Model-Driven Development of Interactive Multimedia Applications

The development of highly interactive multimedia applications is still a challenging and complex task. In addition to the application logic, multimedia applications typically provide a sophisticated user interface with integrated media objects. As a consequence, the development process involves different experts for software design, user interface design, and media design. There is still a lack of concepts for a systematic development which integrates these aspects. This thesis provides a model-driven development approach addressing this problem. Therefore it introduces the Multimedia Modeling Language (MML), a visual modeling language supporting a design phase in multimedia application development. The language is oriented on well-established software engineering concepts, like UML 2, and integrates concepts from the areas of multimedia development and model-based user interface development. MML allows the generation of code skeletons from the models. Thereby, the core idea is to generate code skeletons which can be directly processed in multimedia authoring tools. In this way, the strengths of both are combined: Authoring tools are used to perform the creative development tasks while models are used to design the overall application structure and to enable a well-coordinated development process. This is demonstrated using the professional authoring tool Adobe Flash. MML is supported by modeling and code generation tools which have been used to validate the approach over several years in various student projects and teaching courses. Additional prototypes have been developed to demonstrate, e.g., the ability to generate code for different target platforms. Finally, it is discussed how models can contribute in general to a better integration of well-structured software development and creative visual design

Définition d'un langage et d'une méthode pour la description et la spécification d'IHM post-W.I.M.P. pour les cockpits interactifs

Avec l'apparition de nouvelles technologies comme l'iPad, etc., nous rencontrons dans les logiciels grand public des interfaces de plus en plus riches et innovantes. Ces innovations portent à la fois sur la gestion des entrées (e. g. écrans multi-touch) et sur la gestion des sorties (e.g. affichage). Ces interfaces sont catégorisées de type post-WIMP et permettent d'accroitre la bande passante entre l'utilisateur et le système qu'il manipule. Plus précisément elles permettent à l'utilisateur de fournir plus rapidement des commandes au système et au système de présenter plus d'informations à l'utilisateur lui permettant par là-même de superviser des systèmes de complexité accrue. L'adoption par le grand public et le niveau de maturité de ces technos permet d'envisager leur intégration dans les systèmes critiques (comme les cockpits ou de façon plus générale les systèmes de commande et contrôle). Toutefois les aspects logiciels liés à ces technologies sont loin d'être maîtrisés comme le démontrent les nombreux dysfonctionnements rencontrés par leurs utilisateurs. Alors que ces derniers peuvent être tolérés pour des applications de jeux ou de divertissement elles ne sont pas acceptables dans le domaine des systèmes critiques présentés précédemment. La problématique de cette thèse porte précisément sur le développement de méthodes, langages, techniques et outils pour la conception et le développement de systèmes interactifs innovants et fiables. La contribution de cette thèse porte sur l'extension d'une notation formelle : ICO (Objets Coopératifs Interactifs) pour décrire de manières exhaustive et non ambiguë les techniques d'interactions multi-touch et la démonstrabilité de son application dans le cadre des applications multi-touch civils. Nous proposons en plus de cette notation, une méthode pour la conception et la validation de systèmes interactifs offrants des interactions multi-touch à leurs utilisateurs. Le fonctionnement de ces systèmes interactifs est basé sur une architecture générique permettant une structuration des modèles allant de la partie matérielle des périphériques d'entrées jusqu' à la partie applicative pour la commande et le contrôle de ces systèmes. Cet ensemble de contribution est appliqué sur un ensemble d'étude de ca dont la plus significative est une application de gestion météo pour un avion civil.With the advent of new technologies such as the iPad, general public software feature richer and more innovative interfaces. These innovations are both on the input layer (e.g. multi-touch screens) and on the output layer (e.g. display). These interfaces are categorized as post-W.I.M.P. type and allow to increase the bandwidth between the user and the system he manipulates. Specifically it allows the user to more quickly deliver commands to the system and the system to present more information to the user enabling him managing increasingly complex systems. The large use in the general public and the level of maturity of these technologies allows to consider their integration in critical systems (such as cockpits or more generally control and command systems). However, the software issues related to these technologies are far from being resolved judging by the many problems encountered by users. While the latter may be tolerated for gaming applications and entertainment, it is not acceptable in the field of critical systems described above. The problem of this thesis focuses specifically on the development of methods, languages, techniques and tools for the design and development of innovative and reliable interactive systems. The contribution of this thesis is the extension of a formal notation: ICO (Interactive Cooperative Object) to describe in a complete and unambiguous way multi-touch interaction techniques and is applied in the context of multi-touch applications for civilians aircrafts. We provide in addition to this notation, a method for the design and validation of interactive systems featuring multi-touch interactions. The mechanisms of these interactive systems are based on a generic architecture structuring models from the hardware part of the input devices up to the application part for the control and monitoring of these systems. This set of contribution is applied on a set of case studies, the most significant being an application for weather management in civilian aircrafts

