Audio design in mid-core mobile games

This thesis explores practical aspects of audio design in mid-core games – a massive segment of the modern mobile game market. Despite there is no shortage of professional literature about game audio in general, most of it describes either purely technical or very general matters, taking video games as undivided whole. Games, however, can be broken up into distinct categories, based on genres, platforms, audiences and other criteria. This is the direction I take with my research, focusing on a specific type of games, developed for mobile devices and targeted towards a well-defined audience. The goal of my thesis was to find out if mid-core mobile games require special approach to audio design and what this approach would be. The first two chapters focus on critical aspects of mobile game audio and audio design principles of mid-core games. Two latter chapters describe practical matters of audio design for an actual video game, starting with design principles and ending with project-specific challenges and creative choices. The results show that audio design for mid-core mobile games has a few special aspects on top of existing principles of mobile game audio. These aspects result from the design patterns shared by majority of mid-core games developed for mobile platforms

Improving the Usability of the Thonny Integrated Development Environment

Bakalaureusetöö kirjeldab autori poolt teostatud tarkvaraarendusprojekti, mille eesmärgiks oli Pythoni programmeerimiskeele algõppeks loodud arenduskeskkonna Thonny täiustamine. Esmalt uuritakse erialase kirjanduse põhjal kasutatavuse mõistet algajatele programmeerijatele mõeldud arenduskeskkonna kontekstis. Seejärel tuuakse välja Thonny kasutatavuse ekspertanalüüsi peamised tulemused. Kirjeldatakse ka tarkvaraarenduse käigus valminud uusi funktsionaalseid võimalusi ning selgitatakse nende positiivset panust Thonny kasutatavuse aspektist vaadelduna. Samuti on bakalaureusetöös välja toodud mõned autori ideed Thonny edasiste võimalike arenduste osas.The thesis contains a description of a software development project that was launched to improve the usability of Thonny, an integrated Python development environment designed for novice programmers. First, the concept of usability of beginners’ IDE is examined based on a literature study. The main findings of an expert analysis of the usability of Thonny are then presented. The thesis gives a detailed overview of the new features and improvements that were implemented and integrated with Thonny based on the results of the analysis. In addition, a number of ideas for future Thonny features and implementation changes are listed

Connecting RPA Development and Business : A Tool for Process Definition, Agile RPA Development and Maintenance

The world of automation is changing rapidly, especially in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) field, as companies implement software robots to alleviate the repeatable manual work. This thesis has two purposes. The first purpose is to find out if it is possible to improve Robotic Process Automation projects’ kick-off, communication, documentation, and maintenance with a PDD-SDD Tool. And the second purpose is to demonstrate how the PDD-SDD Tool was designed and developed. The initial hypothesis for the project: A specialized Tool for automating documentation and project kick-off could streamline RPA projects and mitigate communication-related misunderstandings. The methods used in the thesis assisted with understanding the needs of the RPA professionals that are working with the whole RPA project life-cycle. For creating the starting point, the hypothesis was constructed by analyzing the current issues in RPA projects in the industry. Based on the hypothesis an Initial Design of the Tool was created and interview questions were produced. Next, three rounds of structured interviews were held for data gathering and demonstrating the developed prototypes. Lastly, a final presentation of the Tool was given to the same study group and improvement proposals were gathered. The findings of this thesis align with the initial hypothesis based on the data gathered from the interviewees during the interviews, the Tool aids the professionals with process definition by providing guiding questions during the definition process. Automated documentation based on the developers’ code alleviated with documentation burden, which leads to up-to-date documentation, which also leads to better communication. The automatically generated code base for the developers created from the process definition and the up-to-date documentation enhanced maintenance work dramatically. The value of this thesis lies with the actualization of a custom Tool developed specifically for MOST Digital’s RPA projects’ life-cycle. Also, the methodologies used in this thesis for data extraction could be further used to collect new features for the developed Tool or to develop a new tool altogether. This project was initiated in Fall 2019 and finished in Summer of 2021, and resulted with a fully functional StandAlone version of the designed PDD-SDD Tool

