6,777 research outputs found
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Can requirements be creative? Experiences with an enhanced air space management system
Requirements engineering is a creative process in which stakeholders work together to create ideas for new software systems that are eventually expressed as requirements. This paper reports a workshop that integrated creativity techniques with different types of use case and system context modeling to discover stakeholder requirements for EASM, a future air space management software system to enable the more effective, longer-term planning of UK and European airspace use. The workshop was successful in that it provided a range of outputs that were later assessed for their novelty and usefulness in the final specification of the EASM software. The paper describes the workshop structure, gives examples of outputs from it, and uses these results to answer 2 research questions about the utility of creativity techniques and workshops that had not been answered in previous research
Intelligent GIS: Automatic generation of qualitative spatial information
This paper reports on an extension to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that can intelligently analyse and record qualitative information of the surrounding area when adding a feature to a map. This recorded qualitative spatial information can be utilised to perform queries such as path generation using landmarks. Although, there is a lot of research on qualitative spatial reasoning, none of the currently available GIS do actually incorporate this kind of functionality. There have been systems developed that do have functions for adding new features, or generating paths; however they do not generally analyse and record, or use, qualitative information. We have implemented a prototype illustrating our approach. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006
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Integrating Creativity Workshops into Structured Requirements Processes
Requirements engineering is a creative process in which stakeholders and designers work together to create ideas for new systems that are eventually expressed as requirements. However, many requirements engineering or software development methods do not encourage or support creative thinking, let alone integrate it with existing modeling and analysis processes. This paper describes RESCUE, a scenario-driven requirements engineering process that includes workshops that integrate creativity techniques with different types of use case and system context modelling. It reports a case study in which RESCUE creativity workshops were used to discover stakeholder and system requirements for DMAN, a future air traffic management system for managing departures from major European airports. The workshop was successful in that it provided new and important outputs for subsequent requirements processes. The paper describes the workshop structure and wider RESCUE process, important results and key lessons learned
Design: One, but in different forms
This overview paper defends an augmented cognitively oriented generic-design
hypothesis: there are both significant similarities between the design
activities implemented in different situations and crucial differences between
these and other cognitive activities; yet, characteristics of a design
situation (related to the design process, the designers, and the artefact)
introduce specificities in the corresponding cognitive activities and
structures that are used, and in the resulting designs. We thus augment the
classical generic-design hypothesis with that of different forms of designing.
We review the data available in the cognitive design research literature and
propose a series of candidates underlying such forms of design, outlining a
number of directions requiring further elaboration
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Machine learning : techniques and foundations
The field of machine learning studies computational methods for acquiring new knowledge, new skills, and new ways to organize existing knowledge. In this paper we present some of the basic techniques and principles that underlie AI research on learning, including methods for learning from examples, learning in problem solving, learning by analogy, grammar acquisition, and machine discovery. In each case, we illustrate the techniques with paradigmatic examples
A walk in the statistical mechanical formulation of neural networks
Neural networks are nowadays both powerful operational tools (e.g., for
pattern recognition, data mining, error correction codes) and complex
theoretical models on the focus of scientific investigation. As for the
research branch, neural networks are handled and studied by psychologists,
neurobiologists, engineers, mathematicians and theoretical physicists. In
particular, in theoretical physics, the key instrument for the quantitative
analysis of neural networks is statistical mechanics. From this perspective,
here, we first review attractor networks: starting from ferromagnets and
spin-glass models, we discuss the underlying philosophy and we recover the
strand paved by Hopfield, Amit-Gutfreund-Sompolinky. One step forward, we
highlight the structural equivalence between Hopfield networks (modeling
retrieval) and Boltzmann machines (modeling learning), hence realizing a deep
bridge linking two inseparable aspects of biological and robotic spontaneous
cognition. As a sideline, in this walk we derive two alternative (with respect
to the original Hebb proposal) ways to recover the Hebbian paradigm, stemming
from ferromagnets and from spin-glasses, respectively. Further, as these notes
are thought of for an Engineering audience, we highlight also the mappings
between ferromagnets and operational amplifiers and between antiferromagnets
and flip-flops (as neural networks -built by op-amp and flip-flops- are
particular spin-glasses and the latter are indeed combinations of ferromagnets
and antiferromagnets), hoping that such a bridge plays as a concrete
prescription to capture the beauty of robotics from the statistical mechanical
perspective.Comment: Contribute to the proceeding of the conference: NCTA 2014. Contains
12 pages,7 figure
Application of expert systems in project management decision aiding
The feasibility of developing an expert systems-based project management decision aid to enhance the performance of NASA project managers was assessed. The research effort included extensive literature reviews in the areas of project management, project management decision aiding, expert systems technology, and human-computer interface engineering. Literature reviews were augmented by focused interviews with NASA managers. Time estimation for project scheduling was identified as the target activity for decision augmentation, and a design was developed for an Integrated NASA System for Intelligent Time Estimation (INSITE). The proposed INSITE design was judged feasible with a low level of risk. A partial proof-of-concept experiment was performed and was successful. Specific conclusions drawn from the research and analyses are included. The INSITE concept is potentially applicable in any management sphere, commercial or government, where time estimation is required for project scheduling. As project scheduling is a nearly universal management activity, the range of possibilities is considerable. The INSITE concept also holds potential for enhancing other management tasks, especially in areas such as cost estimation, where estimation-by-analogy is already a proven method
Education as Re-Embedding: Stroud Communiversity, Walking the Land and the Enduring Spell of the Sensuous
How we know, is at least as important as what we know: Before educationalists can begin to teach sustainability, we need to explore our own views of the world and how these are formed. The paper explores the ontological assumptions that underpin, usually implicitly, the pedagogical relationship and opens up the question of how people know each other and the world they share. Using understandings based in a phenomenological approach and guided by social constructionism, it suggests that the most appropriate pedagogical method for teaching sustainability is one based on situated learning and reflexive practice. To support its ontological questioning, the paper highlights two alternative cultureâs ways of understanding and recording the world: Those of the Inca who inhabited pre-Columbian Peru, which was based on the quipu system of knotted strings, and the complex social and religious system of the songlines of the original people of Australia. As an indication of the sorts of teaching experiences that an emancipatory and relational pedagogy might give rise to, the paper offers examples of two community learning experiences in the exemplar sustainable community of Stroud, Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom where the authors live
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