User engineering: A new look at system engineering

User Engineering is a new System Engineering perspective responsible for defining and maintaining the user view of the system. Its elements are a process to guide the project and customer, a multidisciplinary team including hard and soft sciences, rapid prototyping tools to build user interfaces quickly and modify them frequently at low cost, and a prototyping center for involving users and designers in an iterative way. The main consideration is reducing the risk that the end user will not or cannot effectively use the system. The process begins with user analysis to produce cognitive and work style models, and task analysis to produce user work functions and scenarios. These become major drivers of the human computer interface design which is presented and reviewed as an interactive prototype by users. Feedback is rapid and productive, and user effectiveness can be measured and observed before the system is built and fielded. Requirements are derived via the prototype and baselined early to serve as an input to the architecture and software design

Nmag micromagnetic simulation tool - software engineering lessons learned

We review design and development decisions and their impact for the open source code Nmag from a software engineering in computational science point of view. We summarise lessons learned and recommendations for future computational science projects. Key lessons include that encapsulating the simulation functionality in a library of a general purpose language, here Python, provides great flexibility in using the software. The choice of Python for the top-level user interface was very well received by users from the science and engineering community. The from-source installation in which required external libraries and dependencies are compiled from a tarball was remarkably robust. In places, the code is a lot more ambitious than necessary, which introduces unnecessary complexity and reduces main- tainability. Tests distributed with the package are useful, although more unit tests and continuous integration would have been desirable. The detailed documentation, together with a tutorial for the usage of the system, was perceived as one of its main strengths by the community.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Software Engineering for Science, ICSE201

The crustal dynamics intelligent user interface anthology

The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) has initiated an Intelligent Data Management (IDM) research effort which has, as one of its components, the development of an Intelligent User Interface (IUI). The intent of the IUI is to develop a friendly and intelligent user interface service based on expert systems and natural language processing technologies. The purpose of such a service is to support the large number of potential scientific and engineering users that have need of space and land-related research and technical data, but have little or no experience in query languages or understanding of the information content or architecture of the databases of interest. This document presents the design concepts, development approach and evaluation of the performance of a prototype IUI system for the Crustal Dynamics Project Database, which was developed using a microcomputer-based expert system tool (M. 1), the natural language query processor THEMIS, and the graphics software system GSS. The IUI design is based on a multiple view representation of a database from both the user and database perspective, with intelligent processes to translate between the views

Interface Engineering and Design: Adaptibility Problems

* The research work reviewed in this paper has been carried out in the context of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research funded project “Adaptable Intelligent Interfaces Research and Development for Distance Learning Systems”(grant N 02-01-81019). The authors wish to acknowledge the co-operation with the Byelorussian partners of this project.The paper describes some investigation’s problems intended to construct user model via psychological assessment for further interface adaptation. The proposed concept of user model comprises formal representation of demographic, professional, physiological and psychological data about the user with stress put on psychological features. Essential users physiological, communicative and cognitive peculiarities are in the center of view in the research theoretical part. The presented research develops flexible user- centered approach as a unity of two main investigation directions – user modeling and adaptive interface’s design. The adaptation engineering procedure is investigated via special interface modeling approach. The targeted implementation is distance learning process. Special software tool InterTrivium for interactive questionnaire presentation is described

Intelligent Systems and Advanced User Interfaces for Design, Operation, and Maintenance of Command Management Systems

