Towards your Parents\u27 Social Network Platform: Design of a User Interface for the Age of Retirement

Most developed countries face an aging population, leading to various challenges due to this demo-graphic change. On average, people turn from working life to retirement at the age of 65. Related changes in their social environment threat their health, i.e. due to perceived social exclusion. Online Social Networks (OSN) may help them to overcome this problem. However, usability issues due to user interfaces (UI) perceived as inconsistent and con-fusing among other reasons prevent their adoption by the elderly so far. While UI design for elderly people has been discussed in the literature, few results exist on the \u27younger\u27 transition agers be-tween 55-75. Therefore, in the present paper an approach for the design of UI for OSN specific for transition agers is presented and evaluated in a qualitative study. The results indicate that with specific, but not extraordinary UI adjustments, OSN could be made easily usable and more attractive for them

A QUESTION OF METHODOLOGY – CREATING A CUSTOMIZED ROLLOUT-METHOD FOR A COLLABORATION PORTAL IN A DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT

Cassidian Electronics, a globally operating business unit of EADS, aimed to implement a collaborative portal for its quality management department. After conducting a successful pilot phase producing a prototype for a small number of users it soon became apparent that a large scale roll-out would not be feasible without proper methodological support. As no methodology was available to be used directly, an evaluation process was started and two champion methodologies (PADEM of Fraunhofer Institut and G&K - Großman and Koschek) were identified. A framework was developed to transparently compare the merits of each methodology and G&K selected as the most suitable. This paper presents the selection process as well as the case study describing the adaption mechanism and subsequent application of G&K for the roll-out of a large scale distributed collaboration portal in a high quality environment. A key lesson learned is the strong benefit of an agile method for portal implementations and roll-outs to ensure high user satisfaction and technology acceptance leading to measurable financial benefits

Island size distributions in submonolayer growth: successful prediction by mean field theory with coverage dependent capture numbers

We show that mean-field rate equations for submonolayer growth can successfully predict island size distributions in the pre-coalescence regime if the full dependence of capture numbers on both the island size and the coverage is taken into account. This is demonstrated by extensive Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations for a growth kinetics with hit and stick aggregation. A detailed analysis of the capture numbers reveals a nonlinear dependence on the island size for small islands. This nonlinearity turns out to be crucial for the successful prediction of the island size distribution and renders an analytical treatment based on a continuum limit of the mean-field rate equations difficult.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figue

It Operating Models In Practice And Research: An Analysis Of The State Of Knowledge

An IT operating model is a combination oforganizational structure and processes that comprehensively covers the IT department. It spans the whole IT lifecycle from IT strategy, architecture, demand and supply management, project management, infrastructure to support services such as accounting andHR. In essence, it is how the IT organization is set up to serve its users, the business. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and IT executives are facing constant pressure to optimize their IT operating model to fit the ever changing business models of their users. The guidance information systems (IS) research provides on this issue is scarce. The IS literature contains little specific advice on how organizations should develop and adapt IT operating models. While the literature has extensive studies on components of IToperating models, such as enterprise architecture, research on IT operating models as a whole is surprisingly sparse. This paper analyzes the available academic and practitioner literature on IT operating models and identifies areas for future research. It specifically identifies research on internal alignment within an IT department ( inward alignment ) as an area of urgent need

Does outside-in teaching improve the learning of object-oriented programming?

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is widely used in the software industry and university introductory courses today. Following the structure of most textbooks, such courses frequently are organised starting with the concepts of imperative and structured programming and only later introducing OOP. An alternative approach is to begin directly with OOP following the Outside-In teaching method as proposed by Meyer. Empirical results for the effects of Outside-In teaching on students and lecturers are sparse, however. We describe the conceptual design and empirical evaluation of two OOP introductory courses from different universities based on Outside-In teaching. The evaluation results are compared to those from a third course serving as the control group, which was taught OOP the "traditional" way. We evaluate the initial motivation and knowledge of the participants and the learning outcomes. In addition, we analyse results of the end- term exams and qualitatively analyse the results of interviews with the lecturers and tutors. Regarding the learning outcomes, the results show no signif- icant differences between the Outside-In and the “traditional” teaching method. In general, students found it harder to solve and implement algorithmic problems than to understand object oriented (OO) concepts. Students taught OOP by the Outside-In method, however, were less afraid that they would not pass the exam at the end of term and understood the OO paradigm more quickly. Therefore, the Outside-In method is no silver bullet for teaching OOP regarding the learning outcomes but has positive effects on motivation and interest

Determinanten der Prüfungshonorare von Unternehmen aus der Medienbranche – eine empirische Untersuchung unter Einsatz einer Regressionsanalyse

Prüfungshonorare stellen für Unternehmen Kosten dar. Daher ist es für die Unternehmen von großem Interesse, welche Faktoren diese Honorare beeinflussen. Um die Determinanten für deutsche börsennotierte Medienunternehmen zu ermitteln, wird eine empirische lineare Regressionsanalyse durchgeführt. Neben dem Basismodell wurden noch einige Modellerweiterungen geprüft. Es hat sich herausgestellt, dass die Größe der Mandanten die einzige Variable in der verwendeten Stichprobe war, welche einen eindeutigen Einfluss auf die Prüfungshonorare in allen untersuchten Jahren hatte. Die vorliegende Studie leistet somit einen wichtigen Beitrag zum aktuellen Forschungsfeld der Prüfungshonorare.Einzelveröffentlichung aus dem Ilmenauer Medienforum 201

Influence of adatom interactions on second layer nucleation

We develop a theory for the inclusion of adatom interactions in second layer nucleation occurring in epitaxial growth. The interactions considered are due to ring barriers between pairs of adatoms and binding energies of unstable clusters. The theory is based on a master equation, which describes the time development of microscopic states that are specified by cluster configurations on top of an island. The transition rates are derived by scaling arguments and tested against kinetic Monte-Carlo simulations. As an application we reanalyze experiments to determine the step edge barrier for Ag/Pt(111).Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure