An adaptive technique for content-based image retrieval

We discuss an adaptive approach towards Content-Based Image Retrieval. It is based on the Ostensive Model of developing information needs—a special kind of relevance feedback model that learns from implicit user feedback and adds a temporal notion to relevance. The ostensive approach supports content-assisted browsing through visualising the interaction by adding user-selected images to a browsing path, which ends with a set of system recommendations. The suggestions are based on an adaptive query learning scheme, in which the query is learnt from previously selected images. Our approach is an adaptation of the original Ostensive Model based on textual features only, to include content-based features to characterise images. In the proposed scheme textual and colour features are combined using the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence combination. Results from a user-centred, work-task oriented evaluation show that the ostensive interface is preferred over a traditional interface with manual query facilities. This is due to its ability to adapt to the user's need, its intuitiveness and the fluid way in which it operates. Studying and comparing the nature of the underlying information need, it emerges that our approach elicits changes in the user's need based on the interaction, and is successful in adapting the retrieval to match the changes. In addition, a preliminary study of the retrieval performance of the ostensive relevance feedback scheme shows that it can outperform a standard relevance feedback strategy in terms of image recall in category search

Business processes in the agile organisation: a socio-technical perspective

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. This paper takes a cross-disciplinary view of the ontology of “business process”: how the concept is treated in the IS research literature and how related concepts (with stronger human behavioural orientation) from organisation and management sciences can potentially inform this IS perspective. In particular, is there room for socio-technical concepts such as technology affordance, derived from the constructivist tradition, in improving our understanding of operational business processes, particularly human-centric business processes? The paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding the role of business processes in organisational agility that distinguishes between the process-as-designed and the process-as-practiced. How this practice aspect of business processes also leads to the improvisation of various information technology enablers, is explored using a socio-technical lens. The posited theoretical framework is illustrated and validated with data drawn from an interpretive empirical case study of a large IT services company. The research suggests that processes within the organisation evolve both by top-down design and by the bottom-up routinisation of practice and that the tension between these is driven by the need for flexibility

Sociomateriality Implications of Software As a Service Adoption on IT-workers’ Roles and Changes in Organizational Routines of IT Systems Support

This paper aims to deepen our understanding on how sociomateriality practices influence IT workers’ roles and skill set requirements and changes to the organizational routines of IT systems support, when an organization migrates an on-premise IT system to a software as a service (SaaS) model. This conceptual paper is part of an ongoing study investigating organizations that migrated on-premise IT email systems to SaaS business models, such as Google Apps for Education (GAE) and Microsoft Office 365 systems, in New Zealand tertiary institutions. We present initial findings from interpretive case studies. The findings are, firstly, technological artifacts are entangled in sociomaterial practices, which change the way humans respond to the performative aspects of the organizational routines. Human and material agencies are interwoven in ways that reinforce or change existing routines. Secondly, materiality, virtual realm and spirit of the technology provide elementary levels at which human and material agencies entangle. Lastly, the elementary levels at which human and material entangle depends on the capabilities or skills set of an individual

A framework for understanding user interaction with content-based image retrieval: model, interface and users

User interaction is essential to the communication between users and content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems. User interaction covers three key elements: an interaction model, an interactive interface and users. The three key elements combine to enable effective interaction to happen. Many studies have investigated different aspects of user interaction. However, there is lack of research in combining all three elements in an integrated manner, especially through well-principled data analysis based on a systematic user study. In this thesis, we investigate the combination of all three elements for interactive CBIR. We first propose uInteract - a framework including a novel four-factor user interaction model (FFUIM) and an interactive interface. The FFUIM aims to improve interaction and search accuracy of the relevance feedback mechanism for CBIR. The interface delivers the FFUIM visually, aiming to support users in grasping how the interaction model functions and how best to manipulate it. The framework is tested in three task-based and user-oriented comparative evaluations, which involves 12 comparative systems, 12 real life scenario tasks and 50 subjects. The quantitative data analysis shows encouraging observations on ease of use and usefulness of the proposed framework, and also reveals a large variance of the results depending on different user types. Accordingly, based on Information Foraging Theory, we further propose a user classification model along three user interaction dimensions: information goals (I), search strategies (S) and evaluation thresholds (E) of users. To our best knowledge, this is the first principled user classification model in CBIR. The model is operated and verified by a systematic qualitative data analysis based on multi linear regression on the real user interaction data from comparative user evaluations. From final quantitative and qualitative data analysis based on the ISE model, we have established what different types of users like about the framework and their preferences for interactive CBIR systems. Our findings offer useful guidelines for interactive search system design, evaluation and analysis

