Supporting End-User Development through a New Composition Model: An Empirical Study

End-user development (EUD) is much hyped, and its impact has outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts. Even so, the vision of end users programming their own solutions has not yet materialized. This will continue to be so unless we in both industry and the research community set ourselves the ambitious challenge of devising end to end an end-user application development model for developing a new age of EUD tools. We have embarked on this venture, and this paper presents the main insights and outcomes of our research and development efforts as part of a number of successful EU research projects. Our proposal not only aims to reshape software engineering to meet the needs of EUD but also to refashion its components as solution building blocks instead of programs and software developments. This way, end users will really be empowered to build solutions based on artefacts akin to their expertise and understanding of ideal solution

Space-centred information management approach to improve CAD-based healthcare building design

This study focuses on developing a space-centred CAD tool to enable designers to effectively manage and implement the information of design guidance information and user requirements during design processes, especially for the stages of design briefing and conceptual design. It aims to structure and store design guidance and user requirements for healthcare building design into a relational database, and link them to relevant space entities in design plans. The tool is developed on the platform of Autodesk Architecture Desktop (ADT). It also enables users to store and retrieve pictures associated with textual information, because pictures have been always used by designers as an effective medium to represent and deliver design information and knowledge. This can give users directly visual and more understandable perceptions of the design guidance. The tool is fully embedded with Autodesk AutoCAD systems to ensure the application of this tool being fully merged with CAD-based design process. A set of design guidance about Alzheimer clinic built environments are adopted as a sample to demonstrate and validate the tool. Moreover, the scenario of expanding this application to more broad areas has also been foreseen

BugsXLA: Bayes for the Common Man

The absence of user-friendly software has long been a major obstacle to the routine application of Bayesian methods in business and industry. It will only be through widespread application of the Bayesian approach to real problems that issues, such as the use of prior distributions, can be practically resolved in the same way that the choice of significance levels has been in the classical approach; although most Bayesians would hope for a much more satisfactory resolution. It is only relatively recently that any general purpose Bayesian software has been available; by far the most widely used such package is WinBUGS. Although this software has been designed to enable an extremely wide variety of models to be coded relatively easily, it is unlikely that many will bother to learn the language and its nuances unless they are already highly motivated to try Bayesian methods. This paper describes a graphical user interface, programmed by the author, which facilitates the specification of a wide class of generalised linear mixed models for analysis using WinBUGS. The program, BugsXLA (v2.1), is an Excel Add-In that not only allows the user to specify a model as one would in a package such as SAS or S-PLUS, but also aids the specification of priors and control of the MCMC run itself. Inevitably, developing a program such as this forces one to think again about such issues as choice of default priors, parameterisation and assessing convergence. I have tried to adopt currently perceived good practices, but mainly share my approach so that others can apply it and, through constructive criticism, play a small part in the ultimate development of the first Bayesian software package truly useable by the average data analyst.

Wearable device to assist independent living.

Older people increasingly want to remain living independently in their own homes. The aim of the ENABLE project is to develop a wearable device that can be used both within and outside of the home to support older people in their daily lives and which can monitor their health status, detect potential problems, provide activity reminders and offer communication and alarm services. In order to determine the specifications and functionality required for development of the device user surveys and focus groups were undertaken and use case analysis and scenario modeling carried out. The project has resulted in the development of a wrist worn device and mobile phone combination that can support and assist older and vulnerable wearers with a range of activities and services both inside and outside of their homes. The device is currently undergoing pilot trials in five European countries. The aim of this paper is to describe the ENABLE device, its features and services, and the infrastructure within which it operates