Experiences in involving analysts in visualisation design

Involving analysts in visualisation design has obvious benefits, but the knowledge-gap between domain experts ("analysts") and visualisation designers ("designers") often makes the degree of their involvement fall short of that aspired. By promoting a culture of mutual learning, understanding and contribution between both analysts and designers from the outset, participants can be raised to a level at which all can usefully contribute to both requirement definition and design. We describe the process we use to do this for tightly-scoped and short design exercises -- with meetings/workshops, iterative bursts of design/prototyping over relatively short periods of time, and workplace-based evaluation -- illustrating this with examples of our own experience from recent work with bird ecologists

Human Research Program Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE) Standing Review Panel (SRP)

The Space Human Factors Engineering (SHFE) Standing Review Panel (SRP) evaluated 22 gaps and 39 tasks in the three risk areas assigned to the SHFE Project. The area where tasks were best designed to close the gaps and the fewest gaps were left out was the Risk of Reduced Safety and Efficiency dire to Inadequate Design of Vehicle, Environment, Tools or Equipment. The areas where there were more issues with gaps and tasks, including poor or inadequate fit of tasks to gaps and missing gaps, were Risk of Errors due to Poor Task Design and Risk of Error due to Inadequate Information. One risk, the Risk of Errors due to Inappropriate Levels of Trust in Automation, should be added. If astronauts trust automation too much in areas where it should not be trusted, but rather tempered with human judgment and decision making, they will incur errors. Conversely, if they do not trust automation when it should be trusted, as in cases where it can sense aspects of the environment such as radiation levels or distances in space, they will also incur errors. This will be a larger risk when astronauts are less able to rely on human mission control experts and are out of touch, far away, and on their own. The SRP also identified 11 new gaps and five new tasks. Although the SRP had an extremely large quantity of reading material prior to and during the meeting, we still did not feel we had an overview of the activities and tasks the astronauts would be performing in exploration missions. Without a detailed task analysis and taxonomy of activities the humans would be engaged in, we felt it was impossible to know whether the gaps and tasks were really sufficient to insure human safety, performance, and comfort in the exploration missions. The SRP had difficulty evaluating many of the gaps and tasks that were not as quantitative as those related to concrete physical danger such as excessive noise and vibration. Often the research tasks for cognitive risks that accompany poor task or information design addressed only part, but not all, of the gaps they were programmed to fill. In fact the tasks outlined will not close the gap but only scratch the surface in many cases. In other cases, the gap was written too broadly, and really should be restated in a more constrained way that can be addressed by a well-organized and complementary set of tasks. In many cases, the research results should be turned into guidelines for design. However, it was not clear whether the researchers or another group would construct and deliver these guidelines

Facilitating the take-up of new HCI practices: a ‘diffusion of innovations’ perspective

The workshop Made for Sharing: HCI Stories of Transfer, Triumph & Tragedy focuses on collecting cases in which practitioners have used their HCI methods in new contexts. For analyzing the collected body of cases we propose to apply a framework inspired by the Diffusion of Innovations approach which focuses on what facilitates the adoption, re-invention and implementation of new practices in social systems

Loom: Unifying Client-Side Web Technologies in a Single Programming Language

Modern client-centred web applications typically depend on a set of complementary languages to control different layers of abstraction in their interfaces: the behaviour, structure, and presentation layers (in order, traditionally: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS). Applications with dynamic interfaces whose structure and presentation depend on the data and state of the application require tight links between such layers; however, communicating between them is often non-trivial or simply cumbersome, mainly because they are effectively distinct languages—each with a specific way of being interacted with. Numerous technologies have been introduced in an attempt to simplify the interaction between the multiple layers; their main focus so far, however, regards the communication between structure and behaviour—leaving room for improvement in the field of presentation. This dissertation presents Loom: a novel reactive programming language that unifies the enunciated abstraction layers of a client-side web application. Loom allows the specification of an interface’s structure and presentation in a declarative, data-dependent, and reactive manner by means of signals—values that change over time—inspired by the field of functional reactive programming: reactive meaning that when the structure and presentation of an interface depend on application-data, changes to said data cause an automatic update of the application’s interface. We provide an implementation of the language’s compiler that allows the creation of interfaces with performance comparable to that of most existent frameworks

The usage of MIS applications to raise the efficiency and performance of the telecommunications services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

