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This paper will focus on what could be one of the biggest challenges in offshore development, communication. Communication is of such importance, that if it is not taken seriously in the offshore project, all the advantages of offshore development, such as access to talent, greater flexibility in access to resources and cheaper resources will be lost in the informational overhead. The paper will argue that communication channels and infrastructure are often not well established in offshore projects, which in worst cases results in project failures. The paper will focus on factors which have an impact on communication and on how to meet these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed software projects are becoming increasingly commonplace in industry. Yet, software engineering education rarely graduates students with the necessary skills and hands-on experience that are particular to off-shore software development projects. Three key areas in successful off-shore software development projects are well documented in the literature as communication, knowledge management, as well as project and process management. This paper maps tasks within each of these three areas to functions that have to be provided by remote collaboration platforms and tools that distributed projects rely on. A case-study of an off-shore requirements engineering class experience between a Master course of Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico and a customer in a Swiss financial institution shows a correlation between areas of learning by the students and functionalities covered with the tools used in the classroom. The paper identifies additional tools, developed by the authors, which will provide additional functionalities in the deficient areas to increase the learning and preparation of the students for off-shore software development projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural approach to development that turns traditional techniques upside down. SOA encourages organizations to think in terms of actual business services and the associated data, rather than low level technology details. Instead of developing applications from the ground up, SOA frees organizations to start with high level business definitions for data, interfaces, documents, and processes. SOA then maps these high level service definitions onto new or existing infrastructure, regardless of the details, location, or programming language in which the systems were written. In this paper we share our practical experience regarding application of SOA to a very large and complex enterprise transformation. By transformation we mean modernization of legacy applications, operating systems, server components, development of new applications, and business process automation with incremental deployment option using either a traditional distributed heterogeneous environment or a set of Virtual machines deployed on a set of utility computing platforms (on-demand computing). Transforming a large and complex enterprise requires digital visibility into the holistic view of the enterprise. This holistic view is captured as a set of interrelated models. Models are digital representations of the enterprise business architecture, the associated technology architecture, and their semantic dependencies. Models are stored in a living and manageable repository with impact analysis capability to accommodate for SOA modernization to be driven by the business needs. We describe our 3D Visible Enterprise (3D-VE) modeling methodology as the analysis phase of our SOA approach. We then describe how such analysis guided us through modernization styles, where each style prescribes the transformation of a legacy entity into its modernized form while following our SOA governance. In this approach the modernization requirements are mapped into the appropriate transformation styles and finally to technical implementation. The mapping follows our SOA governance, a set of guidelines regarding transformation style selection, and the SOA design & run time governance. Relevant SOA standards and products supporting modernization implementation are used to carry the implementation. In particular, some aspect of modernization approach and Unisys SOA governance are described as well. In this paper we tried to describe three important areas of our overall SOA solution methodology, namely the 3D VE modeling, the Architecture Driven Modernization and applied SOA governance to the ADM style. Our plan is to publish subsequent papers each describing the details of our SOA solution methodology, specifically the modeling phase, the tools and methods used to implement the applied ADM styles, criteria selecting ADM style, the SOA governance and the associated SOA standards and products. The paper concludes with lessons learned through such a complex transformation, especially the importance of the front-end business process analysis leading us to identify the components or a subset of the enterprise computing environment for systematic and incremental SOA transformation. Finally we discuss some of the pros and cons of the transformation applying SOA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development and maturity of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) to support business-to-business transactions, enterprises are using Web services to expose the public functionalities associated with internal systems and business processes. Semantic Web service infrastructure achieves automatic data integration to enable enterprises to collaborate and compete effectively in a dynamic global environment. In this paper, we deal with two important aspects of enterprise information integration, namely process integration and data convergence. This paper talks about solution strategies for global enterprise system which provides unified information and agile solution with greater ease and simplicity. Today's Web data lacks machine understandable semantics making it impossible to achieve data integration with the Web service. Hence, the semantic Web services in action to overcome the limitations of information finding, information extracting, information representing, information interpreting and information maintaining. This paper takes you through a case study simulating semantic