Automating and informating : roles to examine in technology's impact on performance

La calidad de la información y la calidad del sistema se consideran factores claves para determinar la utilidad de los sistemas. Sin embargo, estudios anteriores han arrojado resultados mixtos. En este artículo se sostiene que la asistencia del sistema (el grado de la asistencia proporcionada por un sistema a través de sus dos funciones: la automatización e “informating”) media en esta relación y puede ayudar a explicar estos resultados mixtos. Por otra parte, se sostiene que el nivel del sistema de intervención ( grado en que la tecnología participa en la realización de las tareas) es otro factor clave para determinar su utilidad, especialmente a través de la función de automatización. Se recogieron datos de 246 usuarios de diferentes jerarquías y funciones. Los resultados muestran que la calidad de la información y el nivel de intervención del sistema explican la utilidad de ambas funciones. La calidad del sistema explica la utilidad mediante el rol del “informating”, pero no mediante el papel de la automatización. Los efectos diferenciados de los factores a través de cada rol pueden ayudar a los gerentes para establecer criterios y prioridades más eficaces en las diferentes etapas del ciclo de vida de un sistema de información.Information quality and system quality are considered key factors in determining the usefulness of systems. However, prior studies have yielded mixed results. This article holds that the system’s assistance (the degree of the assistance provided by a system through its two roles: automating and informating) mediates in this relationship and may help to explain such mixed results. Furthermore, it holds that the system’s level of intervention (the degree to which technology participates in carrying out the tasks) is another key factor in determining its usefulness, especially through the automating role. Data from 246 users filling different hierarchies and functional areas were collected. Results show that information quality and system’s level of intervention explain usefulness through both roles. System quality explains usefulness through the informating role, but not through the automating role. The factors’ differentiated effects through each role may help managers to establish more effective criteria and priorities in the different stages of an information system’s life cycle

Survey on Evaluation Methods for Dialogue Systems

In this paper we survey the methods and concepts developed for the evaluation of dialogue systems. Evaluation is a crucial part during the development process. Often, dialogue systems are evaluated by means of human evaluations and questionnaires. However, this tends to be very cost and time intensive. Thus, much work has been put into finding methods, which allow to reduce the involvement of human labour. In this survey, we present the main concepts and methods. For this, we differentiate between the various classes of dialogue systems (task-oriented dialogue systems, conversational dialogue systems, and question-answering dialogue systems). We cover each class by introducing the main technologies developed for the dialogue systems and then by presenting the evaluation methods regarding this class

Chatbots for Modelling, Modelling of Chatbots

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Ingeniería Informática. Fecha de Lectura: 28-03-202

Tailored gamification and serious game framework based on fuzzy logic for saving energy in connected thermostats

Connected thermostats (CTs) often save less energy than predicted because consumers may not know how to use them and may not be engaged in saving energy. Additionally, several models perform contrary to consumers’ expectations and are thus not used the way they are intended to. As a result, CTs save less energy and are underused in households. This paper reviews aspects of gamification and serious games focused on engaging consumers. A gamification and serious games framework is proposed for saving energy that is tailored by a fuzzy logic system to motivate connected thermostat consumers. This intelligent gamification framework can be used to customize the gamification and serious game strategy to each consumer so that fuzzy logic systems can be adapted according to the requirements of each consumer. The framework is designed to teach, engage, and motivate consumers while helping them save electrical energy when using their thermostats. It is described the proposed framework as well as a mockup that can be run on a cellphone. Although this framework is designed to be implemented in CTs, it can be translated to their energy devices in smart homes

A Balanced Scorecard Approach to Evaluate Enterprise Resource Planning of Morehead State University

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Milind Patil on November 10, 2008