Investigating the Relationship between IT and Organizations: A Research Trilogy

The overall objective of this dissertation is to contribute to knowledge and theory about the influence of information technology (IT) on organizations and their members. This dissertation is composed of three related studies, each examining different aspects of the relationship between IT and organizations. The objective of the first study is to provide an overview of the dominant theoretical perspectives that IS researchers have used in the last five decades to study the influence of technology on organizations and their members. Without being exhaustive, this study seeks more specifically to identify, for each decade, the dominant theoretical perspectives used in the IS field. These dominant theoretical perspectives are illustrated by the selection and description of exemplars published in the decade and their implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed. This review is useful not only for understanding past trends and the current state of research in this area but also to foresee its future directions and guide researchers in their future research on the influence of IT on organizations and their members. The objective of the second study is to theorize how IT artifacts influence the design and performance of organizational routines. This study adopts organizational routines theory as its theoretical lens. Organizational routines represent an important part of almost every organization and organizational routines theory is an influential theory that explains how the accomplishment of organizational routines can contribute to both organizational stability and change. However, the current form of this theory has several limitations such as its neglect of the material aspect of artifacts and the distinctive characteristics of IT artifacts, and its treatment of artifacts as outside of organizational routines. This study seeks to overcome these limitations by extending organizational routines theory. The objective of the third study is to develop a better understanding of information security standards by analyzing the structure, nature and content of their controls. This study investigates also the mechanisms used in the design of information security standards to make them both applicable to a wide range of organizations and adaptable to various specific organizational settings. The results of this study led to the proposition of a new theory for information systems called generative control theory

Retrieval through explanation : an abductive inference approach to relevance feedback

Relevance feedback techniques are designed to automatically improve a system's representation of a query by using documents the user has marked as relevant. However, traditional relevance feedback models suffer from a number of limitations that restrict their potential in supporting information seeking. One of the major limitations of relevance feedback is that it does not incorporate behavioural aspects of information seeking - how and why users assess relevance. We propose that relevance feedback should be viewed as a process of explanation and demonstrate how this limitation of relevance feedback techniques can be overcome by a theory of relevance feedback based on abductive inference

Exploring the Interplay of the Design and Emergence of Business Processes as Organizational Routines

Much of the BPM literature views business process design and implementation as a top-down process that is built on strategic alignment and managerial control.While this view has enabled the design of many IT artifacts for business processes, it is inconsistent with the observation that information infrastructures, including a company’s business process infrastructure, are at drift, a term that refers to the lack of topdown management control. The paper contributes to resolving this inconsistency by developing ameta-framework that conceptualizes business processes as emergent organizational routines that are represented, enabled, and constrained by IT artifacts. IT artifacts are developed in processes of functionalhierarchical decomposition and social design processes. Organizational routines have ostensive and performative aspects, forming a mutually constitutive duality. A literature review demonstrates that the propositions offered by the meta-framework have been insufficiently considered in the BPM field. The paper concludes with an outlook to applying the meta-framework to theorize about the interplay of design projects with the subsequent emergence of business processes in organizations