HCI factors affecting the mobile internet uptake in Jordan

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The aim of this research is to highlight the factors and barriers that render mobile phone users averse to using their mobile handsets as an internet platform in Jordan. Three studies were conducted to achieve the aim of the conducted research of this PhD thesis. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in all studies. Data was collected from the participants using questionnaires, open-ended questions and sketching techniques. Firstly, mobile internet usage in Jordan was explored in its wider sense. On the basis of these results, the second study compared PC and mobile internet use. This comparison resulted in the preference of PC internet rather than mobile internet. The study covered many aspects such as usability, familiarity, achievement and satisfaction in dealing with both mobile and stationary tools internet. The third study was divided into two sections. The first part required participants to design (using a sketching technique) a mobile application with regard to handling a critical issue (car violations), to establish the possibility for internet users in Jordan to perform tasks on a mobile platform that they currently perform on stationary internet tools. The second part of the study was an evaluation of this prototype application. The results revealed that the application was found to be very easy and useful by the participants of the study. They added that they would benefit from using such applications in their lives. There was an observed issue of security and trust related to the payment option provided as an option in the application. Participants were cautious and declined to use any ―untrusted‖ method of payment. In addition to lacking trust in e-commerce, participants lack trust and confidence in online payment methods, and stated that they would not recommend the payment option to anyone. Finally, the outcome of the study showed that the application is a novel idea in Jordan, and it is very easy to handle and use. Participants commented that it was easy to interact with the mobile application in order to complete different tasks. The key benefit of the application for participants lies in saving time, by avoiding long queues at the Traffic Department

User Assemblages in Design: An Ethnographic Study

This thesis presents an ethnographic study of the role of users in user-centered design. It is written from the perspective of science and technology studies, in particular developments in actor-network theory, and draws on the notion of the assemblage from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The data for this thesis derives from a six-month field study of the routine discourse and practices of user-centered designers working for a multinational microprocessor manufacturer. The central argument of this thesis is that users are assembled along with the new technologies whose design they resource, as well as with new configurations of socio-cultural life that they bring into view. Informing this argument are two interrelated insights. First, user-centered and participatory design processes involve interminglings of human and non-human actors. Second, users are occasioned in such processes as sociotechnical assemblages. Accordingly, this thesis: (1) reviews how the user is variously applied as a practico-theoretical concern within human-computer interaction (HCI) and as an object of analysis within the sociology and history of technology; (2) outlines a methodology for studying users variously enacted within design practice; (3) examines how a non-user is constructed and re-constructed during the development of a diabetes related technology; (4) examines how designers accomplish user-involvement by way of a gendered persona; (5) examines how the making of a technology for people suffering from obesity included multiple users that served to format the designers’ immediate practical concerns, as well as the management of future expectations; (6) examines how users serve as a means for conducting ethnography-in-design. The thesis concludes with a theoretically informed reflection on user assemblages as devices that: do representation; resource designers’ socio-material management of futures; perform modalities of scale associated with technological and product development; and mediate different forms of accountability

