A large-scale computing infrastructure for design education

Most departmental computing infrastructure reflects the state of networking technology and available funds at the time of construction, which converge in a preconceived notion of homogeneity of network architecture and usage patterns. The DMAN (Digital Media Access Network) project, a large-scale server and network foundation for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's School of Design was created as a platform that would support a highly complex academic environment while giving maximum freedom to students, faculty and researchers through simplicity and ease of use. As a centralized multi-user computation backbone, DMAN faces an extremely hetrogeneous user and application profile, exceeding implementation and maintenance challenges of typical enterprise, and even most academic server set-ups. This paper sumarizes the specification, implementation and application of the system while describing its significance for design education in a computational context.

Interactive lounge : an interdisciplinary approach to the design of a gestural interaction device

Among the many new opportunities that digital technologies are enabling are an increased capacity for viewers to interact not only with the program content, but with an increasingly wide array of other digital applications. Within this context this project has developed a new interaction device (incorporating gestural platform technology) and user interfaces to facilitate interactive access to digital media in a lounge room setting. This paper provides an overview of an interdisciplinary design process applied by Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) researchers—in order to develop the device and present in detail its unique features.

Strong designated verifier signature in a multi-user setting

The security of strong designated verifier (SDV) signature schemes has thus far been analyzed only in a two-user setting. We observe that security in a two-user setting does not necessarily imply the same in a multi-user setting for SDV signatures. Moreover, we show that existing security notions do not adequately model the security of SDV signatures even in a two-user setting. We then propose revised notions of security in a multi-user setting and show that no existing scheme satisfies these notions. A new SDV signature scheme is then presented and proven secure under the revised notions in the standard model. For the purpose of constructing the SDV signature scheme, we propose a one-pass key establishment protocol in the standard model, which is of independent interest in itself.

Search engine content analysis

Search engines have forever changed the way people access and discover knowledge, allowing information about almost any subject to be quickly and easily retrieved within seconds. As increasingly more material becomes available electronically the influence of search engines on our lives will continue to grow. This presents the problem of how to find what information is contained in each search engine, what bias a search engine may have, and how to select the best search engine for a particular information need. This research introduces a new method, search engine content analysis, in order to solve the above problem. Search engine content analysis is a new development of traditional information retrieval field called collection selection, which deals with general information repositories. Current research in collection selection relies on full access to the collection or estimations of the size of the collections. Also collection descriptions are often represented as term occurrence statistics. An automatic ontology learning method is developed for the search engine content analysis, which trains an ontology with world knowledge of hundreds of different subjects in a multilevel taxonomy. This ontology is then mined to find important classification rules, and these rules are used to perform an extensive analysis of the content of the largest general purpose Internet search engines in use today. Instead of representing collections as a set of terms, which commonly occurs in collection selection, they are represented as a set of subjects, leading to a more robust representation of information and a decrease of synonymy. The ontology based method was compared with ReDDE (Relevant Document Distribution Estimation method for resource selection) using the standard R-value metric, with encouraging results. ReDDE is the current state of the art collection selection method which relies on collection size estimation. The method was also used to analyse the content of the most popular search engines in use today, including Google and Yahoo. In addition several specialist search engines such as Pubmed and the U.S. Department of Agriculture were analysed. In conclusion, this research shows that the ontology based method mitigates the need for collection size estimation.

Mapping of indoor environments by robots using low-cost vision sensors

For robots to operate in human environments they must be able to make their own maps because it is unrealistic to expect a user to enter a map into the robot’s memory; existing floorplans are often incorrect; and human environments tend to change. Traditionally robots have used sonar, infra-red or laser range finders to perform the mapping task. Digital cameras have become very cheap in recent years and they have opened up new possibilities as a sensor for robot perception. Any robot that must interact with humans can reasonably be expected to have a camera for tasks such as face recognition, so it makes sense to also use the camera for navigation. Cameras have advantages over other sensors such as colour information (not available with any other sensor), better immunity to noise (compared to sonar), and not being restricted to operating in a plane (like laser range finders). However, there are disadvantages too, with the principal one being the effect of perspective. This research investigated ways to use a single colour camera as a range sensor to guide an autonomous robot and allow it to build a map of its environment, a process referred to as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). An experimental system was built using a robot controlled via a wireless network connection. Using the on-board camera as the only sensor, the robot successfully explored and mapped indoor office environments. The quality of the resulting maps is comparable to those that have been reported in the literature for sonar or infra-red sensors. Although the maps are not as accurate as ones created with a laser range finder, the solution using a camera is significantly cheaper and is more appropriate for toys and early domestic robots.