Web paradigm (and semantic Web services) over a leasing business system. It also portrays the various advantages and explains the hurdles in accepting the semantic Web technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address coordination of services in complex business processes. As the main coordination mechanism we rely on a channel-based exogenous coordination language, called Reo, and investigate its application to service-oriented architectures. Reo supports a specific notion of composition that enables coordination of individual services, as well as complex composite business processes. Accordingly, a coordinated business process consists of a set of web services whose collective behavior is coordinated by Reo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business Process Execution Language(BPEL) has been recognized as a standard for the service orchestration in Service Oriented Architecture(SOA). Due to the pivotal role played by BPEL in service composition, the reliability of a business process becomes critical for a SOA system, especially during its evolution. Regression testing is well known as an effective technology to ensure the quality of modified programs. To reduce the cost of regression testing, a subset of test cases is selected to (re)run, known as regression test selection. Previous work addressing this problem will fail in the presence of concurrent control flow, which is an important and widely used feature of BPEL in describing service orchestration. In this paper, a regression testing approach for BPEL business processes is presented. In this approach, an impact analysis rule is proposed to identify the test paths affected by the change of BPEL concurrent control structures. Based on the impact analysis result and process changes identification, the impacted test paths are classified into reusable, modified, obsolete and new-structural paths. Experiments show that our approach is feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently scientists and practitioners are discussing Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) as an approach to reconcile business requirements and IT. The alignment of business and technology in organizations is a key challenge in the discipline of Enterprise Architecture (EA). Therefore the contribution starts with a discussion of SOA as an EA integration concept to synchronize business requirements and IT architecture in an efficient way. Differentiating methodological and technological aspects of EA the paper shows the need for methods in the field of domain analysis supporting the design of a SOA. The main contribution of the paper is an algorithm based modeling tool and methodology to support service domain clustering. Service clusters are being used for service definition and management. Due to enormous complexity it is necessary to support architects by finding and defining appropriate clusters. For modeling interdependencies in EA the paper's focus is on business processes, information systems and interfaces. Our approach adopts network-centric algorithms used in the field of social network analysis to define and/or identify service domain clusters in complex scenarios. Edge remover algorithm is used to compute the relevant model aspects. The results of our approach will be demonstrated in a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key function of a Service Oriented Architecture is the separation between business logic and the platform of its implementation and deployment. Much of the focus in SOA research has been on service design, implementation, composition, and placement. In this paper we address the challenge of configuring the hosting infrastructure for SOA service deployment. The functional and non-functional requirements of services impose constraints on the configuration of their containers at different levels. Presently, such requirements are captured in informal documents, making service deployment a slow, expensive, and error-prone process. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to formally capturing service deployment best-practices as model-based patterns. Deployment patterns capture the structure of a solution, without bindings to specific resource instances. They can be defined at different levels of abstraction supporting reuse, and role-based iterative refinement and composition. We show how we extended an existing model driven deployment platform to support pattern based deployment. We formally define pattern semantics, validation, and refinement. We also present an algorithm for automatically instantiating such patterns on multiple distributed service environments. Our approach has been verified in a large prototype that has been used to capture a variety of functional and non-functional deployment constraints, and demonstrate their end-to-end maintenance and realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The area of service oriented computing stretches between two extremes: On the one hand industry has pushed a whole stack of WS-* standards and tools to support the integration of distributed services into business applications. These standards are used in production environments and are applied successfully, e.g. in the area of enterprise application integration. However, the expensive and labor intensive task of putting together services and maintaining and administering the composed applications has to be done manually. In contrast, academia is busily working on numerous efforts leveraging ontology based semantics and various AI planning techniques to automate these tasks. Yet, up to now the developed technologies have rarely if ever been applied in industry. In our opinion, this has two main reasons: there is high cost involved in creating the necessary comprehensive ontologies and businesses are reluctant to trust semantic technologies. In this paper we bring together the extremes in order to combine their strengths. We show how to flexibly integrate advanced semantic service discovery, composition and invocation technology into manually created standard BPEL processes. Our approach leaves it to the discretion of the developer to flexibly choose an appropriate degree of automation for the process at hand and thus offers him complete control over the usage of semantic technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a