PhD ThesisThere are different kinds of requirements on an information system. Of particular concern to this study are non-functional requirements (NFRs). These are aspects of a system. independent of any technical capabilities that it may have, which form a series of constraints on how a system will actually perform, and of which an organisation must take account in order to achieve success. This thesis studies non-functional requirements with particular reference to those that support an organisation in the process of structural change. Particular attention is paid to those non-functional requirements that will be constraints that hinder the performance and efficiency of any organisation if they are not fully understood and incorporated into the new information system. The way in which such non-functional requirements should be handled is illustrated by an extensive case study of the main provider of telecommunications services in Saudi Arabia. The researcher first took an interest in the Saudi telecommunications industry as a result of the recent moves to transform the country's telecommunications service from the traditional structure to a new system by the introduction of privatisation. The new modified system is called the Saudi Telecom Company (STC), though it is at present still under the effective control of the Saudi Ministry of Post, Telephone and Telegraph (MoPTT), the previous telecommunications service provider. The Saudi telecommunications service has been a monopoly managed through traditional public management systems, typically influenced by a dominant bureaucracy. The researcher's concern has been to study and describe the current management, structure, and operations (in particular the information systems) of the MoPTT in order to identifY key issues and potential areas for development which will help the MoPTT, as the STC, to offer a quality telecommunications service in the new competitive market. The researcher sets the telecommunications industry in Saudi Arabia in its national context by providing the political, cultural and economic background to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is of particular importance in view of the significance discovered by his study of non-technical environmental factors in the performance of the telecommunications service in the country. Using a combination of the qualitative and quantitative research approaches, the researcher examined the literature relevant to his topic and undertook a fieldtrip to Saudi Arabia, when he conferred extensively with MoPTI management and staff, observed MoPTI structures and operations, and consulted other experts in telecommunications. Reflection on the literature along with extensive fieldtrip consultation and observation reveal that a full account of the operations and potential of the Saudi telecommunications system cannot be provided by a consideration of its technical functions and processes alone. Due recognition must be given to the peculiarly Saudi setting of the service, and in particular attention must be paid to non-functional aspects, such requirements and constraints related to the environment in which the system has to operate. Culturally related non-functional requirements are of particular interest, and the case of Internet access in Saudi Arabia is examined, since it provides an especially good example of a non-functional requirement which is undergoing change, while still acting as a constraint on telecommunications usage. The case is related to a new conception of Saudisation, whereby Saudi personnel are no longer simply taking over and imitating western skills, but where they are providing Saudi solutions to Saudi questions. Using information gathered largely during his fieldtrip, the researcher provides a comprehensive description and discussion of the current MoPTT business areas, organisational structures, and information systems. Not only the commercial and technical features of these operations are examined, but also the extent to which they succeed in fulfilling or operating within the non-functional requirements and constraints, especially those of particularly Saudi origin, imposed upon them. Where appropriate, potential new approaches and directions for the MoPTI in relation to handling issues are indicated. Employing techniques developed by Dr. Michael Porter of Harvard University, an analysis has been provided of the of the MoPTI's enterprise strategy, since it is this which ultimately drives all the operations of the MoPTI, and upon which the MoPTI's telecommunications service will depend for commercial success in the new postprivatisation market. Based upon this analysis, the researcher has put forward explicit operational, managerial, and business proposals which should allow the MoPTT to seize the opportunities offered by privatisation, and to achieve success in both the domestic and the international telecommunications market. The researcher has felt able to identifY a number of specific factors within the MoPTr which might receive particular attention for revision and improvement, as they impact on all MoPTT operations and are of critical importance for its commercial success. These areas are strategic planning, marketing, training, customer relations, an integrated information system, and workforce management. As a result of his investigation into the operations of the MoPTT the researcher has been able to identify a new approach to the future of telecommunications in Saudi Arabia. He has designed an information architecture within which the MoPTT information systems might operate, and which takes full account of the role of non-functional aspects in the degree of success of such a complex operation. He offers a comprehensive description of the basis, operational details, and advantages of the implementation of this architecture for the MoPTT's information system operations. The particular benefits of Saudisation are stressed. It became clear during the research that the concept of Saudisation simply as the taking over and imitation of tasks previously carried out by non-Saudis (because they had the training and experience) was now inadequate. Saudisation has now to be understood as a cultural as well as a technical or business transformation, a dynamic concept relating both to enduring Saudi cultural values and to changing social attitudes and practices. Indeed this concept of Saudisation would repay further investigation as a suitable topic for future academic research, and the researcher makes this recommendation. He does so principally because the traditional understanding of the concept now seems inadequate and therefore a factor likely to inlnbit the truly indigenous development industry and services within Saudi ArabiaThe Government of Saudi Arabia: King AbdulAziz University

Visual Scoping and Personal Space on Shared Tabletop Surfaces

Information is often shared between participants in meetings using a projector or a large display. Shared touch-based tabletop surface is an emerging technology. The shared display may not be able to accommodate all the information that participants want on the display. Moreover, large amounts of displayed information increase the complexity and clutter making it harder for participants to locate specific pieces of information. Key challenges are thus how to eliminate or hide irrelevant information and how participants can add information without distracting the other participants unintentionally. This study reports a novel approach that addresses these challenges by globally hiding information that is not relevant to all participants by introducing a private area on the public display