Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

The shared use of the cityscape. Revisiting the extraordinary case of SoHo

Este artículo examina el fenómeno cultural y urbano que aconteció en SoHo como el principal incitador de una relación sin precedentes y de beneficio mutuo entre arte y ciudad. Esta fue la primera experiencia deliberada de este tipo que resultaría en un modelo innovador de vida urbana basado en la cooperación de una comunidad de artistas a través de la interacción con el espacio obsoleto existente en la Ciudad de Nueva York. Este artículo explora el desarrollo de las prácticas espaciales de los artistas de SoHo sobre este territorio principalmente durante los primero años de la década de 1970. El tejido industrial olvidado de SoHo convergió con fuerzas artísticas revolucionarias y generó un producto urbano pionero, el “distrito artístico”. No obstante, la notable cantidad de incursiones artísticas, apropiaciones urbanas y actos de colaboración se concretarían también en otros aprendizajes de menor escala, procedimientos singulares y estratégicos que inspirarían el trabajo en la ciudad de artistas en décadas posteriores. SoHo sería el preludio, el punto de partida, de un arte con responsabilidad urbana y social que se ha revelado hoy de gran interés para aquellos pensadores urbanos que buscan maneras de construir una ciudad más creativa e incluyente.This article reviews SoHo’s cultural and urban phenomenon as the main promoter of an unprecedented mutually beneficial relationship between art and city. This was the first deliberated experience of its kind, resulting in an innovative model of urban life based on the cooperation of a community of artists through the interaction with existing obsolete space in New York City. This article explores the development of the spatial practices by the artists of SoHo throughout this area primarily during the early 1970s. SoHo’s forgotten industrial fabric converged with revolutionary artistic forces and generated a groundbreaking urban product, the “art district”. Nonetheless, the number of art incursions, urban appropriations and collective acts would also conclude in other small scale learning, unique and strategic procedures that inspired the artists’ works in the city over the following decades. SoHo would be the prelude, the starting point for an art with urban and social responsibility, which is revealed today of great interest for those city thinkers who seek ways to build a more creative and inclusive city

Subjective Reactions to Noise in Open-Plan Offices and the Effects of Noise on Cognitive Performance - Problems and Solutions