common model for both functional verification and performance evaluation of a network protocol will reduce a considerable amount of protocol development time and cost. Although there have been several researches trying to achieve this goal, they have not been used widely yet especially in industry. This paper shows a case study in SDL design and performance evaluation of a wireless and mobile technology. In order to evaluate our mobility management technique for 3GPP LTE systems, we designed a simple 3GPP LTE system and its mobility performance system with pure SDL and Tau performance library. This paper describes our experience in pure SDL-based performance evaluation with Tau and discusses SDL design and simulation issues for more efficient performance evaluation with SDL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Use Case Map (UCM) notation enables the use of graphical scenarios to model grey-box views of a system's operational requirements and behaviour, in context. The scenario traversal mechanism is the most popular UCM analysis technique but its current tool support in UCMNav is limited and hard to use, and the high coupling of its features makes it difficult to maintain and evolve. This paper presents major enhancements to the recent jUCMNav Eclipse plugin consisting of a new scenario traversal semantics accompanied by enhanced trace transformations to Message Sequence Charts. In addition, this paper identifies a set of semantic variation points which lay the groundwork for notational clarifications and user-defined semantic profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a toolset for functional testing UML2.0 models by TTCN-3 test suites and its application within Motorola. The toolset incorporates support for part of the UML2.0 testing profile from which TTCN-3 can be generated. The toolset has been developed within Motorola for models developed using Telelogic Tau G2 and test suites using Telelogic Tester. The models are subsequently used for application code generation. The basic integration of the Telelogic Tau and Tester, called cosim, has novel features, such as the ability to service operations declared as external to the model within TTCN-3, and to control model timer operations within TTCN-3. Translating UML2.0 data structures, such as classes, signal definitions, port definitions, and constants into TTCN-3 is done by a tool called UMB. The paper deals with complexities in mapping Tau UML2.0 types and structuring into TTCN-3. To provide more rigorous test specification a tool supporting part of the UML2.0 Testing Profile has been developed which enables consistency of test specifications to be checked automatically and also the generation of executable TTCN-3 test suites for cosim. The toolset is being used by several different product groups within Motorola, and the paper reports some experience and findings, including areas where TTCN-3 can be extended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception and modeling of other robots has been a topic of minor regard in the Four-Legged League, because of the limited processing und sensing capabilities of the AIBO platform. Even the current world champion, the GermanTeam, abandoned the usage of a robot recognition. Nevertheless, accurate position estimates of other players will be needed in the future to accomplish tasks such as passing or applying adaptive tactics. This paper describes an approach for localizing other players in a robot's local environment by integrating different unreliable perceptions of robots and obstacles, which may be computed in a reasonable way. The approach is based on Gaussian distributions describing the models of the robots as well as the perceptions. The integration of information is realized by using Kalman filtering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the RoboCup small-size league, most teams calculate the robots' positions by means of a camera that is mounted above the field as well as different kinds of artificial intelligence methods that run on an additional PC. This processing loop induces various time delays, which require forecasting routines, if more accurate behaviors are desired. This paper shows that by utilizing a combination of a neural network and local sensors, the robot is able to estimates its actual position quite accurately. This paper furthermore shows that the learning procedure is also able to compensate for slip and friction effects that cannot be observed by the local sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning automata act in a stochastic environment and are able to update their action probabilities considering the inputs from their environment, so optimizing their functionality as a result. In this paper, the goal is to investigate and evaluate the application of learning automata to cooperation in multi-agent systems, using soccer simulation server as a test bed. We have also evaluated our learning method in hard situations such as malfunctioning of some of the agents in the team and in situations that agents' sense/act abilities have a lot of noise involved. Our experiment results show that learning automata adapt well with these situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a method for cooperative play among 3 robots in order to score a goal in the RoboCup Small Size League. In RoboCup 2005 Osaka, our team introduced a new attacking play, where one robot kicks a ball and the other receives and immediately shoots the ball on goal. However, due to the relatively slow kicking speed of the robot, top opponent teams could prevent successful passing between robots. This motivates the need for more complex play, such as passing around to several robots to avoid the opponents' passing defense. In this paper we propose a method to realize such a play, i.e. a combination play among 3 robots. We discuss the technical issues to achieve this combination play, especially for a pass-and-shoot combination play. Experimental results on real robots are provided. They indicate that the success rate of the play depends strongly on the arrangement of the robots, and ranges from 20 % to 90 % in tests with an opponent goalkeeper which stands still. