Genres of Spam

Spam is currently the dominant form of communications on the internet, accounting for most e-mail traffic. Spam is a marketing device, it is also an expensive and time-consuming nuisance for industrires as well as a major vehicle for serious internet crimes. While considerable research has focused on the technical aspects of spam, how it works and how it can be blocked, our research aims to better understand why it works. We explore how genre theory can contribute to our understanding of ‘spam’. Our study consists of two parts. The first examined the content, form and specific features and considered the manifest relationship to existing genres of communication. The second part of the study focused on a detailed analysis of 111 Nigerian letters, a particularly noxious form of spam. Genre is generally considered useful because it makes communications more recognizable and understandable to recipients, helping readers process information. Our study suggests that spam is not a single genre but adaptations of many recognizable print genres. With spam, genre operates at several levels and is often used to mask rather than reveal intent. The paper concludes that spam exploits genre by conforming to known forms while at the same time breaching those norms

Data quality assurance for strategic decision making in Abu Dhabi's public organisations

“A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy”.Data quality is an important aspect of an organisation’s strategies for supporting decision makers in reaching the best decisions possible and consequently attaining the organisation’s objectives. In the case of public organisations, decisions ultimately concern the public and hence further diligence is required to make sure that these decisions do, for instance, preserve economic resources, maintain public health, and provide national security. The decision making process requires a wealth of information in order to achieve efficient results. Public organisations typically acquire great amounts of data generated by public services. However, the vast amount of data stored in public organisations’ databases may be one of the main reasons for inefficient decisions made by public organisations. Processing vast amounts of data and extracting accurate information are not easy tasks. Although technology helps in this respect, for example, the use of decision support systems, it is not sufficient for improving decisions to a significant level of assurance. The research proposed using data mining to improve results obtained by decision support systems. However, more considerations are needed than the mere technological aspects. The research argues that a complete data quality framework is needed in order to improve data quality and consequently the decision making process in public organisations. A series of surveys conducted in seven public organisations in Abu Dhabi Emirate of the United Arab Emirates contributed to the design of a data quality framework. The framework comprises elements found necessary to attain the quality of data reaching decision makers. The framework comprises seven elements ranging from technical to human-based found important to attain data quality in public organisations taking Abu Dhabi public organisations as the case. The interaction and integration of these elements contributes to the quality of data reaching decision makers and hence to the efficiency of decisions made by public organisations. The framework suggests that public organisations may need to adopt a methodological basis to support the decision making process. This includes more training courses and supportive bodies of the organisational units, such as decision support centres, information security and strategic management. The framework also underscores the importance of acknowledging human and cultural factors involved in the decision making process. Such factors have implications for how training and raising awareness are implemented to lead to effective methods of system development

Using Unified Personal Information in Workspaces

Knowledge workers (KWers) deal with personal information and use tools like, e.g., desktop workspaces to support their work. But KWer support is hindered by personal information fragmentation, i.e., applications keep a set of personal information while not interconnecting it. This thesis addresses this in the domains personal task management and meeting management by using a common unified personal information model as offered by the semantic desktop personal information management (PIM) system

A study of the perception of the impact of modeling on the development of commitment to action in Decision Conferencing.