This thesis examines the effects of noise on cognitive performance and subjective reactions in open-plan offices. Earlier research suggests that the acoustic distraction largely results from background speech that is irrelevant to the listener. Combining methods from psychology and room acoustic research, this thesis investigates speech intelligibility as a predictor of the negative effects of background speech and examines some design-related solutions to decreasing these problems. Speech intelligibility is described with the Speech Transmission Index (STI) and the distraction distance which is a room acoustic parameter based on the STI. Evidence from three laboratory experiments and two field studies is presented. The results show that the general perception of both disturbing noise (Study IV) and office distractions (Study V) is strongly correlated with disturbing background speech in open-plan offices. An increase in office distractions mediates negative changes in environmental satisfaction, perceived collaboration and stress symptoms following a move to a modern open-plan office (Study V). The laboratory studies (I, II and III) show that speech intelligibility predicts particularly subjective perceptions of acoustic disturbance but also performance in verbal short-term memory and working memory tasks. The observed performance results are compatible with the STI-performance model proposed by Hongisto (2005). More complex tasks with higher requirements on semantic processing were not affected (Studies I to III). In terms of the investigated solutions, the findings support the use of masking sound in increasing satisfaction with the acoustic environment (Studies I to IV). Filtered pink noise and spring water sound are effective and pleasant masking sounds whereas music cannot be recommended for general use (Study II). Together, Studies III and IV show that perceived noise disturbance can be decreased in open-plan offices by holistic room acoustic design. However, its benefits are limited at short distances between nearby workstations (Study III). Distraction distance predicts perceived noise disturbance in open-plan offices (Study IV), which supports its use in the evaluation and design of office acoustics. The provision of additional quiet workspaces is a complementary way of decreasing the negative effects of office distractions in modern open-plan offices (Study V). Limitations of this work and suggestions for future research are discussed.Subjektiiviset reaktiot avotoimistojen meluun ja melun vaikutukset kognitiiviseen suoriutumiseen. Ongelmia ja ratkaisuja Tämä väitöskirjatutkimus käsittelee melun vaikutuksia kognitiiviseen suoriutumiseen ja subjektiivisiin reaktioihin avotoimistoissa. Aiempien tutkimusten mukaan koetut akustiset ongelmat liittyvät suurelta osin sellaisiin puheääniin, jotka ovat kuulijan kannalta hyödyttömiä. Tässä tutkimuksessa selvitetään psykologisia ja huoneakustisia tutkimusmenetelmiä yhdistäen puheenerotettavuuden merkitystä puheen negatiivisten vaikutusten selittäjänä sekä tutkitaan toimistosuunnittelun keinoja ongelmien vähentämiseksi. Puheenerotettavuutta kuvataan puheensiirtoindeksillä ja häiritsevyyssäteellä, joka on puheensiirtoindeksiin perustuva huoneakustinen mittaluku. Tutkimus sisältää kolme kokeellista laboratoriotutkimusta ja kaksi kenttätutkimusta. Tulosten perusteella sekä häiritsevä melu (Tutkimus IV) että kokemus työympäristön häiriötekijöistä (Tutkimus V) korreloivat vahvasti puheäänten häiritsevyyden kanssa. Häiriötekijöiden lisääntyminen toimii välittävänä tekijänä suhteessa negatiivisiin muutoksiin ympäristötyytyväisyydessä, yhteistyön kokemisessa sekä stressioireissa avotoimistoon muuton jälkeen (Tutkimus V). Laboratoriotutkimukset (I, II ja III) osoittavat, että puheenerotettavuus ennustaa erityisesti akustisten olosuhteiden subjektiivista häiritsevyyttä, mutta myös suoriutumista verbaalisissa lyhytkestoisen muistin ja työmuistin tehtävissä. Kognitiivista suoriutumista koskevat tulokset ovat yhdenmukaisia Hongiston (2005) esittämän, puheensiirtoindeksin ja suoriutumisen suhdetta kuvaavan mallin kanssa. Kompleksisemmissa, enemmän semanttista prosessointia sisältävissä tehtävissä ei havaittu puheäänten vaikutuksia kognitiiviseen suoriutumiseen (Tutkimukset I-III). Tutkittujen ratkaisukeinojen osalta tulokset tukevat peiteäänen käyttöä akustisen tyytyväisyyden parantamisessa (Tutkimukset I-IV). Suodatettu kohina ja puronsolina ovat tehokkaita ja miellyttäviä peiteääniä, kun taas musiikkia ei voida suositella yleiseen käyttöön (Tutkimus II). Tutkimukset III ja IV osoittavat, että akustisia ongelmia voidaan vähentää kokonaisvaltaisella huoneakustisella suunnittelulla. Sen hyödyt ovat kuitenkin rajallisia lyhyillä etäisyyksillä lähityöpisteiden välillä (Tutkimus III). Häiritsevyyssäde selittää koettua melun häiritsevyyttä avotoimistoissa (Tutkimus IV), mikä tukee sen käyttöä toimistojen akustisten olosuhteiden arvioinnissa ja suunnittelussa. Työympäristön häiriötekijöiden negatiivisia vaikutuksia voidaan lisäksi vähentää rakentamalla avotoimistoihin vaihtoehtoisia hiljaisia työtiloja (Tutkimus V). Väitöskirjan lopussa tarkastellaan tutkimuksen rajoituksia sekä jatkotutkimustarpeita.Siirretty Doriast

Dissemination, Future Research and Education:

