On Regulatory and Organizational Constraints in Visualization Design and Evaluation

Problem-based visualization research provides explicit guidance toward identifying and designing for the needs of users, but absent is more concrete guidance toward factors external to a user's needs that also have implications for visualization design and evaluation. This lack of more explicit guidance can leave visualization researchers and practitioners vulnerable to unforeseen constraints beyond the user's needs that can affect the validity of evaluations, or even lead to the premature termination of a project. Here we explore two types of external constraints in depth, regulatory and organizational constraints, and describe how these constraints impact visualization design and evaluation. By borrowing from techniques in software development, project management, and visualization research we recommend strategies for identifying, mitigating, and evaluating these external constraints through a design study methodology. Finally, we present an application of those recommendations in a healthcare case study. We argue that by explicitly incorporating external constraints into visualization design and evaluation, researchers and practitioners can improve the utility and validity of their visualization solution and improve the likelihood of successful collaborations with industries where external constraints are more present.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, presented at BELIV workshop associated with IEEE VIS 201

Connecting Researchers with Companies for University-Industry Collaboration

Nowadays, companies are spending more time and money to enhance their innovation ability to respond to the increasing market competition. The pressure makes companies seek help from external knowledge, especially those from academia. Unfortunately, there is a gap between knowledge seekers (companies) and suppliers (researchers) due to the scattered and asymmetric information. To facilitate shared economy, various platforms are designed to connect the two parties. In this context, we design a researcher recommendation system to promote their collaboration (e.g. patent license, collaborative research, contract research and consultancy) based on a research social network with complete information about both researchers and companies. In the recommendation system, we evaluate researchers from three aspects, including expertise relevance, quality and trustworthiness. The experiment result shows that our system performs well in recommending suitable researchers for companies. The recommendation system has been implemented on an innovation platform, InnoCity.

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf

Outcome evaluation of research for development work conducted in Ghana and Sri Lanka under the Resource, Recovery and Reuse (RRR) subprogram of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE).

This is the main report of an external evaluation of the Resource Recovery and Reuse Flagship of the Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE) CGIAR Research Program. WLE commissioned the study. The Evaluators interviewed researchers and partners in two countries, Ghana and Sri Lanka, and in Ghana visited two sites. They also interviewed key international partners and analyzed a wide range of documents, reports and publications. The evaluation was focused on understanding how and in what ways the research and other activities carried out by IWMI and supported by WLE contributed to the outcomes. In essence, the purpose was to understand the specific impact pathways from research to outputs and outcomes

Identity in research infrastructure and scientific communication: Report from the 1st IRISC workshop, Helsinki Sep 12-13, 2011

Motivation for the IRISC workshop came from the observation that identity and digital identification are increasingly important factors in modern scientific research, especially with the now near-ubiquitous use of the Internet as a global medium for dissemination and debate of scientific knowledge and data, and as a platform for scientific collaborations and large-scale e-science activities.

The 1 1/2 day IRISC2011 workshop sought to explore a series of interrelated topics under two main themes: i) unambiguously identifying authors/creators & attributing their scholarly works, and ii) individual identification and access management in the context of identity federations. Specific aims of the workshop included:

• Raising overall awareness of key technical and non-technical challenges, opportunities and developments.
• Facilitating a dialogue, cross-pollination of ideas, collaboration and coordination between diverse – and largely unconnected – communities.
• Identifying & discussing existing/emerging technologies, best practices and requirements for researcher identification.

This report provides background information on key identification-related concepts & projects, describes workshop proceedings and summarizes key workshop findings

Center-commissioned external review of International Water Management Institute: Consolidated report, 19-29 May 2003

Agricultural research / Research institutes / Research policy / Research priorities / Planning / Monitoring / Evaluation / Financial resources / Gender

Supply chain management in small and medium sized companies : opportunity or obstacle?

The purpose of this thesis is to establish how supply chain management expertise can be developed and embedded in a small and medium sized enterprise that will both enhance the efficiency of the existing business and create an additional business opportunity. In order to achieve this, the following aims have been set. A review of the latest academic literature concerning supply chain management and implementation of supply chain management in small and medium sized enterprises and the development of a framework of critical aspects for supply chain management implementation. In addition a case study of a two year knowledge transfer partnership between a company and a university has been conducted. From the case study it has been derived how supply chain management expertise can be developed and embedded in SMEs.For the methodology the action research and the case study approach have been chosen. The findings of the thesis confirm the characteristics and issues described in previous SME literature. Furthermore this two year study contributes to existing literature through in-depth understanding of the development process of supply chain management implementation in small and medium sized enterprises. In addition a holistic framework for supply chain management implementation in small and medium sized enterprises is provided, which also considers the importance of change and project management. In addition it is suggested that the solution should be tailored to the needs of a small and medium sized enterprise in order to correspond to time and resource constraints in small firms. Furthermore the thesis describes continuous improvement as a means for change management as well as for the embedment of collaboration in a small firm. Moreover it has been reconfirmed that also in small companies internal integration needs to be established before external integration and collaboration can take place.The value of this thesis lies in its attempt to establish how supply chain management in small and medium enterprises can be established through a knowledge transfer partnership with an external body (a university) and the development of a framework for implementation

Conclusions

This research aimed to describe work floor experiences of project leaders who work for Dutch housing associations and who attempt to apply principles of SCP. Reason to do this, was that current research about SCP does not provide insight in what goes on at the work floor. This insight is necessary, because supply chain partnering is formed by ongoing complex responsive processes of interaction between professionals in their daily work life. To intervene effectively and to improve performances of collaboration, work floor experiences were studied. This research consists of a literature review, three case studies, and an overarching study in which the insights that are gained in the three case studies are synthesized