Managers are increasingly faced with making complex decisions in turbulent organisational environments. This has led to greater information processing demands. Increasingly organisations try to deal with this in such a way that many of these decisions are now made in a group environment. The increase in group decision making has generated a corresponding intensification in the interest in options available to support such decision making. One such approach is a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) referred to as Decision Conferencing. However, Decision Conferencing rests on the unsupported key premise that the computer modeling, which forms an intrinsic part of the process, leads to shared understanding and commitment - the stated goals of the process. The application of Decision Conferencing to important organizational issues continues, yet prior to this study its fundamental premise was both empirically unsupported and potentially under-theorised. This theory-building research demonstrates that the interface between these concepts is more complex than the literature suggests and that the concepts themselves are problematic. Shared understanding is essentially a dependent variable, with factors such as comprehension of the modeling process impacting on the degree to which this is developed. In addition, many aspects of commitment fall outside of the domain of the Decision Conference workshop e.g. the individual’s sense of responsibility and degree of commitment to their profession. The idea of commitment appears to fall more into the arena of managerial responsibility and change management and it is partly how the outcomes are managed after the Decision Conference which will be crucial to their implementation.Within this study it appears that the most a Decision Conference can offer is the ‘buy-in’ or constructive involvement of the individual participant; the assurance of an unassailable case to which all participants have contributed, for the adoption of the outcomes; and the confidence in the outcomes that this brings. All of this suggests that a higher order goal which subsumes these factors should be considered when re-conceptualising the Decision Conferencing experience. It is suggested here that Decision Quality is a more appropriate goal for the Decision Conferencing process. In essence this is an expansion of the existing ‘best bet’ concept already endorsed in the Decision Conferencing literature. The thesis presents a number of conditions for assuring decision quality e.g. a democratic environment for decision making; mutual respect and an encouragement of diversity. It is also argued that it falls to the facilitator to encompass all of these factors. Given the above, it is also suggested that it is appropriate to consider an alternative conceptualization of Decision Conferencing which facilitators of public sector groups might adopt. This revised conceptualization is drawn from complexity theory. Incorporating the findings from this study a more strongly theorised facilitation approach, entitled Quality Facilitation Practice (QFP) has been developed. Taking into account all of the above a revised model for Decision Conferencing in the public sector is presented, incorporating both QFP and the higher order goal of Decision Quality

The Lifecycle of a Whiteboard Photo: Post-meeting Usage of Whiteboard Content Captured with Mobile Devices

The traditional dry-erase whiteboard is a ubiquitous tool in the workplace, particularly in meeting spaces where they are a key collaboration tool. Although research on whiteboard use and the development of whiteboard systems have been a staple in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature, there is a lack of how whiteboard content is used to direct actions outside the meeting. In today’s mobile-centric world, knowledge workers capture whiteboard content after a meeting by taking photos of them with mobile devices such as cellphones. This thesis empirically investigated post-meeting practices with whiteboard photos to explore how these practices might be better supported by technology. In particular, this thesis investigated the main post-meeting activities that whiteboard photos support, how people value whiteboard photos, and how they manage them. Nineteen knowledge workers from a variety of professions, companies, and industries across North America who were regular users of whiteboards were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol. A Thematic Analysis of the data revealed that whiteboard photos were primarily used to create superseding documents and were sometimes used as evidence of agreement. Whiteboard photos were used mostly in the short-term, and their value was transient. Also, an analysis of the minute detailed actions that interviewees reported taking with one or two recent whiteboard photos revealed that the typical lifecycle of those whiteboard photos involved a seven-stage lifecycle. Moreover, a memory recall task with six of the interviewees about previous meetings where a whiteboard was used revealed that general characteristics of those meetings were well remembered while characteristics about the whiteboard content were not well remembered. The findings suggested a set of unmet design needs for the development of improved mobile-centric whiteboard capture systems. The suggested design implications include the need for a mobile application that supports quick capture and the effortless transfer of whiteboard photos to productivity-oriented devices, and the need for a desktop application that supports the extraction of whiteboard content to aid users in creating superseding documents

Managerial Problem-Solving Methods and Outline Specification for a Computer-Based Managerial Job-Management System