This booklet is one of three final documentations of the results of the COST-Action TU 1403 ‘ADAPTIVE FACADE NETWORK’ to be published next to the proceedings of the Final COST Conference ‘FACADE 2018 – ADAPTIVE!’ and a Special Issue of the Journal of Façade Design & Engineering (JFDE). While the proceedings and the journal present current scientific research papers selected through a traditional peer review process, these three final documentations have another focus and objective. These three documentations will share a more holistic and comparative view to the scientific and educational framework of this COST-Action on adaptive facades with the objective to generate an overview and a summary – different from the more specific approach of the proceedings and connecting to the first publication that was presenting the participating institutions. The three titles are the following and are connected to the deliverables of the responsible Working Groups (WG): Booklet 3.1 Case Studies (WG1) Booklet 3.2 Building Performance Simulation and Characterisation of Adaptive Facades (WG2) Booklet 3.3 Dissemination, Future Research and Education (WG4) Booklet 3.1 concentrates on the definition and classification of adaptive facades by describing the state of the art of real-world and research projects and by providing a database to be published on COST TU 1403 website (http://tu1403.eu/). Booklet 3.2 focusses on comparing simulation and testing methods, tools and facilities. And finally, Booklet 3.3 documents the interdisciplinary, horizontal and vertical networking and communication between the different stakeholders of the COST-Action organised through Short Term Scientific Missions (STSM), Training Schools and support sessions for Early Stage Researchers (ESR) / Early Career Investigators (ECI), industry workshops, and related surveys as specific means of dissemination to connect research and education. All three booklets show the diversity of approaches to the topic of adaptive facades coming from the different participants and stakeholders, such as: architecture and design, engineering and simulation, operation and management, industry and fabrication and from education and research. The tasks and deliverables of Working Group 4 were organized and supported by the following group members and their functions: – Thomas Henriksen, Denmark ESR/ECI – Ulrich Knaack, The Netherlands Chair (2015-16) – Thaleia Konstantinou, The Netherlands ESR/ECI – Christian Louter, The Netherlands Vice-Chair, STSM Coordinator – Andreas Luible, Switzerland Website, Meetings – David Metcalfe, United Kingdom Training Schools – Uta Pottgiesser, Germany Chair (2017-18) As editors and Chairs, we would like to thank the Working Group members and authors from other Working Groups for their significant and comprehensive contributions to this booklet. Moreover, we sincerely thank Ashal Tyurkay for her great assistance during the whole editing and layout process. We also want to thank COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)

Growing a Tree in the Forest: Constructing Folksonomies by Integrating Structured Metadata

Many social Web sites allow users to annotate the content with descriptive metadata, such as tags, and more recently to organize content hierarchically. These types of structured metadata provide valuable evidence for learning how a community organizes knowledge. For instance, we can aggregate many personal hierarchies into a common taxonomy, also known as a folksonomy, that will aid users in visualizing and browsing social content, and also to help them in organizing their own content. However, learning from social metadata presents several challenges, since it is sparse, shallow, ambiguous, noisy, and inconsistent. We describe an approach to folksonomy learning based on relational clustering, which exploits structured metadata contained in personal hierarchies. Our approach clusters similar hierarchies using their structure and tag statistics, then incrementally weaves them into a deeper, bushier tree. We study folksonomy learning using social metadata extracted from the photo-sharing site Flickr, and demonstrate that the proposed approach addresses the challenges. Moreover, comparing to previous work, the approach produces larger, more accurate folksonomies, and in addition, scales better.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in the Proceedings of ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining(KDD) 201

Beyond Browsing and Reading: The Open Work of Digital Scholarly Editions

INKE’s Modelling and Prototyping group is currently motivated by the following research questions:  How do we model and enable context within the electronic scholarly edition?   And how do we engage knowledge-building communities and capture process, dialogue and connections in and around the electronic scholarly edition?  NewRadial is a prototype scholarly edition environment developed to address such queries.  It argues for the unification of primary texts, secondary scholarship and related knowledge communities, and re-presents the digital scholarly edition as a social edition, an open work and shared space where users collaboratively explore, sort, group, annotate and contribute to secondary scholarship creation

Adaptive 3D Imaging and Tolerance Analysis of Prefabricated Components for Accelerated Construction

abstract: Tolerance analysis of prefabricated components poses challenges to effective quality control of accelerated construction projects in urban areas. In busy urban environments, accelerated construction methods quickly assemble prefabricated components to achieve workflows that are more efficient and reduce impacts of construction on urban traffic and business. Accelerated constructions also bring challenges of “fit-up:” misalignments between components can occur due to less detailed tolerance assessments of components. Conventional tolerance checking approaches, such as manual mock-up, cannot provide detailed geometric assessments in a timely manner. This paper proposes the integration of an adaptive 3D imaging and spatial pattern analysis methods to achieve detailed and frequent “fit-up” analysis of prefabricated components. The adaptive 3D imaging methods progressively adjust imaging parameters of a laser scanner according to the geometric complexities of prefabricated components captured in data collected so far. The spatial pattern analysis methods automatically analyze deviations of prefabricated components from as-designed models to derive tolerance networks that capture relationships between tolerances of components and identify risks of misalignments