The impacts of automating manual processes in software maintenance

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to find out how automating a software maintenance task affects the software developers and end users of the information system. The study was conducted as a case study in a Finnish IT organization that provides information systems for organizations. This study focused on software maintenance tasks that are done in the production environments. The main research question was “How has the new automated process affected the stakeholders in the case?” In order to address the research question, the stakeholder groups had to be identified. Two stakeholder groups were defined and two supporting questions were formulated in order to find answers to the main question. The two supporting questions are “How do the software developers experience the changes that took place after automation?” and “How do the customers experience the changes that took place after automation?” The study utilised triangulation, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative data was collected with interviews and a questionnaire, and quantitative analysis was conducted to the maintenance request tickets with an MMG (Maintenance Model Graph) analysis. The findings of the quantitative MMG analysis were used to support the results found with qualitative methods. Automating a repetitive maintenance task was found to affect especially the software developers, who experienced the manual task to be time-consuming and arduous. Based on the developer interviews, four factors were found to have been affected by the automation: (1) degree of difficulty, (2) overall workload, (3) incoming maintenance requests and (4) future development. Customers were affected by the automation indirectly. The new solution was found to provide them with more accurate data and enhanced documentation, but it was also experienced to be arduous to familiarize with. Overall the results from customer questionnaire pointed out that the new solution was experienced as an upgrade. The familiarization will be handled in the case organization by providing training sessions directly to the customer organizations. The contribution of this study is the additional knowledge it provided about automating the repetitive tasks of software maintenance. As software maintenance is a very expensive part of the SW life cycle, it is beneficial to consider automating some of the most frequent tasks

A Usability Inspection Method for Model-driven Web Development Processes

Las aplicaciones Web son consideradas actualmente un elemento esencial e indispensable en toda actividad empresarial, intercambio de información y motor de redes sociales. La usabilidad, en este tipo de aplicaciones, es reconocida como uno de los factores clave más importantes, puesto que la facilidad o dificultad que los usuarios experimentan con estas aplicaciones determinan en gran medida su éxito o fracaso. Sin embargo, existen varias limitaciones en las propuestas actuales de evaluación de usabilidad Web, tales como: el concepto de usabilidad sólo se soporta parcialmente, las evaluaciones de usabilidad se realizan principalmente cuando la aplicación Web se ha desarrollado, hay una carencia de guías sobre cómo integrar adecuadamente la usabilidad en el desarrollo Web, y también existe una carencia de métodos de evaluación de la usabilidad Web que hayan sido validados empíricamente. Además, la mayoría de los procesos de desarrollo Web no aprovechan los artefactos producidos en las fases de diseño. Estos artefactos software intermedios se utilizan principalmente para guiar a los desarrolladores y para documentar la aplicación Web, pero no para realizar evaluaciones de usabilidad. Dado que la trazabilidad entre estos artefactos y la aplicación Web final no está bien definida, la realización de evaluaciones de usabilidad de estos artefactos resulta difícil. Este problema se mitiga en el desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos (DWDM), donde los artefactos intermedios (modelos) que representan diferentes perspectivas de una aplicación Web, se utilizan en todas las etapas del proceso de desarrollo, y el código fuente final se genera automáticamente a partir estos modelos. Al tener en cuenta la trazabilidad entre estos modelos, la evaluación de estos modelos permite detectar problemas de usabilidad que experimentaran los usuarios finales de la aplicación Web final, y proveer recomendaciones para corregir estos problemas de usabilidad durante fases tempranas del proceso de desarrollo Web. Esta tesis tiene como objetivo, tratando las anteriores limitaciones detectadas, el proponer un método de inspección de usabilidad que se puede integrar en diferentes procesos de desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos. El método se compone de un modelo de usabilidad Web que descompone el concepto de usabilidad en sub-características, atributos y métricas genéricas, y un proceso de evaluación de usabilidad Web (WUEP), que proporciona directrices sobre cómo el modelo de usabilidad se puede utilizar para llevar a cabo evaluaciones específicas. Las métricas genéricas del modelo de usabilidad deben operacionalizarse con el fin de ser aplicables a los artefactos software de diferentes métodos de desarrollo Web y en diferentes niveles de abstracción, lo que permite evaluar la usabilidad en varias etapas del proceso de desarrollo Web, especialmente en las etapas tempranas. Tanto el modelo de usabilidad como el proceso de evaluación están alineados con la última norma ISO/IEC 25000 estándar para la evaluación de la calidad de productos de software (SQuaRE). El método de inspección de usabilidad propuesto (WUEP) se ha instanciado en dos procesos de desarrollo Web dirigido por modelos diferentes (OO-H y WebML) a fin de demostrar la factibilidad de nuestra propuesta. Además, WUEP fue validado empíricamente mediante la realización de una familia de experimentos en OO-H y un experimento controlado en WebML. El objetivo de nuestros estudios empíricos fue evaluar la efectividad, la eficiencia, facilidad de uso percibida y la satisfacción percibida de los participantes; cuando utilizaron WUEP en comparación con un método de inspección industrial ampliamente utilizado: La Evaluación Heurística (HE). El análisis estadístico y meta-análisis de los datos obtenidos por separado de cada experimento indicaron que WUEP es más eficaz y eficiente que HE en la detección de problemas de usabilidad. Los evaluadores también percibieron más satisfacción cuando se aplicaron WUEP, y lesFernández Martínez, A. (2012). A Usability Inspection Method for Model-driven Web Development Processes [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17845Palanci

