An Expert-Driven Approach for Collaborative Knowledge Acquisition

Knowledge management is key for any organization. Huge amount of data is made available to organizations by pervasive technologies such as smart mobile devices. However, the knowledge to use such data is still missing, and organizations typically fail to exploit it. This paper proposes an architectural design that aims at addressing such problem. It focuses on knowledge management for collaborative systems in which complex and multicausal situations are presented to interacting actors on a large geographical area with possible low connectivity.VIII Workshop Innovación en Sistemas de Software (WISS).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

An Expert-Driven Approach for Collaborative Knowledge Acquisition

Knowledge management is key for any organization. Huge amount of data is made available to organizations by pervasive technologies such as smart mobile devices. However, the knowledge to use such data is still missing, and organizations typically fail to exploit it. This paper proposes an architectural design that aims at addressing such problem. It focuses on knowledge management for collaborative systems in which complex and multicausal situations are presented to interacting actors on a large geographical area with possible low connectivity.VIII Workshop Innovación en Sistemas de Software (WISS).Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Web mashups with webmakeup

Modding refers to the act of modifying hardware, software, or virtually anything else, to perform a function not originally conceived or intended by the designer. The rationales for modding should be sought in the aspiration of users to contextualize to their own situation the artefact at hand. Websites are not exception. WebMakeup targets mod scenarios where web pages are turned into canvases users can tune to account for their situational, idiosyncratic, and potentially, short-lived needs. By clicking, users turn DOM nodes into widgets. Widgets can next be rearranged, deleted, updated or stored for later reuse in other pages. In addition, widgets can be involved in ?blink? patterns where interactions with a widget might affect the related widgets. This empowers users to tune not only what but also when content is to show up in an AJAX-like way. WebMakeup is publicly available as a Chrome extension.Publicado en Communications in Computer and Information Science book series (vol. 591).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática AvanzadaConsejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnica

Web objects ambient: an integrated platform supporting new kinds of personal web experiences

The Personal Web arose to empower end users with the ability to drive and integrate the Web by themselves, according to their own interests. This is usually achieved through Web Augmentation, Mashups or Personal Information Managers (PIM), but despite the diversity of approaches, there are still scenarios that require to be solved through the combination of their features, which implies the end user knowing diverse tools and being able to coordinate them. This paper presents WOA, a platform conceived under the foundations of the Personal Web for supporting the harvesting and materialization of information objects from existing Web content, and their enhancement through the addition of specialized behaviour. This makes it possible to conceive multiple Web information objects coexisting in a same space of information and offering the end user with different modes of interaction, therefore, with multiple kinds of personal Web experiences.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

A Platform for Web Augmentation Requirements Specification

Web augmentation has emerged as a technique for customizing Web applications beyond the personalization mechanisms natively included in them. This technique usually manipulates existing Web sites on the client-side via scripts (commonly referred as userscripts) that can change its presentation and behavior. Large communities have surfaced around this technique and two main roles have been established. On the one hand there are userscripters, users with programming skills who create new scripts and share them with the community. On the other hand, there are users who download and install in their own Web Browsers some of those scripts that satisfy their customization requirements, adding features that the applications do not support out-of-the-box. It means that Web augmentation requirements are not formally specified and they are decided according to particular userscripters needs. In this paper we propose CrowdMock, a platform for managing requirements and scripts. The platform allows users to perform two activities: (i) specify their own scripts requirements by augmenting Web sites with high-fidelity mockups and (ii) upload these requirements into an online repository. Then, the platform allows the whole community (users and userscripters) to collaborate improving the definition of the augmentation requirements and building a concrete script that implements them. Two main tools have been developed and evaluated in this context. A client-side plugin called MockPlug used for augmenting Web sites with UI prototype widgets and UserRequirements, a repository enabling sharing and managing the requirements.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Reverse engineering in software requirements in web applications using a LEL