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color segmentation is typically the first step of vision processing for a robot operating in a color-coded environment, such as RoboCup soccer, and many object recognition modules rely on that. Although many approaches to color segmentation have been proposed, in the official games of the RoboCup Four Legged League manual calibration is still preferred by most of the teams. In this paper we present a method for color segmentation that is based on an adaptive transformation of the color distribution of the image: the transformation is dynamically computed depending on the current image (i.e., it adapts to condition changes) and then it is used for color segmentation with static thresholds. The method requires the setting of only a few parameters and has been proved to be very robust to noise and light variations, allowing for setting parameters only once when arriving at a competition site. The approach has been implemented on AIBO robots, extensively tested in our laboratory, and successfully experimented in the some of the games of the Four Legged League in RoboCup 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that it is possible to retrieve all parameters of the parabolic flight trajectory of an object from a time stamped sequence of images captured by a single camera looking at the scene. Surprisingly, it is not necessary to use two cameras (stereo vision) in order to determine the coordinates of the moving object with respect to the floor. The technique described in this paper can thus be used to determine the three-dimensional trajectory of a ball kicked by a robot. The whole calculation can be done, at the limit, with just three measurements of the ball position captured in three consecutive frames. Therefore, this technique can be used to forecast the future motion of the ball a few milliseconds after the kick has taken place. The computation is fast and allows a robot goalie to move to the correct blocking position. Interestingly, this technique can also be used to self-calibrate stereo cameras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fast gait is an essential component of any successful team in the RoboCup 4-legged league. However, quickly moving quadruped robots, including those with learned gaits, often move in such a way so as to cause unsteady camera motions which degrade the robot's visual capabilities. This paper presents an implementation of the policy gradient machine learning algorithm that searches for a parameterized walk while optimizing for both speed and stability. To the best of our knowledge, previous learned walks have all focused exclusively on speed. Our method is fully implemented and tested on the Sony Aibo ERS-7 robot platform. The resulting gait is reasonably fast and considerably more stable compared to our previous fast gaits. We demonstrate that this stability can significantly improve the robot's visual object recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When developing skills on a physical robot, it is appealing to turn to modern machine learning methods in order to automate the process. However, when no accurate simulator exists for the type of motion in question, all learning must occur on the physical robot itself. In such a case, there is a high premium on quick, efficient learning (specifically, learning with low sample complexity). Recent results in learning locomotion have demonstrated the feasibility of learning fast walks directly on quadrupedal robots. This paper demonstrates that it is also possible to learn a higher-level skill requiring more fine motor coordination, again with all learning occurring directly on the robot. In particular, the paper presents a learned ball-grasping skill on a commercially available Sony Aibo robot, with no human intervention other than battery changes. The learned skill significantly outperforms our best hand-tuned solution. As the learned grasping skill relies on a learned walk, we characterize our learning implementation within the layered learning formalism. To our knowledge, the two learned layers represent the first use of layered learning on a physical robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most industries are challenging to increase productivity of software development. Often many process improvement activities are started with enthusiasm, unfortunately most of these are less successful than forecasted or improvements do not sustain for long. This paper presents the Seven Forces Improvement Method, SFIM, which claims to overcome unexpected disappointment in improvement results. SFIM is built upon different aspects that influence the success of software process improvements, such as culture, skills and organization. The method has been applied to improvement activities in a large software department for a number of years. The success of SFIM is compared with the compliance with the SFIM method. The paper shows that application of SFIM increases the success rate of software improvement activities in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rapidly growing modern telecommunications industry, software quality and reliability requirements are in contrast to the shorter time to market and higher complexity requirements dictated by strong competition on the telecommunications market. In such a rapidly changing environment, software development organization must improve almost on a daily basis in order to achieve the operational excellence which leads to business success. In this paper, an approach to the continuous improvement of the software verification process based on the application of Six Sigma is given. More precisely, with the help of the Six Sigma methodology, change management, and statistical tools and techniques, the proposed approach solves the problem of fault slippage through verification phases, which is particularly important in overlapping project conditions. Success of the proposed process improvement, proved using Six Sigma methodologies for a case study from a real industrial project, encourages wide and general application to any software verification process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new multi-agent development method, named MDAD (Model Driven Agent Development). It is based on the MDA (Model Driven Architecture) paradigm. The aim of MDAD method is to reduce the cost of building MAS applications by starting from abstract specification of system thanks to MAS meta-models, and