beschriebenen Konzepte, zum einen Prototypenentwicklung im Pervasive Computing und zum anderen Benutzermodellierung, geeignet zu kombinieren. Vorhandene Ansätze werden untersucht und generische Integrationsmöglichkeiten beschrieben. Dies führt zu konkreten Implementierungen solcher Lösungen zur Integration in vorhandene Umgebungen, als auch in Form einer eigenen Applikation spezialisiert auf die Entwicklung von Programmen für mobile Geräte. Sie erlaubt das schnelle Erstellen von Prototypen, unterstützt das automatische Erstellen spezialisierter Benutzermodelle und ermöglicht den Einsatz dieser Modelle früh im Entwicklungsprozess. Dies erleichtert die Anwendung solcher Modelle und kann Aufwand und Kosten für entsprechende Benutzerstudien einsparen

Proceedings of the 11th international Conference on Cognitive Modeling : ICCM 2012

The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) is the premier conference for research on computational models and computation-based theories of human behavior. ICCM is a forum for presenting, discussing, and evaluating the complete spectrum of cognitive modeling approaches, including connectionism, symbolic modeling, dynamical systems, Bayesian modeling, and cognitive architectures. ICCM includes basic and applied research, across a wide variety of domains, ranging from low-level perception and attention to higher-level problem-solving and learning. Online-Version published by Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin (www.univerlag.tu-berlin.de