Validation of a Content Analysis System Using an Iterative Prototyping Approach to Action Research

In the face of a more rapid pace of scientific development, academic societies and competitive organizations alike are seeking new methods for content analysis. This paper describes a theoretically driven action research study that delivers a technology-mediated solution for specifying, organizing, representing and using elements of meaning in a body of knowledge. The theoretical basis, \u27ontological specification\u27 is of particular interest to IS professionals, particularly those involved in analysis and design, because it guides the efficient transformation of tacit knowledge into an explicit form. The technology-mediated solution influenced by ontological specification was validated through an iterative prototyping form of action research. Users reported that the system was useful in their work, easy to use, and compatible with collaborative work when using it for content analysis in academic research

Using the Co-design Process to Build Non-designer Ability in Making Visual Thinking Tools

This research is a case study of using co-design as a way of assisting the capacity building process for an Indianapolis-based community organizer. The community organizer seeks to develop a visual thinking tool for enhancing her engagement with community participants. Community organizers face a wide array of complicated challenges, addressing these kinds of challenges and social issues calls for innovative and inclusive approaches to community problem solving. The author hopes this case study will showcase itself as an example of leveraging design thinking and visual thinking to support and equip more first-line workers who are non-designers to do their community jobs with a more creative problem-solving approach

A dynamic systems engineering methodology research study. Phase 2: Evaluating methodologies, tools, and techniques for applicability to NASA's systems projects

A study of NASA's Systems Management Policy (SMP) concluded that the primary methodology being used by the Mission Operations and Data Systems Directorate and its subordinate, the Networks Division, is very effective. Still some unmet needs were identified. This study involved evaluating methodologies, tools, and techniques with the potential for resolving the previously identified deficiencies. Six preselected methodologies being used by other organizations with similar development problems were studied. The study revealed a wide range of significant differences in structure. Each system had some strengths but none will satisfy all of the needs of the Networks Division. Areas for improvement of the methodology being used by the Networks Division are listed with recommendations for specific action

Shingle 2.0: generalising self-consistent and automated domain discretisation for multi-scale geophysical models

The approaches taken to describe and develop spatial discretisations of the domains required for geophysical simulation models are commonly ad hoc, model or application specific and under-documented. This is particularly acute for simulation models that are flexible in their use of multi-scale, anisotropic, fully unstructured meshes where a relatively large number of heterogeneous parameters are required to constrain their full description. As a consequence, it can be difficult to reproduce simulations, ensure a provenance in model data handling and initialisation, and a challenge to conduct model intercomparisons rigorously. This paper takes a novel approach to spatial discretisation, considering it much like a numerical simulation model problem of its own. It introduces a generalised, extensible, self-documenting approach to carefully describe, and necessarily fully, the constraints over the heterogeneous parameter space that determine how a domain is spatially discretised. This additionally provides a method to accurately record these constraints, using high-level natural language based abstractions, that enables full accounts of provenance, sharing and distribution. Together with this description, a generalised consistent approach to unstructured mesh generation for geophysical models is developed, that is automated, robust and repeatable, quick-to-draft, rigorously verified and consistent to the source data throughout. This interprets the description above to execute a self-consistent spatial discretisation process, which is automatically validated to expected discrete characteristics and metrics.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Submitted for publication and under revie

Agile Requirements Engineering: A systematic literature review

Nowadays, Agile Software Development (ASD) is used to cope with increasing complexity in system development. Hybrid development models, with the integration of User-Centered Design (UCD), are applied with the aim to deliver competitive products with a suitable User Experience (UX). Therefore, stakeholder and user involvement during Requirements Engineering (RE) are essential in order to establish a collaborative environment with constant feedback loops. The aim of this study is to capture the current state of the art of the literature related to Agile RE with focus on stakeholder and user involvement. In particular, we investigate what approaches exist to involve stakeholder in the process, which methodologies are commonly used to present the user perspective and how requirements management is been carried out. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with an extensive quality assessment of the included studies. We identified 27 relevant papers. After analyzing them in detail, we derive deep insights to the following aspects of Agile RE: stakeholder and user involvement, data gathering, user perspective, integrated methodologies, shared understanding, artifacts, documentation and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR). Agile RE is a complex research field with cross-functional influences. This study will contribute to the software development body of knowledge by assessing the involvement of stakeholder and user in Agile RE, providing methodologies that make ASD more human-centric and giving an overview of requirements management in ASD.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Task 10: Research an Alternative Instructional Design Model