This thesis examines problem-solving theory and practice by managers and proposes a structure for computer-based job and problem management. Two principal models are advanced. The Problem-centred model reflects existing perceptions of the problem-solver analysing a specific issue but with further definition given of the main model components. The Role-centred model broadens the perspective to reflect the manager dealing with the totality of his current work units (tasks) amongst which problems form a sub-set. Whilst a work unit may not be 'problematic' it is linked with other issues both in terms of competition for resources and the causal relationships engendered by any resulting actions. The thesis describes a number of designed methods that have emerged in the last few decades including rational sequential approaches as well as self-contained methods which focus on a particular facet. Whilst the varied nature of most managerial problems precludes the adoption of a rigid phased approach, the individual phase components of the former and the specific foci of the latter may be relevant to some amongst the population of problems. Some of the failures in acceptance of the methods by practitioners can be attributed to an assumption that these are comprehensive rather than selectively relevant. Fieldwork provides additional insights into processes adopted in real-world problem-solving, main findings being fragmentation of a problem into sub-problems, the distinction between processes to solve problems and processes to administer the problem-solving process and the network of relationships between different problems. The desk-top PC is identified as currently the main tool for managers offering the most significant potential in terms of medium for methods design and delivery. The recently-emerging PIMs systems can provide the basis for job management but the functionality requires substantial expansion to include the problem-centred activities resulting in broad categories termed Search, Input, Output, Holding, Data and Relating. Executive Information Systems and Expert Systems provide increasingly relevant support within this overall framework, along with other tools and techniques. The main implication of the role-centred model is the requirement that problem-solving methods be embedded within a wider, holistic structure which reflects the manager addressing the totality of his current activities which are prioritised but also interrelated. Within this structure many existing methods, tools and techniques can be assimilated on a non-prescriptive basis as they can be viewed as selectively relevant to types of problem or individual activities within problem-solving processes

Assessing information value for harnessing knowledge needed for improving decision-making and effectiveness of a government organisation: A Case study of Abu Dhabi Police Force

Due to many adverse consequences of poor decision making in organisations there is a need to focus on the quality of information and knowledge. This research focuses on how to obtain and use, or “harness” knowledge from information in improving organisational decision-making in a civil protection/security organisation to become effective and enter an organisational wide learning spiral. This is necessary in order to gain a high degree of intuitiveness and intelligence and to be effective. The researcher explores how information-knowledge can be processed and converted into deeper level knowledge, while at the same time how to get decision makers to codify knowledge in order to help them to externalise it. In order to achieve this, the “information-space” model was used to show the information-to-knowledge dynamic journey. The research involved using quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative approach is used to obtain computable results from key decision-makers, such as senior workers, and test a model derived from the literature. Seventeen hypotheses were proposed based on theory to evaluate the proposed model. Primary data was collected during the empirical phase of the research from 135 respondents. A structural equation model was used and included exogenous and endogenous latent constructs. On the other hand, a use of qualitative research helped to obtain deeper insights into the use of information and knowledge in decision making. It was underpinned by several propositions and its aim was to expose the role of information-knowledge and the creation of a learning organisation. The results of the quantitative approach revealed that twelve hypotheses are positively significant. Two hypotheses have a significant negative impact on other constructs. Additionally, three hypotheses are non-statistically significant. The results reveal some very interesting insights, such as that demographic factors, such as age, level of education, gender, work experience and level of authority, have a significant impact on problem solving and decision making. In terms of type of information, the proprietary and common sense information types have more significance for solving problem and decision making. But, much to the researcher’s surprise, the public information and personal information played a very minor role. On the other hand, the results of the qualitative data collection show how key decision makers made decisions and gained a certain degree of intuition from it. Therefore, this research has met its objective in helping towards improvement in a civil protection/security organisation to become a learning organisation and help it to enter a learning spiral and make continual improvement. Hence, the researcher succeeds in making suitable recommendations to a number of different stakeholders, in particular the civil protection/security organisations to (i) to develop their management and specialist personnel, and, (ii) to have the necessary information management strategy in place that would harness information and help towards (iii) creating an effective and robust knowledge management strategy

