Accurate complex systems design: integrating serious games with Petri Nets

Difficulty understanding the large number of interactions involved in complex systems makes their successful engineering a problem. Petri Nets are one graphical modelling technique used to describe and check proposed designs of complex systems thoroughly. While automatic analysis capabilities of Petri Nets are useful, their visual form is less so, particularly for communicating the design they represent. In engineering projects, this can lead to a gap in communications between people with different areas of expertise, negatively impacting achieving accurate designs. In contrast, although capable of representing a variety of real and imaginary objects effectively, behaviour of serious games can only be analysed manually through interactive simulation. This paper examines combining the complementary strengths of Petri Nets and serious games. The novel contribution of this work is a serious game prototype of a complex system design that has been checked thoroughly. Underpinned by Petri Net analysis, the serious game can be used as a high-level interface to communicate and refine the design. Improvement of a complex system design is demonstrated by applying the integration to a proof-of-concept case study

Proposta de uma visita virtual 3D ao claustro do Museu de Aveiro

Mestrado em Comunicação MultimédiaO presente estudo pretende preencher uma lacuna existente nos museus atuais, que não apresentam evolução tecnológica e desenvolvimento na web que lhes permitam cativar novos públicos através de aplicações museológicas online. O projecto é de forma objectiva a recriação e o restauro digital dos claustros do Museu de Aveiro entre o século XVII e XIX. através do levantamento de imagens e documentação da época, disponibilizadas pelo Museu de Aveiro. As tecnologias 3D são uma mais-valia neste âmbito, no sentido de que se mantêm inalteráveis, podem ser acedidas em qualquer altura e lugar, e podem complementar o espaço com informações adicionais. Analisando o panorama actual de espaços museológicos virtuais e as suas vantagens, elaboramos através de várias ferramentas multimédia e suporte digital, a construção e restauro de uma visita virtual do Claustro do Museu de Aveiro.This study aims to fill a gap in existing museums, which do not present technological and web development to enable them capture new audiences through online museum applications. The project aims to recreate and restore a digital application of the Cloisters of Aveiro Museum between the XVII and XIX century, surveyed the pictures and documentation of the time, provided by the Museum of Aveiro. 3D technologies are an asset in this context, in the sense that remain unchanged, can be accessed at any time and place, and can complement the space with additional information. Analysing the current situation of virtual museums and their advantages, we elaborated through various multimedia tools and digital media, the construction and restoration of a virtual tour to the Cloisters of Aveiro Museum

A Design Rationale for Pervasive Computing - User Experience, Contextual Change, and Technical Requirements

The vision of pervasive computing promises a shift from information technology per se to what can be accomplished by using it, thereby fundamentally changing the relationship between people and information technology. In order to realize this vision, a large number of issues concerning user experience, contextual change, and technical requirements should be addressed. We provide a design rationale for pervasive computing that encompasses these issues, in which we argue that a prominent aspect of user experience is to provide user control, primarily founded in human values. As one of the more significant aspects of the user experience, we provide an extended discussion about privacy. With contextual change, we address the fundamental change in previously established relationships between the practices of individuals, social institutions, and physical environments that pervasive computing entails. Finally, issues of technical requirements refer to technology neutrality and openness--factors that we argue are fundamental for realizing pervasive computing. We describe a number of empirical and technical studies, the results of which have helped to verify aspects of the design rationale as well as shaping new aspects of it. The empirical studies include an ethnographic-inspired study focusing on information technology support for everyday activities, a study based on structured interviews concerning relationships between contexts of use and everyday planning activities, and a focus group study of laypeople’s interpretations of the concept of privacy in relation to information technology. The first technical study concerns the model of personal service environments as a means for addressing a number of challenges concerning user experience, contextual change, and technical requirements. Two other technical studies relate to a model for device-independent service development and the wearable server as a means to address issues of continuous usage experience and technology neutrality respectively

Toward composing variable structure models and their interfaces: a case of intensional coupling definitions

In this thesis, we investigate a combination of traditional component-based and variable structure modeling. The focus is on a structural consistent specification of couplings in modular, hierarchical models with a variable structure. For this, we exploitintensional definitions, as known from logic, and introduce a novel intensional coupling definition, which allows a concise yet expressive specification of complex communication and interaction patterns in static as well as variable structure models, without the need to worryabout structural consistency.In der Arbeit untersuchen wir ein Zusammenbringen von klassischer komponenten-basierter und variabler Strukturmodellierung. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf der Spezifikation von strukturkonsistenten Kopplungen in modular-hierarchischen Modellen mit einer variablen Struktur. Dafür nutzen wir intensionale Definitionen, wie sie aus der Logik bekannt sind, und führen ein neuartiges Konzept von intensionalen Kopplungen ein, welches kompakte gleichzeitig ausdrucksstarke Spezifikationen von komplexen Kommunikations- und Interaktionsmuster in statischen und variablen Strukturmodellen erlaubt

