Activity recognition from smartphone sensing data

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

A tool framework for developing context-sensitive user assistance systems using model-driven aspect weaving

Ankara : The Department of Computer Engineering and the Graduate School of Engineering and Science of Bilkent University, 2012.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2012.Includes bibliographical references.User assistance systems act as a guide for the users of software products. These systems aim to guarantee a successful user experience by helping in performing tasks. Early on, off-line user manuals were mostly the mediums of user assistance, and technically, they were independent of the systems they belong to. The upward trend in user assistance systems is that the provision of assistance is automated through some attached mechanisms to the software systems. There have been numerous proposals introducing fresh and novel methods for the purpose of automated user assistance. Specifically, embedded user assistance consists of instructional or conceptual information that appears within a software application window. It includes embedded help that appear within the application, field labels, and page overviews. The overall objective of this thesis is to reveal the state of the art advances in user assistance systems, and to propose a tool framework for developing contextsensitive user assistance systems. Firstly, we conducted two systematic literature reviews for both automated and embedded user assistance systems. The systematic literature reviews are required for acquiring solid background on embedded user assistance systems as well as for exploring the main obstacles to automated user assistance systems. The research findings are presented in parallel with the work published in the literature, and we aim at revealing a variety of techniques used for automated and embedded user assistance. The systematic reviews are conducted by a multiphase study selection process under a lot of articles obtained by dedicated search strategies. Since there has been no study to systematically undertake the state of user assistance systems, our work has a pioneering value of contents providing a road-map of current trends for further researchers in the field of user assistance. Having analyzed the results of systematic reviews, we conducted a survey of help authoring tools that revealed the lack of generalized context-sensitive user assistance solutions. Also, the utilization of methods, algorithms and tools differs from domain to domain, being rather scattered. We aimed at developing embedded context-sensitive user assistance systems, which is not trivial and has to meet several challenges. Unfortunately, user-assistance concerns such as help content and related weaving information cannot be easily localized in single modules and as such tend to crosscut multiple modules. The reuse of user assistance tools for different applications is required because developing custom-based user assistance for each separate application is laborious. Consequently, the obstacles related to the development of context-sensitive user assistance systems have brought out the idea of a tool framework for this purpose. To address these issues we developed an aspect-oriented tool framework Assistant-Pro that can be used to develop context-sensitive embedded user assistance for multiple applications. The framework provides tools for defining the process model, defining guidance related to process steps, and modularizing and weaving help concerns in the target application for which user guidance needs to be provided. The tool has been originally developed and validated in the context of Aselsan, a large Turkish defense electronics company.Açar, MuratM.S

On the Bottom-up Foundations of the Banking-Macro Nexus

The complexity of credit-money is conceived as the central issue in the banking-macro nexus, which the author considers as a structural as well as process component of the evolving economy. This nexus is significant for the stability as well as the fragility of the economic system, because it connects the monetary with the real domain of economic production and consumption. The evolution of credit rules shapes economic networks between households, firms, banks, governments and central banks in space and time. The properties and characteristics of this evolutionary process are discussed in three sections. First, the author looks into the origins of the theory of money and its role for contemporary monetary economics. Second, he briefly discusses current theoretical foundations of top-down as well as bottom-up approaches to the banking-macro nexus, such as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium and agent-based models. In the third part he suggests an evolutionary framework, building on a generic rule-based approach, to arrive at standards for bottom-up foundations in agent-based macroeconomic models with a banking sector. (author's abstract

Mass participation user trials

This thesis investigates how researchers can take advantage of the rapid adoption of mobile technology that has brought with it transformations in social and cultural practice; the expectations of what computers are, what they can do, and the role of digital objects in everyday life. In particular this thesis presents and discuses the use of new App Store style software distribution methods to reduce the cost, in terms of researcher time and hardware, of recruiting a large group of participants for a trial ‘in the wild’ while increasing the potential diversity of users is becoming an attractive option for researchers pursuing the ubicomp vision. It examines the procedures for running large scale trials with the deployment of three applications released to a combined user base of over 135,000 in such a way as to keep the qualitative detail necessary to inform design while gain- ing the diversity of users for claims of generalisability. More generally, it discusses the results that can be expected from this ‘mass participation’ approach, and the ethical responsibilities they place upon researchers. The contributions of this thesis for mobile HCI show that in large-scale trials, relatively rich qualitative data can be collected along with substantial quantitative data, and that a hybrid trial methodology combining a large- scale deployment with a local trial can be a powerful tool in addressing shortcomings of trials that are either solely local or solely global. This thesis also contributes guidelines for researchers running large-scale user trials that give consideration to the established research norms and practices, in an attempt to strike a new balance between invasiveness and utility