Patient-Centred Culturally-Aware Design Approach for e-Health Acceptance

The importance of information and communication technology in healthcare has recently grown to an unprecedented dimension as more people are empowered by technology to participate more actively in their healthcare processes. New online applications for accessing healthcare information and for self-diagnosis have become increasingly available to diverse patient groups of different languages, educational backgrounds, and cultural orientations. However, the design of these applications typically follows Western cultural orientations. This approach has created a gap, which makes it difficult for users, who use the systems within their own cultural contexts, to derive maximum benefits from such use. As a result, the gap impedes the uptake, market success, and effective adoption of these e-Health applications in various cultural contexts. Moreover, as healthcare organisations increasingly seek to interact with patients, often in real-time, through enhanced web-based services, patient experiences often become tied to a largely ‘Western-driven’ style of patient interfaces, interaction, and look and feel that negatively impact the overall acceptance of these services across different cultures. This poses a tremendous challenge to technology adoption, in particular with regard to how to design culturally-aware and patientcentred e-Health applications that reflect the cultural diversity of today’s users and meaningfully empower them to better utilise such tools to enhance their day-to-day life. This research proposes to investigate the impact of a patient-centred culturally-aware design approach on the patient acceptance of e-Health web-based services, in particular, how e-Health web-based applications can be designed in a way that maximises their usability and ‘fits’ them into the cultural fabrics of individuals in different cultural contexts. To address this challenge, this research work examined existing literature in the fields of culture, technology acceptance and HCI, and identified relevant constructs that were used to develop a culturally-aware technology acceptance model for electronic health. Subsequently, the model provided a means for understanding the influence of different factors affecting patient acceptance and usage which were used as a foundation to inform the design of the Patient-Centred Culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach (PCCeDA) framework for e-Health web-based services developments. The novelty in PCCeDA is the notion of cultural awareness, which allows systems to personalise themselves according to a patient’s cultural profile while adhering to usability principles. As a result, the interface and contents presented to a patient are both dynamically tailored to better suit that patient’s cultural preferences, thereby increasing patient adoption. Based on PCCeDA, a proof of concept prototype called i-Diagnose was developed primarily to assess the validity of the framework and to answer the central questions of this research study. Evaluation results show that a patient-centred culturally-aware design approach enhances the effectiveness, usefulness and patient acceptance of e-Health web-based services in different cultural contexts. The main contributions of this work include: (i) a culturally sensitive technology acceptance model for e-Health (‘e-HTAM’) where both technology acceptance model and cultural dimensions are integrated to develop the e-HTAM model. The model highlighted various issues that need to be taken into consideration when designing patient-centred culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach applications; and (ii) a patient-centred Culturally-aware e-Health Design Approach framework that allows systems to personalise both the patient interface and the contents provided to a patient to better suit that patient’s cultural background. The research also includes a number of other minor contributions such as: (i) an approach for solving the static nature of Hofstede’s dimensions’ indexation, through the use of cultural parameters to dynamically model users’ cultural states, (ii) the introduction of personalisation based on cultural factors into the e-Health web-based services domain, and (iii) shed light on the electronic health acceptance state in the UAE as compared to the UK

User assemblages in design : an ethnographic study

This thesis presents an ethnographic study of the role of users in user-centered design. It is written from the perspective of science and technology studies, in particular developments in actor-network theory, and draws on the notion of the assemblage from the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The data for this thesis derives from a six-month field study of the routine discourse and practices of user-centered designers working for a multinational microprocessor manufacturer. The central argument of this thesis is that users are assembled along with the new technologies whose design they resource, as well as with new configurations of socio-cultural life that they bring into view. Informing this argument are two interrelated insights. First, user-centered and participatory design processes involve interminglings of human and non-human actors. Second, users are occasioned in such processes as sociotechnical assemblages. Accordingly, this thesis: (1) reviews how the user is variously applied as a practico-theoretical concern within human-computer interaction (HCI) and as an object of analysis within the sociology and history of technology; (2) outlines a methodology for studying users variously enacted within design practice; (3) examines how a non-user is constructed and re-constructed during the development of a diabetes related technology; (4) examines how designers accomplish user-involvement by way of a gendered persona; (5) examines how the making of a technology for people suffering from obesity included multiple users that served to format the designers’ immediate practical concerns, as well as the management of future expectations; (6) examines how users serve as a means for conducting ethnography-in-design. The thesis concludes with a theoretically informed reflection on user assemblages as devices that: do representation; resource designers’ socio-material management of futures; perform modalities of scale associated with technological and product development; and mediate different forms of accountability.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Improving program comprehension tools for domain specific languages