Method and Technology for Model-based Test Automation of Context-sensitive Mobile Applications

Smartphone und Tablet Computer haben sich zu universalen Kommunikations- und Unterhaltungsplattformen entwickelt, die durch ständige Verfügbarkeit mobilen Internets die Verwendung mobiler, digitaler Dienste und Anwendungen immer mehr zur Normalität werden lassen und in alle Bereiche des Alltags vordringen. Die digitalen Marktplätze zum Vertrieb von Apps, sogenannten App Stores, sind Blockbuster-Märkte, in denen wenige erfolgreiche Produkte in kurzen Zeitintervallen den Großteil des Gesamtgewinns des Marktes erzielen. Durch dynamische, summative Bewertungssysteme in App Stores wird die Qualität einer App zu einem unmittelbaren Wert- und Aufwandstreiber. Die Qualität einer App steht in direktem Zusammenhang mit der Anzahl Downloads und somit mit dem wirtschaftlichen Erfolg. Mobile Geräte zeichnen sich gegenüber Desktop-Computern vorrangig dadurch aus, dass sie durch Sensoren in der Lage sind, Parameter ihrer Umgebung zu messen und diese Daten für Anwendungsinhalte aufzubereiten. Anwendungsfälle für solche Technologien sind beispielsweise ortsbasierte digitale Dienste, die Verwendung von Standortinformationen für Fahrzeug- oder Fußgängernavigation oder die Verwendung von Sensoren zur Interaktion mit einer Anwendung oder zur grafischen Aufbereitung in Augmented Reality-Anwendungen. Anwendungen, die Parameter ihrer Umgebung messen, aufbereiten und die Steuerung des Kontrollflusses einfließen lassen, werden als kontextsensitive Anwendungen bezeichnet. Kontextsensitivität hat prägenden Einfluss auf die fachliche und technische Gestaltung mobiler Anwendungen. Die fachliche Interpretation von Kontextparametern ist ein nicht-triviales Problem und erfordert eine sorgfältige Implementierung und gründliches Testen. Herausforderungen des Testens kontextsensitiver, mobiler Anwendungen sind Erstellung und Durchführung von Tests, die zum einen die zu testende Anwendung adäquat abdecken und zum anderen Testdaten bereitstellen und reproduzierbar in die zu testende Anwendung einspeisen. In dieser Dissertation wird eine Methode und eine Technologie vorgestellt, die wesentliche Aspekte und Tätigkeiten des Testens durch modellbasierte Automatisierung von menschlicher Arbeitskraft entkoppelt. Es wird eine Methode vorgestellt, die Tests für kontextsensitive Anwendungen aus UML-Aktivitätsdiagrammen generiert, die durch Verwendung eines UML-Profils zur Kontext- und Testmodellierung um Testdaten angereichert werden. Ein Automatisierungswerkzeug unterstützt die Testdurchführung durch reproduzierbare Simulation von Kontextparametern. Durch eine prototypische Implementierung der Generierung von funktionalen Akzeptanztests, der Testautomatisierung und Kontextsimulation wurde Machbarkeit des vorgestellten Ansatzes am Beispiel der mobilen Plattform Android praktisch nachgewiesen.Smartphones and tablet computers have evolved into universal communication and entertainment platforms. With the ubiquitous availability of mobile internet access, digital services and applications have become a commodity that permeates into all aspects of everyday life. The digital marketplaces for mobile app distribution, commonly referred to as App Stores, are blockbuster markets, where few extraordinarily successful apps generate the major share of the market's overall revenue in a short period of time. Through the implementation of dynamic, summative rating mechanisms in App Stores, app quality becomes a key value-driver of app monetarization, as app quality is directly associated with the number of app downloads, and hence with economic success. In contrast to desktop computers, mobile devices are uniquely characterized by a variety of sensors that measure environmental parameters and make them available as input to software. Potential uses of these technologies range from location-based digital services that use the user's location for vehicle or pedestrian navigation to augmented reality applications that use sensor information for user experience enhancement. Apps instrumenting physical and non-physical environmental parameters to control workflows or user interfaces are called context-aware applications. Context-awareness has a formative impact on the functional and technical design of mobile applications. The algorithmic interpretation of context data is a non-trivial problem that makes thorough implementation and careful testing mandatory to ensure adequate application quality. Major challenges of context-aware mobile application testing are test case creation and test execution. The impact of context-awareness on test case creation is the attainability of adequate test coverage, that in contrast to non-context-aware application extends beyond traditional input data. It requires the identification and characterization of context data sources and the provisioning of suitable, reproducible test data. This thesis addresses a method and technology to decouple test case creation and test execution from manual labor through the extensive use of model-driven automation technology. A method is presented that generates test cases for context-aware mobile applications from UML Activity Models by means of model transformation technology. A test execution framework facilitates the reproducible simulation of context data derived from an enriched system model. The approach is validated using a prototypical implementation of the test case generation algorithm. The simulation of context data during test execution ist validated using a modified implementation of the Android operation system