producing the final system by means of transformations of this specification into computational entities. We present in this paper the application of MDAD to the INAF framework. First we give an overview of MDA approach and its application to MAS. Thus, several abstraction levels are determined and a set of meta-models is introduced. Then, we give the transformation rules used to produce INAF compliant models. MDAD method is illustrated with the timetable management benchmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiagent systems may be elegantly modeled and designed by enhancing the role of the environment in which agents evolve. In particular, the environment may have the role of a governing infrastructure that regulates with laws or norms the actions taken by the agents. The focus of modeling and design is thus shifted from a subjective view of agents towards a more objective view of the whole multiagent system. In this paper, we apply the idea of a governing environment to model and design a multi-agent system that micro-simulates the Swiss highway network. The goal of the simulation is to show how traffic jams and accordion phenomena may be handled with appropriate local regulations on speed limits. A natural modeling would give segments the capacity to regulate the speed based on observed local events. We developed the simulation platform from scratch in order to accommodate our design choices and a realistic complexity. This paper presents in details our modeling choices, and first experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an approach for adaptive replication to support fault tolerance. This approach uses a feedback control theory methodology within an adaptive replication infrastructure to determine replication degrees of replica groups. We implemented this approach in a multi-agent system to survive Byzantine failures. At the end of the paper, we also provide some experimental results to show the effectiveness of our approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some systems discard messages that wait in the queue longer than a certain threshold. Identifying such messages and discarding them takes the processor a fixed amount of time. That time is considerably smaller than an average service time, but greater than zero, therefore the models for queuing systems with reneging do not apply. This paper provides a model for such queues. It describes a method of deriving exact formulas for the distribution of waiting times, and proposes simple, yet accurate approximations. The paper then analyzes the model and discusses the properties of such systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network traffic measurements can provide essential data for network research and operation. While Internet traffic has been heavily studied for several years, there are new characteristics of traffic having not been understood well brought by new applications for example P2P. It is difficult to get these traffic metrics due to the difficulty to measurement traffic on line for high speed link and to identify new applications using dynamic ports. In this paper, we present a broad overview of Internet traffic of an operated OC-48 export link of a metro area network from a carrier with the method of measurement on-line. The traffic behaves a daily characteristic well and the traffic data of whole day from data link layer to application layer is presented. We find the characteristics of traffic have changed greatly from previous measurements. Also, we explain the reasons bringing out these changes. Our goal is to provide the first hand of traffic data that is helpful for people to understand the change of traffic with new applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the assumption that packets are sufficiently interleaved and the sampling rate is small, we show in this paper that those characteristics of flows like the number of packets, volume, etc. obtained through deterministic 1-out-of-k packet sampling is equivalent to random packet sampling with rate p = 1/k. In particular, under mild assumptions, the tail distribution of the total number of packets in a given flow can be estimated from the distribution of the number of sampled packets. Explicit theoretical bounds are then derived by using technical tools relying on bounds of Poisson approximation (Le Cam's Inequality) and refinements of the central limit theorem (Berry-Essen bounds). Experimental results from an ADSL traffic trace show good agreement with the theoretical results established in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a broad class of polling models the evolution of the system at specific embedded polling instants is known to constitute a multi-type branching process (MTBP) with immigration. In this paper it is shown that for this class of polling models the vector ${\underline{X}}$ that describes the state of the system at these polling instants satisfies the following heavy-traffic behavior, under mild assumptions: 1$$ \label{eq01} (1-\rho){\underline {X}} \rightarrow_d {\underline {\gamma}}~\Gamma(\alpha, \mu)~~~~(\rho \uparrow 1), $$ where ${\underline {\gamma}}$ is a known vector, Γ(α, μ) has a gamma-distribution with known parameters α and μ, and where ρ is the load of the system. This general and powerful result is shown to lead to exact - and in many cases even closed-form - expressions for the Laplace-Stieltjes Transform (LST) of the complete asymptotic queue-length and waiting-time distributions for a broad class of branching-type polling models that includes many well-studied polling models policies as special cases. The results generalize and unify many known results on the waiting times in polling systems in heavy traffic, and moreover, lead to new exact results for classical polling models that have not been observed before. As an illustration of the usefulness of the results, we derive new closed-form expressions for the LST of the waiting-time distributions for models with a cyclic globally-gated polling regime. As a by-product, our results lead to a number of asymptotic insensitivity properties, providing new fundamental insights in the behavior of polling models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the maximum message throughput of the ActiveMQ server in different application scenarios. We use this throughput