Dissertação de Mestrado em InformáticaSince the dawn of times, curiosity and necessity to improve the quality of their life, led humans to find means to understand everything surrounding them, aiming at improving it. Whereas the creating abilities of some was growing, the capacity to comprehend of others follow their steps. Disassembling physical objects to comprehend the connections between the pieces in order to understand how they work together is a common human behavior. With the computers arrival, humans felt the necessity of applying the same techniques (disassemble to comprehend) to their programs. Traditionally, these programs are written resorting to general-purpose programming languages. Hence, techniques and artifacts, used to aid on program comprehension, were built to facilitate the work of software programmers on maintaining and improving programs that were developed by others. Generally, these generic languages deal with concepts at a level that the human brain can hardly understand. So understanding programs written in this languages is an hard task, because the distance between the concepts at the program level and the concepts at the problem level is too big. Thus, as in politics, justice, medicine, etc. groups of words are regularly used facilitating the comprehension between people, also in programming, languages that address a specific domain were created. These programming languages raise the abstraction of the program domain, shortening the gap to the concepts of the problem domain. Tools and techniques for program comprehension commonly address the program domain and they took little advantage of the problem domain. In this master’s thesis, the hypothesis that it is easier to comprehend a program when the underlying problem and program domains are known and a bridge between them is established, is assumed. Then, a program comprehension technique for domain specific languages, is conceived, proposed and discussed. The main objective is to take advantage from the large knowledge about the problem domain inherent to the domain specific language, and to improve traditional program comprehension tools that only dealt, until then, with the program domain. This will create connections between both program and problem domains. The final result will show, visually, what happens internally at the program domain level, synchronized with what happens externally, at problem level.Desde o início dos tempos a curiosidade e a necessidade de melhorar a qualidade de vida impeliram o humano a arranjar meios para compreender o que o rodeia com o objectivo de melhorar. À medida que a habilidade de uns foi aumentando, a capacidade de compreensão de outros seguiu-lhe os passos. Desmontar algo físico de modo a compreender as ligações entre as peças e assim perceber como funcionam num todo, é um acto bastante normal dos humanos. Com o advento dos computadores e os programas para ele codificados, o homem sentiu a necessidade de aplicar as mesmas técnicas (desmontar para compreender) ao código desses programas. Tradicionalmente, a codificação de tais programas é feita usando linguagens genéricas de programação. Desde logo técnicas e artefactos que ajudam na compreensão desses programas (nessas linguagens) foram produzidas para auxiliar o trabalho de engenheiros de software que necessitam de manter ou alterar programas previamente construídos por outros. De um modo geral estas linguagens mais genéricas lidam com conceitos a um nível bastante abaixo daquele que o cérebro humano, facilmente, consegue captar. Previsivelmente, compreender programas neste tipo de linguagens é uma tarefa complexa pois a distância entre os conceitos ao nível do programa e os conceitos ao nível do problema (que o programa aborda) é bastante grande. Deste modo, tal como no dia-a-dia foram surgindo nichos como a política, a justiça, a informática, etc. onde grupos de palavras são usadas com maior regularidade para facilitar a compreensão entre as pessoas, também na programação foram surgindo linguagens que focam em domínios específicos, aumentando a abstracção em relação ao nível do programa, aproximando este do nível dos conceitos subjacentes ao problema. Ferramentas e técnicas de compreensão de programas abordam, geralmente, o domínio do programa, tirando pouco partido do domínio do problema. Na presente tese assume-se a hipótese de que será mais fácil compreender um programa quando os domínios do problema e do programa são conhecidos, e entre eles é estabelecida uma ponte de ligação; e parte-se em busca de uma técnica de compreensão de programas para linguagens de domínio específico, baseada em técnicas já conhecidas para linguagens de carácter geral. O objectivo prende-se com aproveitar o conhecimento sobre o domínio do problema e melhorar as ferramentas de compreensão de programas existentes para as linguagens genéricas, de forma a estabelecer ligações entre domínio do programa e domínio do problema. O resultado será mostrar, visualmente, o que acontece internamente ao nível do programa, sincronizadamente com o que acontece externamente ao nível do problema

Modellierung und Generierung von Benutzeroberflächen für interaktive Softwaresysteme unter der Nutzung von Mustern

Die Dissertation umfasst den Entwurf einer Entwicklungsumgebung für Benutzeroberflächen, der modell- und musterbasierte UI-Entwicklung zu einem integrierten Entwicklungs- und Generierungsansatz kombiniert. Die Grundlagen der modell- und musterbasierten Entwicklung werden dargestellt und existierende Implementierungen analysiert. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchungen fließen in den Entwurf der kombinierten Entwicklungsumgebung, der detailliert beschrieben wird, ein. Die Arbeit beinhaltet eine Fallstudie, die die praktische Bedeutung der theoretischen Ausführungen verdeutlicht