1,313 research outputs found
On the real world practice of Behaviour Driven Development
Surveys of industry practice over the last decade suggest that Behaviour Driven Development is a popular Agile practice. For example, 19% of respondents to the 14th State of Agile annual survey reported using BDD, placing it in the top 13 practices reported. As well as potential benefits, the adoption of BDD necessarily involves an additional cost of writing and maintaining Gherkin features and scenarios, and (if used for acceptance testing,) the associated step functions. Yet there is a lack of published literature exploring how BDD is used in practice and the challenges experienced by real world software development efforts. This gap is significant because without understanding current real world practice, it is hard to identify opportunities to address and mitigate challenges. In order to address this research gap concerning the challenges of using BDD, this thesis reports on a research project which explored: (a) the challenges of applying agile and undertaking requirements engineering in a real world context; (b) the challenges of applying BDD specifically and (c) the application of BDD in open-source projects to understand challenges in this different context.
For this purpose, we progressively conducted two case studies, two series of interviews, four iterations of action research, and an empirical study. The first case study was conducted in an avionics company to discover the challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety critical project environment. Since requirements management was found to be one of the biggest challenges during the case study, we decided to investigate BDD because of its reputation for requirements management. The second case study was conducted in the company with an aim to discover the challenges of using BDD in real life. The case study was complemented with an empirical study of the practice of BDD in open source projects, taking a study sample from the GitHub open source collaboration site.
As a result of this Ph.D research, we were able to discover: (i) challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety-critical organisation, (ii) current state of BDD in practice, (iii) technical limitations of Gherkin (i.e., the language for writing requirements in BDD), (iv) challenges of using BDD in a real project, (v) bad smells in the Gherkin specifications of open source projects on GitHub. We also presented a brief comparison between the theoretical description of BDD and BDD in practice. This research, therefore, presents the results of lessons learned from BDD in practice, and serves as a guide for software practitioners planning on using BDD in their projects
Comparing the production of a formula with the development of L2 competence
This pilot study investigates the production of a formula with the development of L2 competence over proficiency levels of a spoken learner corpus. The results show that the formula
in beginner production data is likely being recalled holistically from learners’ phonological
memory rather than generated online, identifiable by virtue of its fluent production in absence
of any other surface structure evidence of the formula’s syntactic properties. As learners’ L2
competence increases, the formula becomes sensitive to modifications which show structural
conformity at each proficiency level. The transparency between the formula’s modification
and learners’ corresponding L2 surface structure realisations suggest that it is the independent
development of L2 competence which integrates the formula into compositional language,
and ultimately drives the SLA process forward
Mixed Reality Interfaces for Augmented Text and Speech
While technology plays a vital role in human communication, there still remain many significant challenges when using them in everyday life. Modern computing technologies, such as smartphones, offer convenient and swift access to information, facilitating tasks like reading documents or communicating with friends. However, these tools frequently lack adaptability, become distracting, consume excessive time, and impede interactions with people and contextual information. Furthermore, they often require numerous steps and significant time investment to gather pertinent information. We want to explore an efficient process of contextual information gathering for mixed reality (MR) interfaces that provide information directly in the user’s view. This approach allows for a seamless and flexible transition between language and subsequent contextual references, without disrupting the flow of communication. ’Augmented Language’ can be defined as the integration of language and communication with mixed reality to enhance, transform, or manipulate language-related aspects and various forms of linguistic augmentations (such as annotation/referencing, aiding social interactions, translation, localization, etc.). In this thesis, our broad objective is to explore mixed reality interfaces and their potential to enhance augmented language, particularly in the domains of speech and text. Our aim is to create interfaces that offer a more natural, generalizable, on-demand, and real-time experience of accessing contextually relevant information and providing adaptive interactions. To better address this broader objective, we systematically break it down to focus on two instances of augmented language. First, enhancing augmented conversation to support on-the-fly, co-located in-person conversations using embedded references. And second, enhancing digital and physical documents using MR to provide on-demand reading support in the form of different summarization techniques. To examine the effectiveness of these speech and text interfaces, we conducted two studies in which we asked the participants to evaluate our system prototype in different use cases. The exploratory usability study for the first exploration confirms that our system decreases distraction and friction in conversation compared to smartphone search while providing highly useful and relevant information. For the second project, we conducted an exploratory design workshop to identify categories of document enhancements. We later conducted a user study with a mixed-reality prototype to highlight five board themes to discuss the benefits of MR document enhancement