Historically Command Management Systems (CMS) have been large, expensive, spacecraft-specific software systems that were costly to build, operate, and maintain. Current and emerging hardware, software, and user interface technologies may offer an opportunity to facilitate the initial formulation and design of a spacecraft-specific CMS as well as a to develop a more generic or a set of core components for CMS systems. Current MOC (mission operations center) hardware and software include Unix workstations, the C/C++ and Java programming languages, and X and Java window interfaces representations. This configuration provides the power and flexibility to support sophisticated systems and intelligent user interfaces that exploit state-of-the-art technologies in human-machine systems engineering, decision making, artificial intelligence, and software engineering. One of the goals of this research is to explore the extent to which technologies developed in the research laboratory can be productively applied in a complex system such as spacecraft command management. Initial examination of some of the issues in CMS design and operation suggests that application of technologies such as intelligent planning, case-based reasoning, design and analysis tools from a human-machine systems engineering point of view (e.g., operator and designer models) and human-computer interaction tools, (e.g., graphics, visualization, and animation), may provide significant savings in the design, operation, and maintenance of a spacecraft-specific CMS as well as continuity for CMS design and development across spacecraft with varying needs. The savings in this case is in software reuse at all stages of the software engineering process

A human-machine interaction tool set for Smalltalk 80.

This research represents an investigation into user acceptance of computer systems. It starts with the premise that existing systems do not fully meet user requirements, and are therefore rejected as 'difficult to use'. Various problems and influences affecting user acceptance are identified, and improvements are suggested. Although a broad range of factors affecting user acceptance are discussed, emphasis is given to the impact of actual computer software.Initially, both general and specific user interface software influences are examined, and it is shown how these needs can be met using new software technology. A new Intelligent Interface architecture model is presented, and comparisons are made to existing interface design approaches.Secondly, the role of empirical work within the field of Human Computer Interaction is highlighted. An investigation into the usability and user. acceptance of a large working library database system is described, and the results discussed. The role of Systems Analysis and Design and its effect upon user acceptance is also explored. It is argued that despite improvements in interface technology and related software engineering techniques, a software application is also a product of the Systems Analysis and Design process. Traditional Systems Design approaches are examined, and suitable improvements suggested based upon experience with emerging separable software architectures.Thirdly, the research proceeds to examine the potential of Quantitative User Modelling, and describes the implementation of an example object oriented Quantitative User Model. This is then evaluated in order to determine new knowledge, concerning the major issues surrounding the potential application of user modelling to interface design.Finally, attention is given to the concept of interface and application separation. An object oriented User Interface Management System is presented, and its implementation in the Smalltalk 80 programming language discussed. The proposed User Interface Management System utilises a new software architecture which provides explicit user interface separation, using the concept of a Pluggable View Controller. It also incorporates an integrated design Tool-set for Direct Manipulation interfaces. The proposed User Interface Management System and software architecture represents the major contribution of this project to the growing body of Human Computer Interaction research. In particular, the importance of explicit interface separation is established, and the proposed software architecture is critically evaluated to determine new knowledge concerning the requirements, constraints, and potential of proper user interface separation. The implementation of an object oriented Part Hierarchy mechanism is also presented. This mechanism is related to the proposed User Interface Management System, and is critically evaluated in order to add to the body of knowledge concerning object oriented systems

GRASP/Ada 95: Reverse Engineering Tools for Ada

The GRASP/Ada project (Graphical Representations of Algorithms, Structures, and Processes for Ada) has successfully created and prototyped an algorithmic level graphical representation for Ada software, the Control Structure Diagram (CSD), and a new visualization for a fine-grained complexity metric called the Complexity Profile Graph (CPG). By synchronizing the CSD and the CPG, the CSD view of control structure, nesting, and source code is directly linked to the corresponding visualization of statement level complexity in the CPG. GRASP has been integrated with GNAT, the GNU Ada 95 Translator to provide a comprehensive graphical user interface and development environment for Ada 95. The user may view, edit, print, and compile source code as a CSD with no discernible addition to storage or computational overhead. The primary impetus for creation of the CSD was to improve the comprehension efficiency of Ada software and, as a result, improve reliability and reduce costs. The emphasis has been on the automatic generation of the CSD from Ada 95 source code to support reverse engineering and maintenance. The CSD has the potential to replace traditional prettyprinted Ada source code. The current update has focused on the design and implementation of a new Motif compliant user interface, and a new CSD generator consisting of a tagger and renderer. The Complexity Profile Graph (CPG) is based on a set of functions that describes the context, content, and the scaling for complexity on a statement by statement basis. When combined graphicafly, the result is a composite profile of complexity for the program unit. Ongoing research includes the development and refinement of the associated functions, and the development of the CPG generator prototype. The current Version 5.0 prototype provides the capability for the user to generate CSDs and CPGs from Ada 95 source code in a reverse engineering as well as forward engineering mode with a level of flexibility suitable for practical application. This report provides an overview of the GRASP/Ada project with an emphasis on the current update