as a performance criterion. It depends heavily on the installed filters and the message replication grade. In previous work, we have presented measurement results and an analytical model for simple filters. This work extends these studies towards more complex configuration options. It provides measurement results and analytical performance models for complex AND-, OR-, and IN-filters. The results are useful to understand the performance of JMS servers and help to dimension large distributed JMS-based systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a simulation study that assessed SIP based VOIP networks under overload. This work addresses the issue of network level congestion controls in SIP based telephony networks. The simulation network consists of Media Gateways and Call Controllers, each with internal overload detection and control mechanisms. The simulation includes SIP timers tuned to operate gracefully with PSTN interfacing protocols. The traffic model is SIP based VoIP calls not involving application server or media server interactions. This work demonstrates that combining external overload controls with internal overload controls reduces blocking and increases goodput across the overload levels that ranged from 1 to 4 times the engineered load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Multimedia Modeling Language (MML) is a platform-independent modeling language for model-driven development of interactive multimedia applications. Using models provides several advantages like well-structured applications and better coordination of the different developer groups involved in the development process. However, the creative tasks - like graphical design of the user interface and the design of media objects - are better supported by traditional informal methods and tools. In particular multimedia authoring tools such as Adobe Flash are well established for multimedia application development. In this paper we show how MML and authoring tools can be integrated by the example of Flash. Therefore we transform the MML models into code skeletons which can be directly loaded into the Flash authoring tool to perform the creative design tasks and finalize the application. In that way, the strengths of models and authoring tools are combined. The paper shows the required level of abstraction for the models, introduces a metamodel and a suitable code structure for the Flash platform, and finally presents the transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of interface design is to enable communication between people and the technical product such as a cellular phone, computer, or PDA. To use the product successfully, the interface design should be easy to use. The objective of this paper is to create a practical and user-friendly interface design for a wireless device to control home appliances. In order to control home appliances with a cellular phone, the author suggests a natural (intuitive) interface design that is friendly and attractive to users, based on their experience, and effectively uses graphic elements such as layout, icon, color, and text. As part of this natural (intuitive) interface design, the author suggests using a wheel key to control a cursor system for navigating a cellular phone screen. A usability test was conducted to determine problems people have while using the prototype. The results of the usability test indicated that the user interface was successful, and participants were satisfied with the prototype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze and discuss human performance model for PBUI (Push-Based User Interface) in this paper. PBUI is a user interface method in which a user performs a desired task by selecting a target object that usually represents the task itself. The candidate objects are sequentially and automatically presented to the user by the system. When a target object is presented, user selects the target object by a simple action such as just pushing a button. In this paper, we propose human performance model of PBUI and discuss the characteristics of PBUI. We also evaluate performance of PBUI by comparing with GUI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early evaluation of interactive systems is currently the subject of numerous researches. Some of them aim at explicitly coupling design and evaluation by various software mechanisms. We describe in this paper two approaches of early evaluation exploiting new technologies and paradigms. The first approach is based on aspect oriented programming; the second one proposes an explicit coupling between agent-oriented architecture and evaluation agents. These two approaches are globally compared in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s User-Centered Design (UCD) has been becoming popular in the ICT industry. It helps seek usable designs through a set of workflows, evaluation methods, and design approaches, which construct a comprehensive UCD framework. Along with its extensive utilizations, its pitfalls are also exposed in cost-benefit, robustness, and optimization respects. However, applying the Taguchi Method can remedy these pitfalls to gain robust optimal designs. This approach is feasible but less emphasized in the Human-Computer Interaction field. From a theoretical perspective, this paper depicts a practical approach to enhance UCD framework by adopting the Taguchi philosophy. Based on the analysis of the UCD framework and the Taguchi Method, it discusses key adaptation points for the Taguchi philosophy adoption in the UCD framework. As a result, the Taguchi-Compliant User-Centered Design (TC-UCD) framework is proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a tool that supports a scenario based expert evaluation method called DEPTH (usability evaluation method based on DEsign PaTterns & Heuristics criteria). DEPTH is a method for performing scenario-based heuristic usability evaluation of e-systems. DEPTH focuses on the functionality of e-systems and emphasizes on usability characteristics within their context. This can be done not only by examining not only the availability of a functionality within an e-system but also the usability performance of the supported functionality according to a specific context of use. The main underlying ideas of DEPTH are: i) to minimize the preparatory phase of a usability