Visualization Criteria: supporting knowledge transfer in Incident

Incident Management Systems (IMS) assist in managing resources in order to minimize fatalities and damage. Visual artifacts in an IMS can facilitate knowledge transfer between responders to an incident, however, evidence-based guidance on the design of these visualizations are lacking. The aim of this study is to propose evidence-based knowledge visualization criteria (KVC). Design Science Research (DSR) was the guiding methodology. We abstracted a set of KVC from the academic literature, and then applied said criteria to evaluate a cloud-based prototype IMS. The evaluation included interviews with content experts from the South African Fire Service to establish the relevance of the KVC. The KVC were also used in a heuristic evaluation of the IMS by usability experts. The theoretical contribution of the study is the validated set of KVC based on the triangulation of the findings from the content experts and the usability experts. The study also makes a practical contribution by demonstrating the use of evidencebased visualization criteria in IMS.School of Computin

Methodology to sustain common information spaces for research collaborations

Information and knowledge sharing collaborations are essential for scientific research and innovation. They provide opportunities to pool expertise and resources. They are required to draw on today’s wealth of data to address pressing societal challenges. Establishing effective collaborations depends on the alignment of intellectual and technical capital. In this thesis we investigate implications and influences of socio-technical aspects of research collaborations to identify methods of facilitating their formation and sustained success. We draw on our experience acquired in an international federated seismological context, and in a large research infrastructure for solid-Earth sciences. We recognise the centrality of the users and propose a strategy to sustain their engagement as actors participating in the collaboration. Our approach promotes and enables their active contribution in the construction and maintenance of Common Information Spaces (CISs). These are shaped by conceptual agreements that are captured and maintained to facilitate mutual understanding and to underpin their collaborative work. A user-driven approach shapes the evolution of a CIS based on the requirements of the communities involved in the collaboration. Active users’ engagement is pursued by partitioning concerns and by targeting their interests. For instance, application domain experts focus on scientific and conceptual aspects; data and information experts address knowledge representation issues; and architects and engineers build the infrastructure that populates the common space. We introduce a methodology to sustain CIS and a conceptual framework that has its foundations on a set of agreed Core Concepts forming a Canonical Core (CC). A representation of such a CC is also introduced that leverages and promotes reuse of existing standards: EPOS-DCAT-AP. The application of our methodology shows promising results with a good uptake and adoption by the targeted communities. This encourages us to continue applying and evaluating such a strategy in the future