Under authority of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Center of Excellence (COE) Technical Training Human Performance (TTHP) Task 10 research team has prepared a comprehensive technical report and an executive summary for the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) concerning the instructional development (ID) of occupational education and training for Air Traffic (AT) controllers and Technical Operations (TO) technicians. Research included: • Front-end analysis of available FAA courses and government furnished information (GFI), including course-development documentation and associated guidance, policies, and regulations. • Structured and semi-structured data-gathering techniques in cooperation with Instructional Systems Specialists (ISS), ISS Managers, and Requirements personnel. • Informal observations of validation events for Air Traffic training. • Analysis of the relevant literature from academic, government, and industry domains. The executive summary describes the findings and observations of issues directly related to the ID process and potential solutions based on findings from this comparative analysis. The comprehensive report that follows includes these and additional observations and recommendations as well as the project overview, an introduction to best practice research, the research methodology, presentation and analysis of the results, and discussion of the findings and conclusions

Prototypointimenetelmien käyttö käyttäjäkeskeisessä suunnitteluprosessissa

To stay competitive in the rapidly evolving business environment, organizations need to be able to create innovations. Novel new products are often created with experimentation, which means that organizations need to use practices that support experimentation. Prototyping is one such practice. Agile software development embraces changing requirements, which makes it suitable for experimentation-driven product development. The overall research problem considers how different types of prototyping approaches can support fast-paced product development in an agile software development project. Research questions include: 1. How to improve prototyping for fast-paced agile software development? 2. How can prototyping support agile requirements engineering? The research consists of two main parts: literature review and empirical research, which includes action research and interviews. Prototyping could be improved for the purposes of fast-paced agile software projects by using simplified prototypes and small focused prototypes to make it possible to iterate the design of user interface elements faster. Additionally, low-fidelity prototyping and participatory design could be useful for agile projects. To make large high-fidelity prototypes faster to iterate, better tooling is needed. Prototyping can support agile requirements engineering e.g. by acting as documentation, facilitating communication and by making big picture clearer.Pysyäkseen kilpailukykyisinä nopeasti kehittyvässä liiketoimintaympäristössä organisaatioiden pitää kyetä luomaan innovaatioita. Uudenlaiset tuotteet saadaan usein aikaiseksi kokeilujen avulla, mistä johtuen on käytettävä käytäntöjä, jotka tukevat kokeilujen tekemistä. Prototypointi on yksi tällainen käytäntö. Ketterä ohjelmistokehitys ottaa halukkaasti vastaan muuttuvat vaatimusmääritykset, joten se soveltuu kokeiluita hyödyntävään tuotteiden kehitykseen. Tutkimusongelma tarkastelee, kuinka erilaiset prototypointitavat tukevat nopeatempoista tuotekehitystä ketterässä ohjelmistokehitysprojektissa. Tutkimuskysymykset ovat: 1. Kuinka prototypointia voidaan kehittää nopeatempoista ketterää ohjelmistokehitystä varten? 2. Kuinka prototypointi tukee ketterää vaatimusmäärittelyä? Tutkimus sisältää kaksi pääosaa: kirjallisuuskatsauksen ja kokeellisen osan, joka koostuu haastatteluista ja toimintatutkimuksesta. Prototypointia voidaan kehittää nopeatempoisten ketterien ohjelmistoprojektien tarpeisiin käyttämällä yksinkertaistettuja prototyyppejä sekä pienempiä ja fokusoituneempia prototyyppejä käyttöliittymäelementtien designin iteroinnin nopeuttamiseksi. Matalan tarkkuuden prototyypit ja osallistava suunnittelu voivat myös olla avuksi ketterissä projekteissa. Isojen korkean tarkkuuden prototyyppien iteroinnin nopeuttaminen vaatii uusien työkalujen kehittämistä. Prototypointi voi tukea ketterää vaatimusmäärittelyä esim. toimimalla dokumentaationa, helpottamalla kommunikaatiota ja tekemällä ns. ison kuvan selvemmäksi

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

A method for tailoring the information content of a software process model

The framework is defined for a general method for selecting a necessary and sufficient subset of a general software life cycle's information products, to support new software development process. Procedures for characterizing problem domains in general and mapping to a tailored set of life cycle processes and products is presented. An overview of the method is shown using the following steps: (1) During the problem concept definition phase, perform standardized interviews and dialogs between developer and user, and between user and customer; (2) Generate a quality needs profile of the software to be developed, based on information gathered in step 1; (3) Translate the quality needs profile into a profile of quality criteria that must be met by the software to satisfy the quality needs; (4) Map the quality criteria to set of accepted processes and products for achieving each criterion; (5) Select the information products which match or support the accepted processes and product of step 4; and (6) Select the design methodology which produces the information products selected in step 5