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Alternative Power: The Politics of Denmark\u27s Renewable Energy Transition
Global climate change is one of the defining political challenges and opportunities of the current era. Experts widely agree that technical means already exist for making the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; the obstacles to doing so are primarily political. Careful observers also recognize that this period of transition creates an opening for political innovation and development. How can the political will be generated to take action to prevent climate catastrophe? And what will the process of transitioning mean for the political systems that have been built on cheap and abundant oil? Political scientists have largely ignored technological development as a lever for political development, or feared that technology could only be a force of domination. Yet renewable energy enthusiasts have often seen democratizing potential in these technologies. What can be accomplished politically by building a wind turbine? As countries like Denmark accumulate decades of experience with renewable energy, it is becoming possible to give such questions close empirical consideration. Denmark generates more of its electricity from renewable sources, and has been doing so longer, than any other industrialized nation, making it a uniquely valuable case for studying an advanced renewable energy transition in progress. This dissertation draws on novel qualitative and quantitative data to present the first comprehensive history of Denmark’s energy transition from its roots in the 1970s until the present, aiming to explain how this tiny nation emerged as the world’s leading wind power producer, and assess whether this process has yielded any democratic dividends. The multi-method analysis sheds new light on internal dynamics of Denmark’s energy transition, and, more generally, on late-stage evolutionary processes in mature technological systems. Many studies have shown an interest in the Danish case, which is usually presented as a relatively unqualified success story, but few have provided the empirical resolution to identify these complicating factors. This dissertation employs an explanatory strategy adapted from the ecological sciences to construct a more holistic and integrative portrait, resulting in a more thorough and accurate account of how Denmark jumped out to such a significant lead in the energy transition, and why that momentum might be flagging today, with implications for other countries hoping to chart a path toward a sustainable future
Developmental Bootstrapping of AIs
Although some current AIs surpass human abilities in closed artificial worlds
such as board games, their abilities in the real world are limited. They make
strange mistakes and do not notice them. They cannot be instructed easily, fail
to use common sense, and lack curiosity. They do not make good collaborators.
Mainstream approaches for creating AIs are the traditional manually-constructed
symbolic AI approach and generative and deep learning AI approaches including
large language models (LLMs). These systems are not well suited for creating
robust and trustworthy AIs. Although it is outside of the mainstream, the
developmental bootstrapping approach has more potential. In developmental
bootstrapping, AIs develop competences like human children do. They start with
innate competences. They interact with the environment and learn from their
interactions. They incrementally extend their innate competences with
self-developed competences. They interact and learn from people and establish
perceptual, cognitive, and common grounding. They acquire the competences they
need through bootstrapping. However, developmental robotics has not yet
produced AIs with robust adult-level competences. Projects have typically
stopped at the Toddler Barrier corresponding to human infant development at
about two years of age, before their speech is fluent. They also do not bridge
the Reading Barrier, to skillfully and skeptically draw on the socially
developed information resources that power current LLMs. The next competences
in human cognitive development involve intrinsic motivation, imitation
learning, imagination, coordination, and communication. This position paper
lays out the logic, prospects, gaps, and challenges for extending the practice
of developmental bootstrapping to acquire further competences and create
robust, resilient, and human-compatible AIs.Comment: 102 pages, 29 figure
Everyday Streets
Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities.
The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control.
Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive
Northeastern Illinois University, Academic Catalog 2023-2024
https://neiudc.neiu.edu/catalogs/1064/thumbnail.jp
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