Shared Artefacts and Virtual Worlds in Computer-Mediated Creative Collaboration

Virtual teams are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon within the globalizing surroundings of corporations. The communication between virtual team members is predominantly based on information and communication technology. The question, how different ICT collaboration environments can support different virtual team activities, has gained attention in research and practice. However, collaboration environments' role to foster creative virtual team collaboration is not entirely understood. This dissertation addresses the topic by focusing on the potential of artefacts and three-dimensional virtual worlds. Artefacts – shared visual representations – have been considered necessary for co-located creative collaboration. Though, the entire ecology of artefacts in distributed, computer-mediated creative collaboration has thus far remained unclear. While previous studies have suggested virtual worlds as beneficial for creative team collaboration, a systematic effort to characterize and describe this potential has not been undertaken. The four essays of this dissertation utilize real-life observational data of interaction between technical experts, decision-makers, and engineering designers. Either a web conferencing tool or a virtual world was employed as a collaboration environment during the observed interaction sessions. The first essay outlines virtual worlds' eight affordances towards creative team collaboration. The second essay investigates the question, how the two-dimensional web conferencing tool and virtual world differ in terms of supporting the use of shared visual artefacts. The third essay broadens the observation of the artefacts by studying their roles as boundary objects, which mediate communication within an intersection of different social worlds. Grounding on these results, the fourth essay addresses the artefacts' role in distributed teams' different collaborative activities within creative virtual world collaboration. Findings of the study demonstrate virtual worlds' potential to foster team creativity. Meanwhile the findings indicate a variety of artefacts that are utilized within creative virtual team collaboration, ranging from epistemic to technical objects. Grounding on the observed contrast between the virtual world and web conferencing tool, the results end up in suggesting an expansion of separated auditory and visual channel information to the concept of boundary objects. While the study conveys practical relevance for virtual teams that engage in creative collaboration, it also outlines potential directions to future ICT collaboration environments development path.Virtuaalitiimit yleistyvät liiketoiminnan globalisoituessa. Virtuaalitiimien jäsenet viestivät pääosin tieto- ja viestintäteknologian välityksellä. Tutkimuksessa ja käytännön työssä on havaittu, että eri tieto- ja viestintäteknologiset vuorovaikutusympäristöt voivat tukea virtuaalitiimien eri toimintoja. Vuorovaikutusympäristöjen roolia virtuaalitiimin luovan työn tukemisessa ei kuitenkaan ole täysin ymmärretty. Väitöskirja käsittelee aihetta suunnaten huomion artefaktoihin ja kolmiulotteisiin virtuaalimaailmoihin. Artefaktat – yhteiset visuaaliset dokumentit – on aiemmin mielletty välttämättömiksi samanpaikkaisessa luovassa yhteistyössä. Artefaktojen rooli monipaikkaisessa, tietokonevälitteisessä luovassa yhteistyössä on kuitenkin vielä selvittämättä. Aiemmat tutkimukset ovat arvioineet virtuaalimaailmojen olevan suotuisia luovalle tiimin vuorovaikutukselle; näkökantaa ei kuitenkaan ole luonnehdittu tai kuvattu järjestelmällisesti. Väitöskirjan neljä esseetä hyödyntävät dataa teknisten asiantuntijoiden, päätöksentekijöiden ja teollisten suunnittelijoiden tosielämän vuorovaikutustilanteista. Vuorovaikutusympäristöinä käytettiin web-konferenssityökalua tai kolmiulotteista virtuaalimaailmaa. Ensimmäinen esseistä linjaa kahdeksan kolmiulotteisen virtuaalimaailman ominaispiirrettä, jotka tukevat luovan tiimin vuorovaikutusta. Toinen esseistä selvittää, miten visuaalisesti kaksiulotteinen web-konferenssityökalu ja kolmiulotteinen virtuaalimaailma eroavat toisistaan artefaktojen käytön osalta. Kolmas essee tarkastelee artefaktoja rajaesineinä, jotka välittävät viestintää erillisten sosiaalisten maailmojen leikkauskohdassa. Tuloksiin perustuen neljäs essee tarkastelee visuaalisten artefaktojen roolia monipaikkaisten, hajautettujen tiimien erilaisissa yhteistyöaktiviteeteissa luovan virtuaalimaailma-vuorovaikutuksen yhteydessä. Tutkimustulokset havainnollistavat virtuaalimaailman potentiaalin edistää luovaa tiimitason vuorovaikutusta. Tulokset esittelevät luovien virtuaalitiimien hyödyntämien artefaktojen kirjon, ulottuen episteemisistä teknisiin objekteihin. Havaittuihin virtuaalimaailman ja web-konferenssityökalun eroavaisuuksiin perustuen esitetään visuaalisen ja auditiivisen viestintäkanavan eroon pohjautuvaa laajennusta rajaesineiden käsitteeseen. Siinä missä tutkimus on merkittävä luovaan vuorovaikutukseen osallistuvien virtuaalitiimien kannalta, se myös linjaa mahdollisia suuntia tulevaisuuden tieto- ja viestintäteknologian kehityspolulle

Is a Seat at the Table Enough? Engaging Teachers and Students in Dataset Specification for ML in Education

Despite the promises of ML in education, its adoption in the classroom has surfaced numerous issues regarding fairness, accountability, and transparency, as well as concerns about data privacy and student consent. A root cause of these issues is the lack of understanding of the complex dynamics of education, including teacher-student interactions, collaborative learning, and classroom environment. To overcome these challenges and fully utilize the potential of ML in education, software practitioners need to work closely with educators and students to fully understand the context of the data (the backbone of ML applications) and collaboratively define the ML data specifications. To gain a deeper understanding of such a collaborative process, we conduct ten co-design sessions with ML software practitioners, educators, and students. In the sessions, teachers and students work with ML engineers, UX designers, and legal practitioners to define dataset characteristics for a given ML application. We find that stakeholders contextualize data based on their domain and procedural knowledge, proactively design data requirements to mitigate downstream harms and data reliability concerns, and exhibit role-based collaborative strategies and contribution patterns. Further, we find that beyond a seat at the table, meaningful stakeholder participation in ML requires structured supports: defined processes for continuous iteration and co-evaluation, shared contextual data quality standards, and information scaffolds for both technical and non-technical stakeholders to traverse expertise boundaries

The Essence of Software Engineering

Software Engineering; Software Development; Software Processes; Software Architectures; Software Managemen