This document explores and describes the state of the art of Reverse Engineering in the specification of Software Requirements for web applications using an LEL (Language Extended Lexicon). A review of the scientific literature on this topic was carried out with the aim of investigating how the application of Reverse Engineering in the specification of software requirements would improve their quality, with the support of the creation of a tool for web augmentation, that is, a web extension that allows creating a glossary of terms or LEL of web applications, this with the purpose of knowing their operation for maintenance and improvement purposes.Facultad de Informátic

A domain specific language for orchestrating user tasks whilst navigation web sites

In this paper we claim that there are a lot of processes over Web applications that require a high level of coordination between individuals and tasks featuring procedures. We propose hereafter a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for describing the asynchronous orchestration users' tasks including manual users' tasks (i.e. simple instructions that tell users what to do during the navigation) and automated tasks (i.e. tasks that can be partially or completely automated by client-side scripts). The approach is illustrated by examples and a case study showing the tools, for which an empiric evaluation is presented.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 7977).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

An Expert-driven Ontology-based Approach to the Collaborative Acquisition of Information

This article presents design decisions for an ontologybased framework supporting an expert-driven approach to the collaborative acquisition, integration and analysis of information. It describes a three-tier organization in which components facilitate establishing an information system to assist domain experts in addressing multi-causal dynamic situations where heterogeneous information sources must be integrated and the interaction of a variety of actors must be supported in large geographical areas with possibly low or intermittent connectivity levels. The approach and envisioned framework are illustrated with a case-study in the design of bikeways in urban zones.Facultad de Informátic

Logikós: Augmenting the Web with Multi-criteria Decision Support

There are activities that on-line customers daily perform, which involve a multi-criteria decision challenge. Choosing a destination for traveling, buying a book to read, or buying a mobile phone are some examples. Customers analyze and compare alternatives considering a set of shared characteristics, and under certain criteria. E-commerce web-sites frequently present the information of products without special support to compare them by one or many properties. Moreover support for decision making is limited to sorting, filtering, and side-by-side comparison tables. Consequently, customers may have the feeling that the merchants interests influence their choices, which are no longer grounded on the rational arguments they would like to put in practice. Moreover, the alternatives of interest for the customer are frequently scattered across various shops, with no support to collect and compare them in a consistent and customized manner. In this article, we propose empowering users with multi-criteria decision making support on any website, and across different websites. We also present Logik ́os, a toolbox supporting multi-criteria decision making depending on the presentation layer of any Web page.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

An approach for supporting distributed user interface orchestration over the Web

Currently, a lot of the tasks engaged by users over the Web involve dealing with multiple Web sites. Moreover, whilst Web navigation was considered as a lonely activity in the past, a large proportion of users are nowadays engaged in collaborative activities over the Web. In this paper we argue that these two aspects of collaboration and tasks spanning over multiple Web sites call for a level of coordination that require Distributed User Interfaces (DUI). In this context, DUIs would play a major role by helping multiple users to coordinate their activities whilst working collaboratively to complete tasks at different Web sites. For that, we propose in this paper an approach to create distributed user interfaces featuring procedures that are aimed to orchestrate user tasks over multiple Web sites. Our approach supports flexible process modeling by allowing users to combine manual tasks and automated tasks from a repertoire of patterns of tasks performed over the Web. In our approach, whilst manual tasks can be regarded as simple instructions that tell users how to perform a task over a Web site, automated tasks correspond to tools built under the concept of Web augmentation (as it augments the repertoire of tasks users can perform over the Web) called Web augmenters. Both manual and automated tasks are usually supported by specific DOM elements available in different Web sites. Thus, by combining tasks and DOM elements distributed in diverse Web sites our approach supports the creation of procedures that allows seamless users interaction with diverse Web site. Moreover, such an approach is aimed at supporting the collaboration between users sharing procedures. The approach is duly illustrated by a case study describing a collaborative trip planning over the Web.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad