330,016 research outputs found

    Capturing Practices of Knowledge Work for Information Systems Design

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    Despite abundant tools and systems claiming support for knowledge work, many have failed to be accepted by users. Designing information systems (ISs) for knowledge work is a challenging task, but results on how knowledge work is actually performed is scarce and so are instruments that help to translate results into artefacts useful for IS design. This paper takes the perspective of work practices and proposes an approach to collaboratively study and analyze practices of knowledge work. The approach uses stereotypes of users, called personas, in order to inform IS design activities. The persona concept is enriched with respect to behaviour concerning practices of knowledge work. Furthermore, a procedure for selecting primary personas out of a set of personas is suggested based on cluster analysis. The approach is illustrated with the case of a collaborative ethnographically-informed study of seven organizations in four European countries. The proposed approach is the more suitable, the more innovative, big and diverse the project, the planned product, the developers and the target group are. User-centered design activities benefit from personas by reduced effort for involving end-users and a continuous focus on characteristics of critical users and their way of performing practices of knowledge work

    Functional Skills Support Programme: Developing functional skills in design and technology

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    This booklet is part of "... a series of 11 booklets which helps schools to implement functional skills across the curriculum. The booklets illustrate how functional skills can be applied and developed in different subjects and contexts, supporting achievement at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. Each booklet contains an introduction to functional skills for subject teachers, three practical planning examples with links to related websites and resources, a process for planning and a list of additional resources to support the teaching and learning of functional skills." - The National Strategies website

    Mapping Tasks to Interactions for Graph Exploration and Graph Editing on Interactive Surfaces

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    Graph exploration and editing are still mostly considered independently and systems to work with are not designed for todays interactive surfaces like smartphones, tablets or tabletops. When developing a system for those modern devices that supports both graph exploration and graph editing, it is necessary to 1) identify what basic tasks need to be supported, 2) what interactions can be used, and 3) how to map these tasks and interactions. This technical report provides a list of basic interaction tasks for graph exploration and editing as a result of an extensive system review. Moreover, different interaction modalities of interactive surfaces are reviewed according to their interaction vocabulary and further degrees of freedom that can be used to make interactions distinguishable are discussed. Beyond the scope of graph exploration and editing, we provide an approach for finding and evaluating a mapping from tasks to interactions, that is generally applicable. Thus, this work acts as a guideline for developing a system for graph exploration and editing that is specifically designed for interactive surfaces.Comment: 21 pages, minor corrections (typos etc.

    Generating collaborative systems for digital libraries: A model-driven approach

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    This is an open access article shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.The design and development of a digital library involves different stakeholders, such as: information architects, librarians, and domain experts, who need to agree on a common language to describe, discuss, and negotiate the services the library has to offer. To this end, high-level, language-neutral models have to be devised. Metamodeling techniques favor the definition of domainspecific visual languages through which stakeholders can share their views and directly manipulate representations of the domain entities. This paper describes CRADLE (Cooperative-Relational Approach to Digital Library Environments), a metamodel-based framework and visual language for the definition of notions and services related to the development of digital libraries. A collection of tools allows the automatic generation of several services, defined with the CRADLE visual language, and of the graphical user interfaces providing access to them for the final user. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by presenting digital libraries generated with CRADLE, while the CRADLE environment has been evaluated by using the cognitive dimensions framework

    FĂ­schlĂĄr on a PDA: handheld user interface design to a video indexing, browsing and playback system

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    The FĂ­schlĂĄr digital video system is a web-based system for recording, analysis, browsing and playback of TV programmes which currently has about 350 users. Although the user interface to the system is designed for desktop PCs with a large screen and a mouse, we are developing versions to allow the use of mobile devices to access the system to record and browse the video content. In this paper, the design of a PDA user interface to video content browsing is considered. We use a design framework we have developed previously to be able to specify various video browsing interface styles thus making it possible to design for all potential users and their various environments. We can then apply this to the particulars of the PDA's small, touch-sensitive screen and the mobile environment where it will be used. The resultant video browsing interfaces have highly interactive interfaces yet are simple, which requires relatively less visual attention and focusing, and can be comfortably used in a mobile situation to browse the available video contents. To date we have developed and tested such interfaces on a Revo PDA, and are in the process of developing others

    Designing learning object repositories : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Science in Information Sciences at Massey University

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    Learning object repositories are expanding rapidly into the role of independent educational systems that not only are a supplement to a traditional way of learning, but also allow users to search, exchange and re-use learning objects. The intention of this innovative technology is to have such repositories to collect a database of learning objects catalogued by the learning content management system. However, for users to perform an efficient search, these learning objects would need to use metadata standards or specifications to describe their properties. For learning objects stored within the repositories, metadata standards are often used to descibe them so users of the respositories are able to find the accurate resources they required, hence metadata standards are important elements of any learning object repository. In this paper, a courseware example is used to demonstrate how to define a set of characteristics that we want to describe for our courseware, and attempt to map the data schema in the database with the available metadata standards. The outcome is to identify a set of metadata elements that would fully describe our learning objects stored within the learning object repository, and these metadata elements will also assist instructors to create adaptable courseware that can be reused by different instructors. Metadata standard is known as a critical element for the management of learning objects, not only will it increase the accuracy of the search results, it will also provide more relevant and descriptive information about the learning objects to the searchers

    Application of context knowledge in supporting conceptual design decision making

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    Conceptual design is the most important phase of the product life cycle as the decisions taken at conceptual design stage affect the downstream phases (manufacture, assembly, use, maintenance, and disposal) in terms of cost, quality and function performed by the product. This research takes a holistic view by incorporating the knowledge related to the whole context (from the viewpoint of product, user, product's life cycle and environment in which the product operates) of a design problem for the consideration of the designer to make an informed decision making at the conceptual design stage. The design context knowledge comprising knowledge from these different viewpoints is formalised and a new model and corresponding computational framework is proposed to support conceptual design decision making using this formalised context knowledge. Using a case study, this paper shows the proof of the concept by selecting one concept among different design alternatives using design context knowledge thereby proactively supporting conceptual design decision making for an informed and effective decision making

    Bletchley Park text: using mobile and semantic web technologies to support the post-visit use of online museum resources

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    A number of technologies have been developed to support the museum visitor, with the aim of making their visit more educationally rewarding and/or entertaining. Examples include PDA-based personalized tour guides and virtual reality representations of cultural objects or scenes. Rather than supporting the actual visit, we decided to employ technology to support the post-visitor, that is, encourage follow-up activities among recent visitors to a museum. This allowed us to use the technology in a way that would not detract from the existing curated experience and allow the museum to provide access to additional heritage resources that cannot be presented during the physical visit. Within our application, called Bletchley Park Text, visitors express their interests by sending text (SMS) messages containing suggested keywords using their own mobile phone. The semantic description of the archive of resources is then used to retrieve and organize a collection of content into a personalized web site for use when they get home. Organization of the collection occurs both bottom-up from the semantic description of each item in the collection, and also top-down according to a formal representation of the overall museum story. In designing the interface we aimed to support exploration across the content archive rather than just the search and retrieval of specific resources. The service was developed for the Bletchley Park museum and has since been launched for use by all visitors
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