Design as interactions of problem framing and problem solving

This paper introduces a model of framing in design. The model takes into account a reflective nature of designing, and it is based on the interplay between two conceptually distinct knowledge sources – an explicit specification of a problem and a solution to it. The approach is novel in the former investigated aspect that is presented as a semi-formal operation of framing, i.e. interpretation of a problem using selected conceptual primitives. We argue that the interpretation of design problems lacks a similar rigorous investigation as problem solving received in both design theory and methodology. Furthermore, two design schemas of frame refinement and problem re-framing are discussed and exemplified

Bletchley Park text: using mobile and semantic web technologies to support the post-visit use of online museum resources

A number of technologies have been developed to support the museum visitor, with the aim of making their visit more educationally rewarding and/or entertaining. Examples include PDA-based personalized tour guides and virtual reality representations of cultural objects or scenes. Rather than supporting the actual visit, we decided to employ technology to support the post-visitor, that is, encourage follow-up activities among recent visitors to a museum. This allowed us to use the technology in a way that would not detract from the existing curated experience and allow the museum to provide access to additional heritage resources that cannot be presented during the physical visit. Within our application, called Bletchley Park Text, visitors express their interests by sending text (SMS) messages containing suggested keywords using their own mobile phone. The semantic description of the archive of resources is then used to retrieve and organize a collection of content into a personalized web site for use when they get home. Organization of the collection occurs both bottom-up from the semantic description of each item in the collection, and also top-down according to a formal representation of the overall museum story. In designing the interface we aimed to support exploration across the content archive rather than just the search and retrieval of specific resources. The service was developed for the Bletchley Park museum and has since been launched for use by all visitors

Using Explicit Semantic Analysis for Cross-Lingual Link Discovery

This paper explores how to automatically generate cross language links between resources in large document collections. The paper presents new methods for Cross Lingual Link Discovery(CLLD) based on Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA). The methods are applicable to any multilingual document collection. In this report, we present their comparative study on the Wikipedia corpus and provide new insights into the evaluation of link discovery systems. In particular, we measure the agreement of human annotators in linking articles in different language versions of Wikipedia, and compare it to the results achieved by the presented methods

Investigating the Effects of Exploratory Semantic Search on the Use of a Museum Archive

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in how new technologies can support the more effective use of online museum content. Two particularly relevant developments are exploratory search and semantic web technologies. Exploratory search tools support a more undirected and serendipitous interaction with the content. Semantic web technology, when applied in this context, allows the exploitation of metadata and ontologies to provide more intelligent support for user interaction. Bletchley Park Text is a museum web application supporting a semantic driven, exploratory approach to the search and navigation of digital museum resources. Bletchley Park Text uses semantics to organise selected content (i.e. stories) into a number of composite pages that illustrate conceptual patterns in the content, and from which the content itself can be accessed. The use made of Bletchley Park Text over an eight month period was analysed in order to understand the kinds of trajectories across the available resources that users could make with such a system. The results identified two distinct strategies of exploratory search. A risky strategy was characterised as incorporating: conceptual jumps between successive queries, a larger number of shorter queries and the use of the stories themselves to acclimatise to a new set of search results. A cautious strategy was characterised as incorporating: small conceptual shifts between queries, a smaller number of longer queries and the use of composite pages to acclimatise to a set of new search results. These findings have implications for the intelligent scaffolding of exploratory search

Mining cross-document relationships from text

The paper argues that automatic link generation and typing methods are needed to find and maintain cross document links in large and growing textual collections. Such links are important to organise information and to support search and navigation. We present an experimental study on mining cross document links from a collection of 5000 documents. We identify a set of link types and show that the value of semantic similarity is a good distinguishing indicator

Supporting organisational learning: an overview of the ENRICH approach

Traditional training separates learning from the work context in which the newly acquired knowledge is to be applied. This requires the worker themselves to apply imparted theoretical knowledge to knowledge in practice, a process that is grossly inefficient. The ENRICH approach builds on organisational learning theory to intertwine working and learning. The ENRICH methodology incorporates theories of learning at the individual, group and organisational level. Individual level learning is supported through the provision of semantically related resources to support problem reframing and to challenge assumptions. Group learning is supported through the evolution of domain concepts through work documents and representations linked to formal models of group knowledge, and the development of group practices and perspectives through enhanced sharing and collaboration. Organisational learning is supported through exposure to customs and conventions of other groups through shared best practices and knowledge models. The approach is being investigated in a range of industrial settings and applications

A Generic library of problem-solving methods for scheduling applications

In this paper we describe a generic library of problem-solving methods (PSMs) for scheduling applications. Although, some attempts have been made in the past at developing libraries of scheduling methods, these only provide limited coverage: in some cases they are specific to a particular scheduling domain; in other cases they simply implement a particular scheduling technique; in other cases they fail to provide the required degree of depth and precision. Our library is based on a structured approach, whereby we first develop a scheduling task ontology, and then construct a task-specific but domain independent model of scheduling problem-solving, which generalises from specific approaches to scheduling problem-solving. Different PSMs are then constructed uniformly by specialising the generic model of scheduling problem-solving. Our library has been evaluated on a number of real-life and benchmark applications to demonstrate its generic and comprehensive nature

The Epistemology of scheduling problems

Scheduling is a knowledge-intensive task spanning over many activities in day-to-day life. It deals with the temporally-bound assignment of jobs to resources. Although scheduling has been extensively researched in the AI community for the past 30 years, efforts have primarily focused on specific applications, algorithms, or 'scheduling shells' and no comprehensive analysis exists on the nature of scheduling problems, which provides a formal account of what scheduling is, independently of the way scheduling problems can be approached. Research on KBS development by reuse makes use of ontologies, to provide knowledge-level specifications of reusable KBS components. In this paper we describe a task ontology, which formally characterises the nature of scheduling problems, independently of particular application domains and in-dependently of how the problems can be solved. Our results provide a comprehensive, domain-independent and formally specified refer-ence model for scheduling applications. This can be used as the ba-sis for further analyses of the class of scheduling problems and also as a concrete reusable resource to support knowledge acquisition and system development in scheduling applications

CHARACTER-EYES: story-driven inquiry from a character’s viewpoint

Inquiry-based learning encourages students to pose questions, find and interpret multiple pieces of evidence and to present conclusions in a coherent presentation. The goal of this research is to demonstrate that narrative and story can support inquiry learning on a number of different levels. Characters who undertake familiar inquiry processes, such as a detective or an investigative journalist, can act as a focus around which an inquiry task can be conducted and a story can be constructed. These characters are intended to support a learner by helping them to understand the sorts of activities they may need to do in their own inquiry. More functional aspects of narrative can also underpin the process of the inquiry and assist a learner in understanding important relationships between facts. Finally, parallels between narrative structure and an inquiry process can be exploited to support a learner through the different stages of inquiry and provide help in producing the output and constructing a story, based on the conclusions of the task