Evaluating groupware usability at the cognitive level of human action

Tese de doutoramento, Informática (Engenharia Informática), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2010This dissertation explores the importance of the cognitive level of human action in the evaluation and improvement of groupware usability. This research is motivated by the problem that current methods focus on the rational and social levels of human action and yet an increasing number of users relies on computers to fulfil collaborative tasks dominated by perceptual, cognitive, and motor skill. The first contribution of this research is a groupware interface model that leverages existing knowledge on cognitive-level behaviour with single-user interfaces by expanding its application to multi-user interfaces. To do this, I show that the key differences between users interacting with the computer and interacting with other users through the computer can be supported by specialised groupware information flows and input/output devices. The second contribution of this dissertation is a pair of methods for predicting groupware usability at the cognitive level of human action. The first method applies to scenarios of collaboration occurring routinely in shared workspaces. The second aims at capturing the intertwined nature of mixed-focus collaboration, encompassing shared and private workspaces. I use the methods to evaluate and compare the usability of competing designs in four scenarios of collaboration. The methods do not require user testing or functioning prototypes, so they can be integrated into the iterative process of interactive systems design. The third contribution of this research is the evaluation of an attentive electronic brainstorming tool, which implements a novel attentive device that adjusts the delivery of group awareness information according to users’ natural task switching between doing individual work and attending to the group. I present results from a laboratory experiment, which indicate that groups produced 9.6% more ideas when compared to the immediate broadcast of ideas and provide evidence suggesting that the usability improvement was due to the mitigation of information overload.Esta dissertação explora a importância do nível cognitivo da actividade humana, no qual as tarefas demoram segundos a realizar e são tipicamente repetitivas, na avaliação e melhoria da usabilidade de sistemas de trabalho cooperativo suportado por computador, também designados por groupware. Estes sistemas de computadores permitem que grupos de interesse, como amigos e colegas, possam partilhar e organizar actividades de forma flexível e económica, onde o tempo e a distância deixam de ser obstáculos à colaboração. Alguns exemplos de groupware incluem os mensageiros instantâneos, usados por centenas de milhões de pessoas no mundo inteiro, os jogos multi-utilizador, que já atingiram cerca de dezasseis milhões de jogadores, bem como uma gama cada vez mais alargada de aplicações de escritório que estão a ser disponibilizadas na Internet. Com base nesta evidência, uma assumpção desta dissertação é que os sistemas de groupware estão a ficar cada vez mais ubíquos. O problema abordado nesta investigação é que os métodos actuais de avaliação da usabilidade de groupware omitem o nível cognitivo da actividade humana, e, no entanto, as nossas características psicológicas, como a percepção, cognição, e capacidade motora, dominam a execução de tarefas de colaboração rápidas, mas normalmente muito repetitivas. Uma consequência desta situação é que faltam instrumentos aos designers e investigadores de groupware que lhes permitam fazer optimizações de usabilidade de granularidade fina. Isto acontece porque os métodos actuais de avaliação da usabilidade visam tarefas colaborativas de relativa longa duração (que demoram minutos, horas, ou mais, a completar) e, portanto, baseiam-se em abstracções para conter o grau de complexidade da avaliação. Desta forma, as optimizações tendem a abranger vários passos de colaboração de granularidade fina de uma só vez, o que causa problemas porque a usabilidade de sistemas de groupware, como na maioria dos sistemas computacionais, está inerentemente ligada aos detalhes da interface com o utilizador. Estas optimizações, mesmo que de pequena expressão individual, podem acarretar um efeito multiplicador significativo dado o crescente número de utilizadores de groupware, especialmente na Internet. Outra consequência do nível cognitivo da acção humana ser negligenciado das avaliações de usabilidade de groupware é que o design da interface com o utilizador pode estar indevidamente alinhado com as características psicológicas humanas, o que pode fazer com que as tarefas colaborativas exijam uma carga de trabalho que excede as nossas capacidades limitadas de processamento de informação. Aliás, os utilizadores que realizam trabalho em grupo estão particularmente expostos a uma sobrecarga de informação porque têm de acompanhar o que se passa no grupo para além de realizarem trabalho individual, isto é, têm de dividir a atenção entre múltiplos fluxos de informação. Esta carga de trabalho pode penalizar a usabilidade dos sistemas de groupware devido ao aumento da probabilidade dos utilizadores não serem capazes de colaborar adequadamente. Dada esta situação, a minha questão de investigação é: como fazer avaliações ao nível cognitivo da actividade humana para melhorar a usabilidade de tarefas colaborativas realizadas através de sistemas de groupware? As avaliações de usabilidade ao nível cognitivo são bastante conhecidas no contexto das aplicações mono-utilizador, ao ponto de um conjunto de conhecimentos da psicologia aplicada ter sido