IXVC: An interactive pipeline for explaining visual clusters in dimensionality reduction visualizations with decision trees

High-dimensional data with many features are usually challenging to represent with standard visualization techniques. Usually, one has to resort to dimensionality reduction techniques such as PCA, MDS or t-SNE to represent such data. Such dimensionality reduction techniques make it possible to highlight the high-dimensional structures of data. In many of such visualizations, comparable instances appear to form visual clusters. However, no feedback is directly given by these techniques to the user about the features that make the instances cluster together in the visualization. As such, the interpretation of which features define a given visual cluster is a complicated task. In this paper, we propose a novel interactive approach (called Interactive eXplanation of Visual Clusters — IXVC) to explain dimensionality reduction visualizations by mapping their clusters to explanations provided by decision trees. The decision trees use features in high-dimensional data to explain two-dimensional clusters, filling the gap between the dimensionality reduction visualization and the original data

Multi-paradigm modelling for cyber–physical systems: a descriptive framework

The complexity of cyber–physical systems (CPSS) is commonly addressed through complex workflows, involving models in a plethora of different formalisms, each with their own methods, techniques, and tools. Some workflow patterns, combined with particular types of formalisms and operations on models in these formalisms, are used successfully in engineering practice. To identify and reuse them, we refer to these combinations of workflow and formalism patterns as modelling paradigms. This paper proposes a unifying (Descriptive) Framework to describe these paradigms, as well as their combinations. This work is set in the context of Multi-Paradigm Modelling (MPM), which is based on the principle to model every part and aspect of a system explicitly, at the most appropriate level(s) of abstraction, using the most appropriate modelling formalism(s) and workflows. The purpose of the Descriptive Framework presented in this paper is to serve as a basis to reason about these formalisms, workflows, and their combinations. One crucial part of the framework is the ability to capture the structural essence of a paradigm through the concept of a paradigmatic structure. This is illustrated informally by means of two example paradigms commonly used in CPS: Discrete Event Dynamic Systems and Synchronous Data Flow. The presented framework also identifies the need to establish whether a paradigm candidate follows, or qualifies as, a (given) paradigm. To illustrate the ability of the framework to support combining paradigms, the paper shows examples of both workflow and formalism combinations. The presented framework is intended as a basis for characterisation and classification of paradigms, as a starting point for a rigorous formalisation of the framework (allowing formal analyses), and as a foundation for MPM tool development

"A model-driven approach for designing multi-platform user interface dialogues": dialogues specification

Human-computer interaction becomes sophisticated, multimodal and multi device and needs to be well-designed with the aim of facilitating application correction (i.e. to correcting errors/bugs in the application) or extension (i.e. adding new functionalities or modifying existing tasks). This thesis is focused on building a methodology of designing and specifying User Interface (UI) behaviour. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is used to describe in detail the conceptual model and to define all its objects. The methodology flux diagram is provided with the specification of the consistency and the completeness properties of the transformation model. To support the methodology, we implement a graphic Dialog Editor in which Models are organized in three levels (abstract, concrete and final) according to Cameleon Reference Framework (CFR) and, whose process respects the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach. Furthermore, the use of Dialog Editor is illustrated through a simple exam...Les interfaces Homme-Machine deviennent de plus en plus complexes. Leur conception nécessite des nouveaux outils et/ou méthodes. En exploitant l'aproche orienté-modèle, cette thèse repond à ce besoin en proposant une méthodologie de conception des dialogues multi-plateform

Interactive visualisation tools for supporting taxonomists working practice.

The necessity for scientists and others to use consistent terminology has recently beenregarded as fundamental to advancing scientific research, particularly where data fromdisparate sources must be shared, compared or integrated. One area where there aresignificant difficulties with the quality of collected data is the field of taxonomicdescription. Taxonomic description lies at the heart of the classification of organismsand communication of ideas of biodiversity. As part of their working practice,taxonomists need to gather descriptive data about a number of specimens on aconsistent basis for individual projects. Collecting semantically well-defined structureddata could improve the clarity and comparability of such data. No tools howevercurrently exist to allow taxonomists to do so within their working practice.Ontologies are increasingly used to describe and define complex domain data. As a partof related research an ontology of descriptive terminology for controlling the storageand use of flowering plant description data was developed.This work has applied and extended model-based user interface developmentenvironments to utilise such an ontology for the automatic generation of appropriatedata entry interfaces that support semantically well defined and structured descriptivedata. The approach taken maps the ontology to a system domain model, which ataxonomist can then specialise using their domain expertise, for their data entry needs asrequired for individual projects. Based on this specialised domain knowledge, thesystem automatically generates appropriate data entry interfaces that capture dataconsistent with the original ontology. Compared with traditional model-based userautomatic interface development environments, this approach also has the potential toreduce the labour requirements for the expert developer.The approach has also been successfully tested to generate data entry interfaces basedon an XML schema for the exchange of biodiversity datasets