Designing and evaluating the usability of a machine learning API for rapid prototyping music technology

To better support creative software developers and music technologists' needs, and to empower them as machine learning users and innovators, the usability of and developer experience with machine learning tools must be considered and better understood. We review background research on the design and evaluation of application programming interfaces (APIs), with a focus on the domain of machine learning for music technology software development. We present the design rationale for the RAPID-MIX API, an easy-to-use API for rapid prototyping with interactive machine learning, and a usability evaluation study with software developers of music technology. A cognitive dimensions questionnaire was designed and delivered to a group of 12 participants who used the RAPID-MIX API in their software projects, including people who developed systems for personal use and professionals developing software products for music and creative technology companies. The results from the questionnaire indicate that participants found the RAPID-MIX API a machine learning API which is easy to learn and use, fun, and good for rapid prototyping with interactive machine learning. Based on these findings, we present an analysis and characterization of the RAPID-MIX API based on the cognitive dimensions framework, and discuss its design trade-offs and usability issues. We use these insights and our design experience to provide design recommendations for ML APIs for rapid prototyping of music technology. We conclude with a summary of the main insights, a discussion of the merits and challenges of the application of the CDs framework to the evaluation of machine learning APIs, and directions to future work which our research deems valuable

Communication System For Firefighters

Currently firefighters use two-way radios to communicate on the job, and they are forced to write reports based on their memory because there is not an easy way to record the communications between two-way radios. Firefighters need a system to automatically document what happened while they were responding to a call. To save them a significant amount of time when creating reports, our solution is to implement an application that allows firefighters to take pictures, record video and communicate in real time with their team of on-site responders. The proposed system will use a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) hosted on the fire truck itself to act as an access point (AP) to which the firefighters can connect. This AP will also save communication between firefighters to a local storage location. Upon return to the fire station, the AP will route all of the information stored locally to a larger database. For now, Wi-Fi will be our communication medium, with a prediction that our technology can eventually be extended to include radio signal

Data visualization in the Data Center Infrastructure Management field

La Revolució Digital s'ha caracteritzat per un ús generalitzat d'Internet i la generació de grans quantitats de dades. El càlcul i l'anàlisi d'aquestes dades, però, no sempre són automàtics. Sovint cal l'ajuda humana per decidir primer el propòsit o l'objectiu de la tasca en curs, i després seleccionar les dades adequades que ajudaran a assolir aquest objectiu. La visualització de dades té com a propòsit facilitar el procés de presa de decisions. Aquestes grans quantitats de dades s'emmagatzemen i es processen en centres de dades que requereixen el manteniment adequat dels seus ecosistemes físics (el seu espai, electricitat, temperatura i seguretat de les dades), que es fa principalment mitjançant programaris anomenats sistemes de gestió d'infraestructures de centres de dades (DCIM). La investigació en aquest camp s'ha centrat sobretot en solucions de programari per gestionar aquest tipus de sistemes i en canvi no s'ha centrat tant en la visualització de dades. L'objectiu d'aquest estudi és contribuir en aquest camp proposant una solució de visualització de dades que té com a objectiu ajudar els usuaris de sistemes DCIM a analitzar i interpretar millor les dades crítiques (principalment recursos i alarmes). Això permetrà als usuaris prendre millors decisions, predir, planificar i gestionar aquests sistemes de manera segura i eficient. Aquesta solució ha estat dissenyada a través de visualitzacions definides a partir de tasques, un camí propi de tractament de les dades i una web a mida de l'usuari. Aquesta última, és la part més visible del projecte, ja que és la interfície final a nivell d'usuari, tanmateix, cada part de la solució té una rellevància en el projecte.The Digital Revolution has been characterized by a widespread use of the Internet and the generation of huge quantities of data. The computation and analysis of this data is not always automatic. It often needs human help to first decide the purpose or goal of the task-at-hand and then select the right features from the data that will help achieve that goal. Data visualization aims to facilitate this decision-making process. Such vast amounts of data are stored and processed in data centers which require the proper maintenance of their physical ecosystems (i.e., their space, electricity, temperature, and data security), which is mostly done though Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) systems. Research in this field has mostly focused on software solutions to manage these types of systems and hasn't focused as much on data visualization. The purpose of this study is to contribute in this field by proposing a data visualization solution that aims at helping users of DCIM systems to better analyze and interpret the critical data (i.e. resources and alarms). This will allow users not only to make better decisions on forecasting and planning and to manage these systems more safely and efficiently. To do so, this solution is designed using multiple task-based data visualizations, a custom data pipeline and a tailored website from back-end to front-end. The latter has the main focus of the project, since it is the final user interface experience, but every step of the solution counts and is given equal importance to achieve a solid solution

