Pattern languages in HCI: A critical review

This article presents a critical review of patterns and pattern languages in human-computer interaction (HCI). In recent years, patterns and pattern languages have received considerable attention in HCI for their potential as a means for developing and communicating information and knowledge to support good design. This review examines the background to patterns and pattern languages in HCI, and seeks to locate pattern languages in relation to other approaches to interaction design. The review explores four key issues: What is a pattern? What is a pattern language? How are patterns and pattern languages used? and How are values reflected in the pattern-based approach to design? Following on from the review, a future research agenda is proposed for patterns and pattern languages in HCI

Model-driven design, simulation and implementation of service compositions in COSMO

The success of software development projects to a large extent depends on the quality of the models that are produced in the development process, which in turn depends on the conceptual and practical support that is available for modelling, design and analysis. This paper focuses on model-driven support for service-oriented software development. In particular, it addresses how services and compositions of services can be designed, simulated and implemented. The support presented is part of a larger framework, called COSMO (COnceptual Service MOdelling). Whereas in previous work we reported on the conceptual support provided by COSMO, in this paper we proceed with a discussion of the practical support that has been developed. We show how reference models (model types) and guidelines (design steps) can be iteratively applied to design service compositions at a platform independent level and discuss what tool support is available for the design and analysis during this phase. Next, we present some techniques to transform a platform independent service composition model to an implementation in terms of BPEL and WSDL. We use the mediation scenario of the SWS challenge (concerning the establishment of a purchase order between two companies) to illustrate our application of the COSMO framework

The role of concurrency in an evolutionary view of programming abstractions

In this paper we examine how concurrency has been embodied in mainstream programming languages. In particular, we rely on the evolutionary talking borrowed from biology to discuss major historical landmarks and crucial concepts that shaped the development of programming languages. We examine the general development process, occasionally deepening into some language, trying to uncover evolutionary lineages related to specific programming traits. We mainly focus on concurrency, discussing the different abstraction levels involved in present-day concurrent programming and emphasizing the fact that they correspond to different levels of explanation. We then comment on the role of theoretical research on the quest for suitable programming abstractions, recalling the importance of changing the working framework and the way of looking every so often. This paper is not meant to be a survey of modern mainstream programming languages: it would be very incomplete in that sense. It aims instead at pointing out a number of remarks and connect them under an evolutionary perspective, in order to grasp a unifying, but not simplistic, view of the programming languages development process

Improving Usability of Interactive Graphics Specification and Implementation with Picking Views and Inverse Transformations

Specifying and programming graphical interactions are difficult tasks, notably because designers have difficulties to express the dynamics of the interaction. This paper shows how the MDPC architecture improves the usability of the specification and the implementation of graphical interaction. The architecture is based on the use of picking views and inverse transforms from the graphics to the data. With three examples of graphical interaction, we show how to express them with the architecture, how to implement them, and how this improves programming usability. Moreover, we show that it enables implementing graphical interaction without a scene graph. This kind of code prevents from errors due to cache consistency management

An instrument for assessing primary students' knowledge of information graphics in mathematics

Information graphics have become increasingly important in representing, organising and analysing information in a technological age. In classroom contexts, information graphics are typically associated with graphs, maps and number lines. However, all students need to become competent with the broad range of graphics that they will encounter in mathematical situations. This paper provides a rationale for creating a test to measure students’ knowledge of graphics. This instrument can be used in mass testing and individual (in-depth) situations. Our analysis of the utility of this instrument informs policy and practice. The results provide an appreciation of the relative difficulty of different information graphics; and provide the capacity to benchmark information about students’ knowledge of graphics. The implications for practice include the need to support the development of students’ knowledge of graphics, the existence of gender differences, the role of cross-curriculum applications in learning about graphics, and the need to explicate the links among graphics

Challenges in Bridging Social Semantics and Formal Semantics on the Web

This paper describes several results of Wimmics, a research lab which names stands for: web-instrumented man-machine interactions, communities, and semantics. The approaches introduced here rely on graph-oriented knowledge representation, reasoning and operationalization to model and support actors, actions and interactions in web-based epistemic communities. The re-search results are applied to support and foster interactions in online communities and manage their resources