reunido em modelos de engenharia de desempenho humano que predizem tempos de execução numa gama variada de tarefas de interacção pessoa-máquina. Estes modelos foram já, inclusivamente, aplicados no contexto de trabalho de grupo, mas sempre com a limitação de os utilizadores estarem restringidos a papéis individualistas e de a colaboração ficar de fora dos limites do sistema ou então ser abstraída. Em contraste, nesta dissertação estou interessado em avaliar as tarefas de colaboração realizadas através do sistema de groupware. A primeira contribuição desta investigação é um modelo da interface do groupware, o qual alavanca o conhecimento existente sobre o comportamento humano com interfaces mono-utilizador, baseado em modelos de engenharia que predizem o desempenho humano, através da expansão da sua aplicação a interfaces multi-utilizador. Para fazer isto mostro que as diferenças fundamentais entre os utilizadores interagirem com o computador (para trabalharem individualmente) e interagirem com outros utilizadores através do computador (para colaborar) podem ser suportadas por fluxos de informação e dispositivos de input/output especializados. Este modelo tem como propósito ajudar o designer a organizar o espaço de soluções numa gama alargada de sistemas de groupware. A segunda contribuição desta dissertação é um par de métodos para avaliar a usabilidade de sistemas de groupware ao nível cognitivo da actividade humana. O primeiro método é aplicável a cenários críticos de colaboração que ocorram rotineiramente em espaços de trabalho partilhados e define usabilidade em termos do tempo necessário para executar tarefas colaborativas, tal como estimado pelos modelos de engenharia de desempenho humano. Na dissertação aplico este método para avaliar e comparar a usabilidade de alternativas de design em três casos de colaboração em espaços partilhados. O segundo método visa capturar a natureza complexa e entrecruzada da colaboração que abrange tanto espaços partilhados como privados, bem como capturar os objectivos frequentemente conflituosos dos utilizadores enquanto estão a trabalhar individualmente ou quando estão a interagir com o grupo. Para fazer isto, combino estimativas de tempos de execução de tarefas com contribuições dessas tarefas para a progressão do grupo em direcção a um objectivo comum, em termos de produtividade individual, oportunidades criadas para os outros, e restrições para o trabalho de outros utilizadores. Na dissertação aplico este método a um jogo colaborativo, e mostro que, se para alguma outra coisa mais, este método serve para forçar o designer de groupware a pensar sobre as contrapartidas entre uma interface que permite aos utilizadores enquanto indivíduos serem mais produtivos e outra que permite um melhor desempenho do grupo enquanto um todo. Os dois métodos de avaliação não requerem testes com utilizadores ou a construção de protótipos de groupware para produzirem resultados de usabilidade, o que atesta a sua natureza formativa, e permite a sua integração no processo iterativo de design de sistemas interactivos. A terceira contribuição desta investigação é a avaliação da usabilidade de um sistema de groupware atentivo, que implementa um novo dispositivo de gestão da atenção humana, chamado opportunity seeker , o qual tem como propósito mitigar a sobrecarga de informação em cenários de colaboração síncrona, isto é, em que todos os elementos do grupo estão a trabalhar em simultâneo. O opportunity seeker intercepta e guarda numa memória tampão a informação de estado sobre o grupo e ajusta automaticamente a entrega dessa informação a cada utilizador em função da alternância natural entre este estar a realizar trabalho individual e estar a prestar atenção ao grupo. Na dissertação mostro como este dispositivo pode ser adaptado e instalado numa ferramenta electrónica para geração de ideias, chamada ABTool, e como a fronteira entre os dois estados de atenção pode ser detectada através de actividade no teclado. Para avaliar os efeitos do opportunity seeker na usabilidade da ferramenta ABTool, realizei uma experiência de laboratório em que pedi a grupos de voluntários para submeterem ideias em paralelo o mais rapidamente possível, e recolhi evidência de que quando os grupos estiveram sob a influência do opportunity seeker o número de ideias geradas aumentou em 9.6% em comparação com a condição em que todas as ideias eram imediatamente difundidas por todos os utilizadores. Adicionalmente, levei a cabo uma análise post-hoc que mostra que o opportunity seeker reduziu o número de entregas de ideias em 44.1%, pois combinou as ideias em pequenos lotes, e que isso se traduziu em 54.7% mais tempo para os utilizadores escreverem ideias sem serem interrompidos pela recepção de ideias de outros utilizadores. Nestas condições, os utilizadores foram 18.8% mais rápidos a alternar entre a escrita de uma ideia, o que fizeram em 16.3% menos tempo, e ler novas ideias de outros utilizadores. Estes resultados evidenciam que o opportunity seeker criou condições para mitigar a sobrecarga de informação e mostram que a usabilidade de sistemas de groupware pode ser melhorada através de avaliações focadas nas limitações da capacidade de processamento de informação humana. Com este conjunto de contribuições, mostrei que o nível cognitivo da actividade humana tem um papel determinante na avaliação da usabilidade de sistemas de groupware, complementando os níveis racional e social que têm sido tradicionalmente considerados por outros métodos de avaliação.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology(Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia), through project PTDC/EIA/67589/2006 and the Multiannual Funding Programme