Animation of BPMN business processes models

BPM in the business world is currently supported by tools that facilitate the design, implementation, execution, monitoring and optimization of business processes. These so called Business Process Management Suites usually have animation capabilities associated to process simulation. However, animation capabilities vary depending on the tool and the better these are, the higher is the animation preparation effort. This problem is more evident when generic simulation tools are compared with BPM specific ones, which use BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) as the modeling notation and have more limited animation capabilities. This dissertation presents a proposal to endow the BPMN with animation capabilities which respects all the elements presentation rules established in the notation specification. This proposal was designed based upon the data collected through the application of the animation capabilities evaluation taxonomy also proposed here in this dissertation. A prototype was built on top of an open-source tool in order to implement our animation proposal and was used to animate the service request process model using real execution data from an IT Service management tool used at ISCTE-IUL.A gestão de processos de negócio no mundo empresarial é actualmente suportada por ferramentas computacionais, que facilitam o seu desenho, implementação, execução, monitorização e optimização. Essas ferramentas, vulgarmente designadas de Business Process Management Suites, possuem usualmente mecanismos de animação aliados à simulação de processos. Contudo, as capacidades de animação diferem consoante a ferramenta, sendo que quanto melhores são estas capacidades, maior é o tempo investido na preparação da animação. Este problema torna-se mais evidente quando são comparadas ferramentas de simulação mais genéricas com ferramentas dedicadas à gestão de processos de negócio, que usam BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) como notação de modelação, em que as animações se tornam mais limitadas. Esta dissertação apresenta uma proposta de animação para a notação BPMN que respeita as regras de apresentação dos elementos da notação estabelecidas na especificação da mesma. Esta proposta foi desenhada com base nos resultados recolhidos através da aplicação de uma taxonomia também aqui proposta para a avaliação das capacidades de animação de ferramentas de simulação de processos de negócio, onde se reflecte o estado da arte no campo da animação de processos. A proposta de animação foi implementada num protótipo, que assenta sobre uma ferramenta open-source seleccionada a partir de requisitos definidos e apresentados na dissertação. Por fim, o protótipo foi usado para animar um modelo do processo de requisição de serviços usando, para isso, dados de execução reais recolhidos da ferramenta de gestão de serviços de TI utilizado no ISCTE-IUL

Traveltant: Social Interaction Based Personalized Recommendation System

Trip planning is a time consuming task that most people do before going to any destination. Traveltant is an intelligent system that analyzes a user\u27s Social network and suggests a complete trip plan detailed for every single day based on the user\u27s interests extracted from the Social network. Traveltant also considers the interests of friends the user interacts with most by building a ranked friends list of interactivity, and then uses the interests of those people in this list to enrich the recommendation results. Traveltant provides a smooth user interface through a Windows Phone 7 application while doing most of the work in a backend cloud service. To evaluate the results of the system, volunteers have rated the personalized results better than those results from only common factors such popularity and rating

Software is Scholarship

This Article provides the first systematic account and justification of software applications as works of scholarship. Software is scholarship to the extent that software functionality is derived from scholarly research, software is used as a means to develop scholarship, or software is used as a medium to communicate scholarly ideas. Software applications are superior to articles and books for communicating scholarly ideas because software is not limited by the constraints of traditional written works. Software can communicate using a wide variety of textual components, graphical elements, and programmable interactivity that significantly enhance the ability to communicate scholarly concepts, arguments, and findings. This Article identifies four methods for software applications to enhance scholarly communication: app-ified argumentation that provides theoretical clarity, interactive toolkits that create rich qualitative studies, data visualizations that persuade using data, and policy tech that improves the ability to enact social change. Interactive software applications can enhance research agendas in the humanities and social sciences by making traditional, prose scholarship more thorough, persuasive, and analytically precise. Due to recent innovations, developing software for scholarly purposes is accessible to those that work in the humanities. Platforms for developing software have grown so sophisticated that they no longer require creators to write code to develop powerful, data rich, and well-designed interactive applications. Scholars should accordingly use and develop software to better communicate their ideas. By providing a framework for developing software as works of scholarship, this Article contributes to the field of digital humanities. To better understand this Article’s concept of scholarly software, I apply my conceptualization of scholarly software to legal scholarship and legal technology and discuss three case studies: LegalTech toolkits, voice recognition for automated contract drafting, and court data visualizations. Law is a fertile ground for the development of scholarly software because the core of legal reasoning consists of a formalistic, computational structure that is well-expressed through programmable applications. This Article contributes to legal scholarship by identifying how it can be enhanced through the creation of software applications

Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development

Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we provide a roadmap of directions for future work.Comment: Invited Keynote Paper for the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'18

Survey of Technologies for Web Application Development

Web-based application developers face a dizzying array of platforms, languages, frameworks and technical artifacts to choose from. We survey, classify, and compare technologies supporting Web application development. The classification is based on (1) foundational technologies; (2)integration with other information sources; and (3) dynamic content generation. We further survey and classify software engineering techniques and tools that have been adopted from traditional programming into Web programming. We conclude that, although the infrastructure problems of the Web have largely been solved, the cacophony of technologies for Web-based applications reflects the lack of a solid model tailored for this domain.Comment: 43 page