Implementation patterns for supporting learning and group interactions

This thesis covers research on group learning by using a computer as the medium. The computer software provides the basic blending of the students contributions augmented by the effects generated for the specific learning domain by a system of agents to guide the process of the students learning. The research is based on the approach that the computer as a medium is not an end point of the interaction. The development of agents in based on Human-Computer-Human interaction or HCH. HCH is about removing the idea that the role of the computer is that of an intelligent agent and reducing its role to that of a mixer, with the ability to insert adaptive electronic (software) components that add extra effects and depth to the product of the human-human interactions. For the computer to achieve this support, it must be able to analyse the input from the individuals and the group as a whole. Experiments have been conducted on groups working face to face, and then on groups using software developed for the research. Patterns of interaction and learning have been extracted from the logs and files of these group sessions. Also a pattern language has been developed by which to describe these patterns, so that the agent support needed to analyse and respond appropriately to each pattern can be developed. The research has led to the derivation of a structure that encompasses all the types of support required, and provides the format for implementing each type of support. The main difficulty in this work is the limited ability of computers to analyse human thoughts through their actions. However progress is made in analysing the level of approach by students to a range of learning concepts. The research identified the separate patterns that contribute to learning agents development and form a language of learning processes, and the agents derived from these patterns could in future be linked into a multi-agent system to support learning

Post-industrial Intervention : An Activity-Theoretical Expedition Tracing the Proximal Development of Forms of Conducting Interventions

Ei saatavillaThe purpose of this study is to investigate which forms of conducting interventions could effectively address a qualitatively new type of problems ('post-industrial problems') which are located between activities and which cannot be resolved by adapting standard solutions. This is achieved by combining a historical-analytical investigation with an empirical-experimental investigation. The historical-analytical part commences by investigating the origin of forms of conducting interventions with a unit of analysis for the further procedure as an outcome. The unit of analysis serves as the basis for the analysis of some selected past and contemporary forms of conducting interventions. This leads to the comprehension of the historical dynamics of forms of conducting interventions, including a historical hypothesis of a zone of proximal development. The empirical-experimental part takes the study from the comprehension of the current state to a discussion of a qualitatively new form of conducting interventions that could address post-industrial problems effectively. Concrete characteristics of an example of a new form of conducting interventions are identified by following the developmental trajectory of theoretically interesting cases that experiment with new models of intervention. The Change Laboratory method is used to analyze and support the development in the central empirical case, a New Zealand-based research-consultancy hybrid. The historical analyses suggest that intervention activity has its roots in societal problem-solving processes, that is, innovation and diffusion processes, associated with periods of radical change in work and organizations, such as those occurring during technological revolutions. In the majority of the 20th century a clear-cut societal division of labor between established types of conducting interventions can be observed: (1) 'Scholar-entrepreneurs' developed and tested innovative solutions for the efficient operation of factories, effective strategic management of multinational corporations and ICT infrastructure for supporting work processes in companies. (2) Large efficiency consultancies, management consultancies and IT consultancies took up these organizational innovations and focused on adapting and disseminating solutions that entailed a fundamental change in the logic of client activities. (3) After the unbalanced top-down implementation of fundamental organizational innovations (with regard to efficiency, strategy/structure or ICT) problems such as Human Relations, weak cooperation or weak quality emerged or were aggravated. These problems were often addressed by intervention-oriented research centers, which relied on methodologies for creating innovative solutions. (4) In times of societal turmoil, government agencies were involved in organizing state interventions that diffused standardized solutions for partial organizational problems (e.g., in Human Relations or regarding quality issues) to a large number of work activities and by this provided the means to alleviate situations. With the emergence of complex network organizations and post-industrial problems at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century, the need has increased for new forms of conducting interventions ('post-industrial' forms) which (1) combine a focus on creating innovative solutions with a focus on adapting and disseminating solutions, as well as (2) combine the focus on fundamental change in the logic of work organization with the focus on balanced transformation. In the analysis of selected experiments on conducting interventions, variants of Developmental Work Research are identified as possible instruments of post-industrial forms. A dynamic network of activities that contribute to a joint problem-solving process is identified as a possible community arrangement of post-industrial forms. This study argues that the creation of solutions can develop a more disseminating character and the dissemination of solutions a more creative character, if intervention activity is not organized within the boundaries of one consultancy firm or research center, but is instead carried out by a network of actors and organizations