Multi-user interface for co-located real-time work with digital mock-up: a way to foster collaboration?

Nowadays more and more industrial design activities adopt the strategy of Concurrent Engineering (CE), which changes the way to carry out all the activities along the product’s lifecycle from sequential to parallel. Various experts of different activities produce technical data using domain-specific software. To augment the interoperability among the technical data, a Digital Mock-Up (DMU), or a Building Information Model (BIM) in architectural engineering can be used. Through an appropriate Computer–Human Interface (CHI), each expert has his/her own point-of-view (POV) of a specific representation of DMU’s technical data according to an involved domain. When multiple experts work collaboratively in the same place and at the same time, the number of CHIs is also multiplied by the number of experts. Instead of multiple CHIs, therefore, a unique CHI should be developed to support the multiview and multi-interaction collaborative works. Our contributions in this paper are (a) a concept of a CHI system with multi-view and multi-interaction of DMU for multiple users in collaborative design; (b) a state of the art of multi-view and multi-interaction metaphors; (c) an experiment to evaluate a collaborative application using multi-view CHI. The experimental results indicate that, in multi-view CHI working condition, users are more efficient than in the other two working conditions (multiple CHIs and split view CHI). Moreover, in multi-view CHI working condition, the user, who is helping the other, takes less mutual awareness of where the other collaborator works than the other two working conditions.Bourse de thèse de CSC (China Scholarship Council

A Comparison of Interactive Shadows and Multi-View Layouts for Mouse-based 3D Modelling

3D user interfaces allow users to view and interact with objects in a 3D scene and form a key component in many modelling applications used in engineering, medicine and design. Most mouse-based interfaces follow the same multi-view layout (three orthogonal, one perspective). This interface is difficult to understand, as it requires users to integrate all four views and build a 3D mental model. An alternative, Interactive Shadows, has been previously proposed that could improve on the multi-view's shortcomings but has never been formally tested. This paper presents the first quantitative user evaluation (n = 36) of both the multi-view and interactive shadows interfaces to compare their relative effectiveness and usability. Participants completed three types of tasks designed to be representative of object manipulation in current 3D modelling software. Interactive shadows were significantly better (p < 0,05) for tasks requiring participants to estimate distance. This suggests interactive shadows interface might better help users approximate relative object positioning

Graphical User Interface (GUI) Development for an Optical Communication Simulator

Modeling and simulation tools have been an integral part of engineering world for a long time. Various Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools have been extensively used in various industries and research to evaluate the performance of electronic systems. The advancement of such design tools also has influenced the optical communication sector such that there has been a continuous progress on the Photonic Design Automation (PDA) tools. Currently, many software for simulating optical communications are available. However, they are very expensive and conceal the information on how components are modeled. To avoid these constraints, we developed our own PDA software for optical communication. This thesis delves into the development of Graphical User Interface (GUI) of our software. The studied GUI software conforms to the feature of standard simulation software and assists the users to perform a system-level simulation of fiber optic communication. The developed GUI allows the users to design their layout, run the simulation and view the results in the form of data or plot. The GUI is explained with respect to the graphical layout and the interactive features of the components. The detailed structure is described along with the Java library used to build them. The interactive aspects of GUI are investigated, for adding the hierarchical feature to our GUI software. In addition, a plotting tool is created for the GUI. The thesis provides comprehensive information on working principle of GUI for simulation software and describes the addition of plotting tool and hierarchical design in detail