Towards a knowledge sharing framework based on student questions : the case for a dynamic FAQ environment

Includes bibliographical references.This study investigates the impact of anonymous computer mediated interaction on question-driven knowledge acquisition among students. A growing concern for educational institutions in general and educators in particular has been to augment what students are formally taught and what they informally learn from one another. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students consult one another informally. However, informal consultations suffer from three limitations: a) they are limited to clusters of friends; b) shared information is not retained; c) educators have no access to informal knowledge. My argument is that knowledge shared informally among students is a potential knowledge resource for both students and educators. As a student resource, it allows students to reconstruct their own understanding as they share their knowledge with each other. As an educators' resource, it serves as a diagnostic tool about students' knowledge levels hence identifying areas of misunderstanding or misconceptions

Geographically distributed requirements elicitation

The technology revolution has transformed the way in which many organisations do their business. The resultant information systems have increased the decision making powers of executives, leading to increased effectiveness and ultimately to improved product delivery. The process of information systems development is, however, complex. Furthermore, it has a poor track record in terms of on-time and within-budget delivery, but more significantly in terms of low user acceptance frequently attributable to poor user requirements specification. Consequently, much attention has been given to the process of requirements elicitation, with both researchers and businessmen seeking new, innovative and effective methods. These methods usually involve large numbers of participants who are drawn from within the client and developer organisations. This is a financially costly characteristic of the requirements elicitation process. Besides information systems, the technology revolution has also brought sophisticated communication technologies into the marketplace. These communication technologies allow people to communicate with one another in a variety of different time and space scenarios. An important spin-off of this is the ability for people located in significantly different geographical locations to work collaboratively on a project. It is claimed that this approach to work has significant cost and productivity advantages. This study draws the requirements elicitation process into the realm of collaborative work. Important project management, communication, and collaborative working principles are examined in detail, and a model is developed which represents these issues as they pertain to the requirements elicitation process. An empirical study (conducted in South Africa) is performed in order to examine the principles of the model and the relationships between its constituent elements. A model of geographically distributed requirements elicitation (GDRE) is developed on the basis of the findings of this investigation. The model of GDRE is presented as a 3-phased approach to requirements elicitation, namely planning, implementation, and termination. Significantly, the model suggests the use of interviews, structured workshops, and prototyping as the chief requirements elicitation methods to be adopted in appropriate conditions. Although a detailed study of communications technology was not performed, this thesis suggests that each individual GDRE implementation requires a different mix of communication technologies to support its implementation