Modalities of regulation In the informal economy: a study of waste collectors in Cape Town

Includes bibliographical referencesA large amount of people in South Africa earn their living from recycling waste on landfills or the streets in cities across the country. Much is written about those operating on landfills, although a few studies focus on those operating on the streets. The latter studies largely focus on the socio-economic conditions and collective organising capacity of these informal sector workers, and their relationships with other actors. Although, these studies provide a useful resource for understanding the nature of their work and the contexts in which it emerges, very little is known about how their work is regulated. With this in mind, this thesis asks the following research question; how are informal activities regulated in the city? Drawing on the idea of non-humans as actors (in Actor Network Theory terms) this thesis argues that informal activities are regulated by hybrid modes of regulation that include human/non-human and formal and informal assemblages. The research was conducted between 2008 and 2014. It made use of qualitative methodologies and approaches, i.e. semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis, as methods of data collection. The findings of the research reveal that informal activities are regulated in the followings ways. Firstly, it shows that objects such as trolleys, carthorses, bakkies and storage facilities are regulators that actively enabled or constrained informal waste activities. Secondly, the findings suggest that these nonhumans play an active role in organising the spaces where informal waste activities are carried out. Finally, the findings show that these nonhumans also play an active role in how informal waste collectors build alliances through assembling hybrid collectives of humans and non-humans in order to mobilise resources. The main finding in this study is that regulation in the urban informal economy is constituted by human/non-human and formal/informal assemblages. Including the non-human in the analysis of regulation in the urban informal economy is important because it contributes to a better understanding of regulation in the urban informal economy. It does so by highlighting that regulation in the urban informal economy is not only based on human social relations consisting of rules, norms, and institutions but is constitutive of assemblages that involve all actors (both human and non-humans)

Time Sharing: The Multi-Functional Office

The purpose of my thesis is to create and develop a new office layout that meets the needs of current and new office trends. However, this thesis is only the starting point of my career in understanding how office design improves employee productivity and work efficiency. By applying current research to office design improvement, this space planning layout will benefit trends in modern technology, innovative projects and global development and relations. My goal is to improve current and new office designs with key components found in society. The objective of my study is to improve conditions found in offices where limited square footage and space planning is a major factor in the design. As a result, the Multi‐ Functional office will look at current workplaces that encourage new space developments to improve conditions that are imposed by limited office space. Once the real estate is acquired by the client, the architect has to satisfy all program requirements in addition to building and egress codes. However, designing an office layout that improves efficiency and enhances productivity is challenging. Therefore a comfortable work environment should keep one important factor in mind – the ‘Human Factor.’ This is the point where my thesis begins. My intention is not to write a book of codes or explain how past office designs could be improved. Rather, I want to stimulate creative thinking within the office layout that would be appropriate for tomorrow’s workplace. This new type of space planning may or may not be 100 percent practical in specific industries found in the present day office environments, but we can assume that the new design in the office will create awareness of current problems and challenges found in the workplace. This thesis includes a perspective on alternative workplace strategies and innovative office design for better and more efficient use of space. My research is not advocating a specific office layout. This intended design is the starting point for new ways of looking at the office and is not directing clients and/or architects to follow this space planning precisely. This office layout does not apply to all places of work and/or specific types of office industries. I believe this is a new strategy that presents a new way of thinking. The methodology used is a combination of several types of research methods. The two main methods are Interpretive‐Historical and Qualitative research. Interpretive‐ Historical is based on facts, i.e. archived, records, books, on anything related historically. Qualitative research method comes directly from current information that is found in interviewing, observing and surveying people. This research method is used to understand and analyze specific trends not found in the past. When comparing the past to current trends, we can learn how certain decisions and facts improved or failed in the office environment. Some of the information in this methodology was collected through research conducted by various companies and/or industries that strive to improve the workplace with alternative solutions