System design for periodic data production management

This research project introduces a new type of information system, the periodic data production management system, and proposes several innovative system design concepts for this application area. Periodic data production systems are common in the information industry for the production of information. These systems process large quantities of data in order to produce statistical reports in predefined intervals. The workflow of such a system is typically distributed world-wide and consists of several semi-computerized production steps which transform data packages. For example, market research companies apply these systems in order to sell marketing information over specified timelines. production of information. These systems process large quantities of data in order to produce statistical reports in predefined intervals. The workflow of such a system is typically distributed world-wide and consists of several semi-computerized production steps which transform data packages. For example, market research companies apply these systems in order to sell marketing information over specified timelines. There has been identified a lack of concepts for IT-aided management in this area. This thesis clearly defines the complex requirements of periodic data production management systems. It is shown that these systems can be defines as IT-support for planning, monitoring and controlling periodic data production processes. Their significant advantages are that information industry will be enabled to increase production performance, and to ease (and speed up) the identification of the production progress as well as the achievable optimisation potential in order to control rationalisation goals. In addition, this thesis provides solutions for he generic problem how to introduce such a management system on top of an unchangeable periodic data production system. Two promising system designs for periodic data production management are derived, analysed and compared in order to gain knowledge about appropriate concepts and this application area. Production planning systems are the metaphor models used for the so-called closely coupled approach. The metaphor model for the loosely coupled approach is project management. The latter approach is prototyped as an application in the market research industry and used as case study. Evaluation results are real-world experiences which demonstrate the extraordinary efficiency of systems based on the loosely coupled approach. Special is a scenario-based evaluation that accurately demonstrates the many improvements achievable with this approach. Main results are that production planning and process quality can vitally be improved. Finally, among other propositions, it is suggested to concentrate future work on the development of product lines for periodic data production management systems in order to increase their reuse

A personalized system for scalable distribution of multimedia content in multicast wireless networks

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-2139-3This paper presents a novel architecture for scalable multimedia content delivery over wireless networks. The architecture takes into account both the user preferences and context in order to provide personalized contents to each user. In this way, third-party applications filter the most appropriate contents for each client in each situation. One of the key characteristics of the proposal is the scalability, which is provided, apart from the use of filtering techniques, through the transmission in multicast networks. In this sense, content delivery is carried out by means of the FLUTE (File Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) protocol, which provides reliability in unidirectional environments through different mechanisms such as AL-FEC (Application Layer Forward Error Correction) codes, used in this paper. Another key characteristic is the context-awareness and personalization of content delivery, which is provided by means of context information, user profiles, and adaptation. The system proposed is validated through several empirical studies. Specifically, the paper presents evaluations of two types that collect objective and subjective measures. The first evaluate the efficiency of the transmission protocol, analyzing how the use of appropriate transmission parameters reduces the download time (and thus increasing the Quality of Experience), which can be minimized by using caching techniques. On the other hand, the subjective measures present a study about the user experience after testing the application and analyze the accuracy of the filtering process/strategy. Results show that using AL-FEC mechanisms produces download times until four times lower than when no protection is used. Also, results prove that there is a code rate that minimizes the download time depending on the losses and that, in general, code rates 0.7 and 0.9 provide good download times for a wide range of losses. On the other hand, subjective measures indicate a high user satisfaction (more than 80 %) and a relevant degree of accuracy of the content adaption.This work is supported in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Government of Spain under project COMINN (IPT-2012-0883-430000) and by the project PAID/2012/313 from the PAID-05-12 program of the Vicerrectorado de Investigacion of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.De Fez Lava, I.; Gil Pascual, M.; Fons Cors, JJ.; Guerri Cebollada, JC.; Pelechano Ferragud, V. (2014). A personalized system for scalable distribution of multimedia content in multicast wireless networks. 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