evaluation process and ii) to assist a novice usability expert (one who is not necessarily familiar with the genre of the e-system). Thus, we (re)use expert's knowledge captured in design patterns and structured as design pattern languages for the various genres of e-systems. This paper briefly describes the DEPTH method and presents the way a specially designed tool supports it along with the findings from an evaluation study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of an evaluation of an adaptive multimodal application for reading of rich digital talking books. Results are in accordance with previous studies, indicating no user perceived difference between applications with and without adaptivity. The NASA Task Load Index was also used and showed that users of the adaptive application reported less workload. Results also include a comparison between tasks executed with electronic support and tasks executed with print support, and also what specific features in the interface benefited the most from the use of visual and audio modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two case studies of prototype evaluation as a tool for user needs elicitation for emerging technologies. In the first user evaluation, a high-fidelity virtual reality prototype is used. In the second one, a low-fidelity mixed reality prototype is used. Our results show that prototypes may be a powerful a tool for eliciting user-needs, but their potentiality depends on their fidelity. In our studies, users elicit more needs when working with the high-fidelity prototypes. Furthermore, the information collected in this case is richer and more useful for design. We discuss these results as well as some factors that could help stakeholders elicit a greater number of needs for emerging technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The narration board is a powerful design tool to help translate user observation studies into a storytelling format. It helps to communicate design values and ideas among the design team via visualising user scenarios in its proper context during the early design stages. This paper aims to discuss the narration board as a design tool to help the design team conceptualise and visualise user scenarios interacting with future design concepts within its context of use. Second part of the paper discusses how narration boards assist in generating ideations and visualising final design concepts by interface designers. Twenty (20) design projects (N=20) were examined to study and quantify two important factors, i.e. the components of the narration board in relation with the attributes of the final design concepts. A non-parametric correlation test was used to study the correlation coefficient between scores of the two factors. The results show that there is a statistically significant positive correlation between components of the narration board and attributes of the final design concept. Those with higher scores of components in narration board tend to produce better final design concepts, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a simple framework for implementing SBD. This framework consists of four elements: a basic story structure, an innovation acceleration field, a tool for expressing idea/describing scenario, and an activity theory-based tension detector/idea stimulator, and a process based on the Chinese traditional literature four-stage creation process. A case study is presented at the end of the paper to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development and piloting of a user-centered design method which enables participants to actively engage in a creative process to produce intuitive representations and inspire early design concepts for innovative mobile and ubiquitous applications. The research has been produced as part of the EC funded project PASION, aiming to enhance mediated communication in games and collaborative environments through the introduction of socio-emotional information cues, represented in meaningful yet abstract enough ways to accommodate variable thresholds of privacy. We describe our design research methodology, which combines analytical approaches, aiming to uncover participant's needs, desires and perceptions with creative, generative methods, with which participants inform and inspire the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing for Chinese industries and the new China market has became a ‘hot‘ issue within the global and Chinese industrial design society. The characteristics of low labor costs and hard-working Chinese have had an effect on the rapid economic development within the region as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to analyze state of the art industrial development within Taiwan and Mainland China, and to evaluate the critical problems of industrial design development in both regions. Additionally to discover how Taiwan Chinese digital technology industries confront this situation with user-oriented design (UOD). This paper synthesizes six approaches to carry out an innovative product development framework of new product development procedures, with user oriented scenario predictions and experience innovation approach. These approaches not only generate original design data from a user's point of view, but furthermore make it much easier to get consensus from product development teams and really create innovative designs through interdisciplinary collaboration to create innovative cultural enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the time period between September 2005 and September 2006 where HCI research experiments were deployed in a post-hurricane Katrina disaster area. This area stretched from the cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi (the epicenter of hurricane Katrina) to shelters in Baton Rouge and Houston, Texas. The HCI experiments were constructed in order to understand immediate disaster aftermath issues of a population in context of activities, information and organizational needs. The use of a Participatory Design (PD) methodology, Ethnographic techniques, and design Probes were refined over the course of the longitudinal study. Field notes were created in an iterative process with individual participants over a course of time due to the impact of shock and cognitive issues early on. These field notes