Language: what it's for and why we have it

In this thesis, I agree with the notion that human natural languages are underpinned by an innate faculty of language which predisposes us to acquire the structural aspects of language. Theories pertaining to its primary function, however, are lacking as they are either out of touch with the bigger picture of human social life (Berwick and Chomsky 2017) or, if they do embrace this, they are met with challenges from evolutionary and communication theory (Pinker and Bloom 1990; Jackendoff 2002). In order to give a more satisfactory evolutionary account of the faculty of language, I propose that we take inspiration from the alternative view that natural languages are social entities which are wholly learnt and exist to improve human cooperation and social living (Tomasello 2014; Sterelny 2012). An important aspect of this view is seeing that humans have an advanced form of social cognition—that is the ability to understand that other creatures also have minds—which underpins their cooperative and communicative capabilities. I suggest, instead, that we ask what the faculty of language brings to this viewpoint. My response is that an innate linguistic structure is able to bring to mind new thoughts, ideas, or explanations in human communicative discourse and in situations where it would not be possible with just standalone words or pointing and pantomime. In more technical terms ‘the primary function of the faculty of language is to make relevant what is not salient in communicative discourses’. The faculty of language, thus, introduces a new paradigm to human communication and social living. In conclusion, we will appreciate that an approach which integrates valuable lessons from viewpoints that are usually diametrically opposed provides a picture of language evolution that is more holistic and streamlined. My theory, therefore, appreciates and combines our understanding of linguistic structure, social cognition, human communication, and evolution in a way that is not seen in either of the theories that precede it

The Ostensive Model of Developing Information-Needs

From intuitions and informal observations of searching behaviour, a formal model is developed of cognition during a searching session. The model is of the iterative updating of an information-need by exposure of a user to information during a session. The model is path-based - using trends within the content of objects on a path to predict the current information-need. This provides contextual interpretation of objects based upon the path taken to an object. The model is ostensive in nature; however, instead of the active communicated evidence of traditional conceptions of ostension, it uses passive observational evidence. It produces a new notion of relevance: Ostensive Relevance - profiles of which are the key to the effective use of path information. The integration of the Ostensive Model and the Binary Probabilistic Model is achieved by weakening of a conventional assumption in the estimation of a probabilistic parameter. This integration effects a novel combination of objective and subjective probabilities - commonly regarded as incompatible. The Ostensive Model is instantiated in a combination of a networked IR server and a novel graphical user-interface. The interface presents a fish-eyed view of a growing multi-path browsing surface that hides internal representations and obviates querying. The hiding of internals, combined with the ability of the Ostensive Model to follow a developing information-need, makes the interface a truly media-neutral searching environment. A new test collection of general interest images with four binary relevance assessments is constructed and used for an evaluation of three Ostensive Relevance Profiles. The results are analysed in the light of different interpretations of the multiple assessments of the test-collection. The evaluation method is itself analysed and concrete proposals made for its development. The results of the evaluation provide strong encouragement for the Ostensive approach

Integration of Action and Language Knowledge: A Roadmap for Developmental Robotics

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”This position paper proposes that the study of embodied cognitive agents, such as humanoid robots, can advance our understanding of the cognitive development of complex sensorimotor, linguistic, and social learning skills. This in turn will benefit the design of cognitive robots capable of learning to handle and manipulate objects and tools autonomously, to cooperate and communicate with other robots and humans, and to adapt their abilities to changing internal, environmental, and social conditions. Four key areas of research challenges are discussed, specifically for the issues related to the understanding of: 1) how agents learn and represent compositional actions; 2) how agents learn and represent compositional lexica; 3) the dynamics of social interaction and learning; and 4) how compositional action and language representations are integrated to bootstrap the cognitive system. The review of specific issues and progress in these areas is then translated into a practical roadmap based on a series of milestones. These milestones provide a possible set of cognitive robotics goals and test scenarios, thus acting as a research roadmap for future work on cognitive developmental robotics.Peer reviewe