End-User Preferences for Spreader Layout

Acquiring information about user preferences for forum chat layout can be the key for continuously access of the portal. Forum chat is a chatting technique that commonly uses in social networking website. Using forum chat all users can post their stories in front of body layout of website then other users can comment it. Computer Science Department of UiTM Kedah needs to develop a portal that can give interactive session between Computer Science’s Lecturers and their students. From the set of possible behaviour, two different layouts will propose for developing prototype of Computer Science Department Portal which includes online forum chat spot name as Spreader. This research proposed an importance measure that considers which layout most prefer by end-users base on Nielsen's criteria; learnability and user satisfaction. With this information, a new analysis to place Spreader in portal layout successfully performed. This analysis can acts as guideline for applying in any other portal in order to make portal become more interactive than before. The respective results give very important insight regarding end-user preferences and prompt the interactivity of the portal layout

Bridging the digital divide for e-learning students through adaptive VLEs

Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are required to be highly effective and easy to use as they serve as the primary institutional portal between students and academics. There are currently a number of challenges that are caused due to the modernized digital divide, with a significant limitation being the inability of information systems to adapt to the users' technological platform, broadband quality and device in use to access the online system. This paper focuses on the limitations that students encounter when accessing VLEs within Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs). This research aims to primarily review and provide critical analysis of current VLE frameworks, as well as assess restrictions based on several demographics including content adaptation and technical aspects. An algorithmic system is developed to analyze students' individualistic needs, undertake adaption and personalization of the VLE, and hence ensure consistent and efficient access to academic web resources and functionalitie

Improving the performance of a dismounted Future Force Warrior by means of C4I2SR

This thesis comprises seven peer-reviewed articles and examines systems and applications suitable for increasing Future Force Warrior performance, minimizing collateral damage, improving situational awareness and Common Operational Picture. Based on a literature study, missing functionalities of Future Force Warrior were identified and new ideas, concepts and solutions were created as part of early stages of Systems of Systems creation. These introduced ideas have not yet been implemented or tested in combat and for this reason benefit analyses are excluded. The main results of this thesis include the following: A new networking concept, Wireless Polling Sensor Network, which is a swarm of a few Unmanned Aerial Vehicles forming an ad-hoc network and polling a large number of fixed sensor nodes. The system is more robust in a military environment than traditional Wireless Sensor Networks. A Business Process approach to Service Oriented Architecture in a tactical setting is a concept for scheduling and sharing limited resources. New components to military Service Oriented Architecture have been introduced in the thesis. Other results of the thesis include an investigation of the use of Free Space Optics in tactical communications, a proposal for tracking neutral forces, a system for upgrading simple collaboration tools for command, control and collaboration purposes, a three-level hierarchy of Future Force Warrior, and methods for reducing incidents of fratricide

A service-oriented approach to implementing an adaptive user interface

Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are being adopted by organisations in order to integrate disparate computational assets. A major hurdle they face is the decision on how to integrate the UI in an SOA. In addition, technological advances have allowed complex applications and complex user interfaces (UIs) to be realised and the increase in accessibility to computers enables a diverse population of users with different characteristics, preferences and needs to use these complex computer applications. Adaptive user interfaces (AUIs) have been proposed as a solution to cater for the differences in user traits by adapting the UI to meet the diverse needs of users. AUIs have, however, traditionally been developed using client/server architectures This research, therefore, set out to investigate how to develop an AUI using a service-oriented architecture (SOA). In order to successfully achieve the goal of this research, literature concerning SOAs was investigated to gain an understanding of SOAs. A literature review of AUIs was also undertaken to gain an understanding of AUIs. A model-based approach was used to develop a model for UI adaptation using knowledge gained in the literature reviews. The model generates different UIs depending on various users‘ inferred level of expertise. The model describes the interaction between AUI services that use design-time documents and run-time user-interaction to adapt the UI. A prototype of the model was implemented and evaluated using an evolution strategy devised to assess different aspects of the research. The evaluation strategy proved the following: The service components of the prototype adhere to SOA design principles; The implementation was effective based on software engineering metrics; and, The implementation was usable and did not negatively affect the performance of users. The successful implementation of the prototype provides evidence that the design of AUIs using SOA is feasible. This dissertation therefore makes a contribution to the development of AUIs using SOAs. The model could be used to provide UI adaptation for business software applications