then influenced a set of personas that were iterated and used as a vehicle to gather and validate field research findings and people's needs within the disaster framework. The main goal of this paper is not to propose informational, organizational or technology solutions to the complex problems inherent in a disaster cycle, but to illustrate both the failure and success of using HCI methods in a post disaster situation. Therefore, a disaster cycle is outlined and described in this paper. Insights and thoughts regarding the Rescue and Recovery phases are described and notes where HCI as a practice may influence or contribute to these areas within the disaster cycle are outlined. The last part of the paper illustrates the first HCI experiment in the field and some of the iterations and findings from this practice. This first research study was undertaken at a grassroots level, yet this does not mean valuable information could not be gathered in further studies of governmental, NGOs, or businesses participating in planning, preparing or rescue and recovery efforts during a disaster. In fact, the opportunity to combine grassroots and governmental HCI research could offer immense benefits. However, as a grassroots initiative it is a level of inquiry without the constraints of political hierarchy. Given this, this paper focuses less on how HCI can be used in a more typical framework where a sponsor, such as a client and HCI worker are collaborating in HCI "workplace" research, and more on developing tools and methods within communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering changes, whether it is desirable or undesirable, incur cost and delay in schedule. It should be avoided as much as possible and change management strategy should be chosen as to minimize the overall cost. This paper proposes a method to represent change propagation and formulate change absorbing problem into mathematical programming. Solution to the mathematical problem can lead to optimal change absorbing strategy that minimizes overall cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brainstorming is a commonly used method for diffusion thinking in early design stage. While the communication between two participants is blocked with isolated communication boundaries, the ideas are often transferred via a propagated interaction process among design team participants. The paper describes an organization-communication method to study the interaction between designers and design teams using act/react characteristics of role-interplay. Adapting a role-play framework called DARIS; a particular controlling agent called Playwright Agent is developed and used for implementing the adaptive scripts. Furthermore, by simulating the interconnecting process among discrete communication boundaries, the interaction and controlling mechanism of Playwright Agent is also unleashed in the paper. The mechanism and the agent implementation of proposed framework, namely DARIS +  is shown to represent the interaction as well as their consequence. An example for describing how Playwright Agent works is also shown in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents several experiments carried out by the AmILAB research group of Tekniker in the framework of the WearIT@work project (EC IP 004216) on the use of wearable technology base solutions for the training process of workers in a manufacturing environment. The description includes both the initial work at the SKODA production facilities in Czech Republic and the experiments with local workers at Tekniker. As an introduction, the authors of this paper shortly describe current training processes at Skoda, and derive the potential benefits and risks of applying wearable computing technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe a role-based multiple view approach to support sharing and coordination of knowledge in geo-collaborative planning. The software coordinates multiple unshared role-specific views with one shared team view. The rationale for this approach is that: (1) it affords clear separation between role-specific and shared knowledge; (2) it leverages experts' knowledge to filter out role-specific details; and (3) it promotes implicit sharing of strategic knowledge (i.e. about roles). We illustrate the key features implemented in a prototype to evaluate this approach, describe design requirements extracted from a paper prototype study, and discuss relevant design issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a couple of tool-sets that allows the management of group therapy sessions, for a single room with a large public display setting. These sessions involve several patients, a main therapist and eventually a second therapist. Information is created, exchanged and discussed between them during those sessions. All participants recur to different devices to perform their activities, from PDAs to PCs, through an interactive large display, if available. Devices are selected and tool-sets designed adequately for each setting and participant role. For the main therapist, the variant with an interactive large display, required the simultaneous usage of a complimentary devices, to cope with non-public aspects of the therapy. Preliminary evaluation rose interesting, one hand usage issues for that variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mismatch between ‘traditional‘ educational model and the e-Learning has drawn the research attention on personalized instruction, one of the growing concerns in HCI. This paper presents a framework that can be used as a basis for the identification of an appropriate type of personalization. Our idea is that users who demonstrate particular learning styles, as identified in Felder-Silverman's learning style theory, require a specific e-learning environment that matches their learning preferences. In particular, the framework is formulated to investigate how the different modalities presenting e-Learning content will influence the students' learning quality and experience. The considered learning styles profile in this paper is typical for a science and technology domain student. Through this framework we expect that learning preferences of a certain type of learners could be better supported and consequently their improved learning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]