Imssap: after-school interactive mobile learning student support application

06.03.2018 tarihli ve 30352 sayılı Resmi Gazetede yayımlanan “Yükseköğretim Kanunu İle Bazı Kanun Ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması Hakkında Kanun” ile 18.06.2018 tarihli “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” gereğince tam metin erişime açılmıştır.Bu araştırmada, dünya çapında m-öğrenme geliştirme sürecine giriyoruz. M-öğrenme aracımızı tasarlarken sosyal ve pedagojik faktörler kullanılmaktadır. Popülerlik odaklı bir kültürde, kullanıcılar arasındaki etkileşim tartışmaları zenginleştirir ve bilgi paylaşımını teşvik eder. Uygulama android yazılım geliştirme seti ve java programlama dili kullanılarak tasarlandı ve oluşturuldu. Google bulut depolama, verileri kaydetmek için gerçek zamanlı bir veritabanı altyapısı kullanıldı. Test ve geribildirim için Sakarya Üniversitesi, Türkiye. Anket tanıtılmadan önce, öğrenme sürecinin kavramı tartışılmıştır. Uygulamayı kullandıktan sonra, öğrenciler anketi cevapladılar. Anket üç ana noktayı yansıtıyordu: performans, kazanç ve mobil öğrenmenin kabulünü etkileyen sosyal faktörler. Popülerlik, öğrencileri mobil öğrenmeyi benimsemeye teşvik eden en önemli faktörlerden biridir. Anahtar Kelimeler: mühendislik, eğitim, etkileşimli yazılım, sınıf gösterimi, lisans eğitimi.In this research, we are engaging in the process of developing m-learning around the world. Social and pedagogical factors are being used while designing our m- learning tool. In a popularity-driven culture, interaction between users enriches discussions and promotes knowledge share. The application was designed and created using android software development kit and java programming language. Google cloud storage a real-time database infrastructure was used to save data. The application was offered to students in different majors in engineering departments in Sakarya University, Turkey, for testing and feedback. Before conducting the questionnaire we introduced mobile learning concept to students and explained its importance in their own learning process. After using the application, students answered the questionnaire. The questionnaire reflected three major points: performance, gain and the social factors effecting mobile learning acceptance. Popularity is one of the top factors that motivated learners to adopt mobile learning. Keywords: Engineering, Education, Interactive Software, classroom Demonstration, Undergraduate Education

Social Computing: Study on the Use and Impacts of Collaborative Content

Collaborative content, created with web2.0 technologies, is part of the social computing phenomenon. The key feature of collaborative content is that it is created, reviewed, refined, enhanced and shared by interactions and contributions of a number of people. The report provides an assessment of the use, adoption and impact of collaborative content applications, giving an in-depth description of YouTube, Wikipedia and blogging, and discussing the socio-economic impacts and challenges of collaborative content phenomenon. The great variety of collaborative content applications is providing people with access to a great diversity of content and information, new relations to other people based on common interests, and a new tool for collaboration. Organizations can not avoid responding to the challenges rising, but there are various ways in which they can also benefit from the opportunities available. A major challenge is how to nurture a responsible digital culture, where users adopt a critical attitude in both creating and using the content, and where the collaborative communities have sustainable models for participation and content quality management.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

CAPTURING AND SHARING LESSONS LEARNED ACROSS BOUNDARIES: A VIDEO-BASED APPROACH

In light of emerging product development trends, such as Product-Service Systems, manufacturing organizations are obliged to collaborate across functional and organizational borders. Hence, companies are increasingly investigating how to leverage knowledge management practices to enhance their dynamic learning capabilities to achieve continuous process improvements. Many researchers assert that lessons learned practices are possible ways for organizational learning, which allows for continuous capturing and sharing of experiential knowledge across boundaries in order to learn both from mistakes and successes. However, many organizations fall short in capturing and sharing lessons from projects and applying them in new situations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a video-based approach and related guidelines for capturing and sharing lessons learned in a dynamic manner across functional and organizational boundaries. Based on laboratory experiments as well as validation activities conducted in collaboration with an aerospace manufacturer, this paper compares the video-based approach with a more traditional text-based approach of documenting lessons learned from projects. The paper describes the results of testing activities conducted with a video-based lessons learned prototype and the authors reflect on its implications for design practice management in the aerospace industry

What do they really mean by “design”? A textual analysis of the reports from design-led labs that strive for better service provision and policymaking

This master’s thesis investigates the notion of design depicted by the design-led labs (DLLs) in the emergent field of design for public sector through the viewpoints of two eminent design scholars, namely Bryan Lawson and Nigel Cross. The DLLs in this thesis refer to various agencies with design as their core competence that are involved in the attempts to improve public service provision and policymaking in collabo-ration with their respective governments. These DLLs have largely owed their origins to the governments’ demands for creating better services and policies with decreased financial re-sources. As a result of budgetary constraints and a variety of complex societal problems, the public sectors has been obligated to seek ways to innovate their solutions. In the effort to miti-gate the difficulties, design seems to have arisen as one of the alternative approaches to ad-dress these challenges on account of its prevalent emergence and achievements around the world. However, the usage of the term “design”, constantly mentioned by the DLLs appears confusing and remains undefined. Due to this lack of clarity with the most essential concept, this thesis attempts to disclose the actual meaning of “design” as seen by the DLLs. This thesis analyses the notion of design adopted by DLLs and explicated in their reports. The notion of design is operationalised on the basis of four landmark design research publications. These serve as investigate lenses in examining the reports from DLLs in four different coun-tries, namely the Design Council (UK), Public Policy Lab (US), Strategic Design Unit at SITRA (Finland), also known as Helsinki Design Lab, and MindLab (Denmark), in order to identify the various notions of design. Through the analysis of the four books, the notions of design are identified and categorised under three themes: design tendencies; design capabilities; design skills. The analysis based on the aforementioned themes shows that the notions of design expressed in the DLL’s reports extend or contradict those established by Lawson and Cross. As a conclusion, this study presents the four extended design capability and design skills, as well as a new set of design capabilities that may contribute to the process of expanding the notions of design adapted for the public sector in order to improve service provision and poli-cymaking. Additionally, the thesis summarises the arguments presented by the DLLs in sup-port of fostering design as a viable tool for the public sector and governments to achieve more effective service provision and policymaking