Exploring the influence of a science content course incorporating explicit nature of science and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers' views of nature of science

There exists a general consensus in the science education literature around the goal of enhancing students. and teachers. views of nature of science (NOS). An emerging area of research in science education explores NOS and argumentation, and the aim of this study was to explore the effectiveness of a science content course incorporating explicit NOS and argumentation instruction on preservice primary teachers. views of NOS. A constructivist perspective guided the study, and the research strategy employed was case study research. Five preservice primary teachers were selected for intensive investigation in the study, which incorporated explicit NOS and argumentation instruction, and utilised scientific and socioscientific contexts for argumentation to provide opportunities for participants to apply their NOS understandings to their arguments. Four primary sources of data were used to provide evidence for the interpretations, recommendations, and implications that emerged from the study. These data sources included questionnaires and surveys, interviews, audio- and video-taped class sessions, and written artefacts. Data analysis involved the formation of various assertions that informed the major findings of the study, and a variety of validity and ethical protocols were considered during the analysis to ensure the findings and interpretations emerging from the data were valid. Results indicated that the science content course was effective in enabling four of the five participants. views of NOS to be changed. All of the participants expressed predominantly limited views of the majority of the examined NOS aspects at the commencement of the study. Many positive changes were evident at the end of the study with four of the five participants expressing partially informed and/or informed views of the majority of the examined NOS aspects. A critical analysis of the effectiveness of the various course components designed to facilitate the development of participants‟ views of NOS in the study, led to the identification of three factors that mediated the development of participants‟ NOS views: (a) contextual factors (including context of argumentation, and mode of argumentation), (b) task-specific factors (including argumentation scaffolds, epistemological probes, and consideration of alternative data and explanations), and (c) personal factors (including perceived previous knowledge about NOS, appreciation of the importance and utility value of NOS, and durability and persistence of pre-existing beliefs). A consideration of the above factors informs recommendations for future studies that seek to incorporate explicit NOS and argumentation instruction as a context for learning about NOS.

Adolescence: A useful concept for this millennium

‘Adolescence’ has become increasingly recognised as a nebulous concept. Previous conceptualisations of adolescence have adopted a ‘deficit’ view, regarding teenagers as ‘unfinished’ adults. The deficit view of adolescence is highly problematic in an era where adulthood itself is difficult to define. The terms ‘kidult’ or ‘adultescent’ have emerged to describe adult-age people whose interests and priorities match those of their teenage counterparts. Rather than relying on ‘lock-step’ models of physical, cognitive and social growth put forward by developmental psychology, adolescence can be more usefully defined by looking at the common experiences of people in their teenage years. Common experiences arise at an institutional level; for example, all adolescents are treated as the same by legal and education systems. The transition from primary to secondary schooling is a milestone for all children, exposing them to a new type of educational environment. Shared experiences also arise from generational factors. Today’s adolescents belong to the millennial generation, characterised by technological competence, global perspectives, high susceptibility to media influence, individualisation and rapid interactions. This generation focuses on teamwork, achievement, modesty and good conduct, and has great potential for significant collective accomplishments. These generational factors challenge educators to provide relevant learning experiences for today’s students. Many classrooms still utilise textbook-based pedagogy more suited to previous generations, resulting in disengagement among millennial students. Curriculum content must also be tailored to generational needs. The rapid pace of change, as well as the fluidity of identity created by dissolving geographical and vocational boundaries, mean that the millennial generation will need more than a fixed set of skills and knowledge to enter adulthood. Teachers must enable their students to think like ‘expert novices’, adept at assimilating new concepts in depth and prepared to engage in lifelong learning.

User-designer collaboration during the early stage of the product development process

As an understanding of users' tacit knowledge and latent needs embedded in user experience has played a critical role in product development, users’ direct involvement in design has become a necessary part of the design process. Various ways of accessing users' tacit knowledge and latent needs have been explored in the field of user-centred design, participatory design, and design for experiencing. User-designer collaboration has been used unconsciously by traditional designers to facilitate the transfer of users' tacit knowledge and to elicit new knowledge. However, what makes user-designer collaboration an effective strategy has rarely been reported on or explored. Therefore, interaction patterns between the users and the designers in three industry-supported user involvement cases were studied. In order to develop a coding system, collaboration was defined as a set of coordinated and joint problem solving activities, measured by the elicitation of new knowledge from collaboration. The analysis of interaction patterns in the user involvement cases revealed that allowing users to challenge or modify their contextual experiences facilitates the transfer of knowledge and new knowledge generation. It was concluded that users can be more effectively integrated into the product development process by employing collaboration strategies to intensify the depth of user involvement.

Effective web service discovery using a combination of a semantic model and a data mining technique

With the advent of Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services have gained tremendous popularity. Due to the availability of a large number of Web services, finding an appropriate Web service according to the requirement of the user is a challenge. This warrants the need to establish an effective and reliable process of Web service discovery. A considerable body of research has emerged to develop methods to improve the accuracy of Web service discovery to match the best service. The process of Web service discovery results in suggesting many individual services that partially fulfil the user’s interest. By considering the semantic relationships of words used in describing the services as well as the use of input and output parameters can lead to accurate Web service discovery. Appropriate linking of individual matched services should fully satisfy the requirements which the user is looking for. This research proposes to integrate a semantic model and a data mining technique to enhance the accuracy of Web service discovery. A novel three-phase Web service discovery methodology has been proposed. The first phase performs match-making to find semantically similar Web services for a user query. In order to perform semantic analysis on the content present in the Web service description language document, the support-based latent semantic kernel is constructed using an innovative concept of binning and merging on the large quantity of text documents covering diverse areas of domain of knowledge. The use of a generic latent semantic kernel constructed with a large number of terms helps to find the hidden meaning of the query terms which otherwise could not be found. Sometimes a single Web service is unable to fully satisfy the requirement of the user. In such cases, a composition of multiple inter-related Web services is presented to the user. The task of checking the possibility of linking multiple Web services is done in the second phase. Once the feasibility of linking Web services is checked, the objective is to provide the user with the best composition of Web services. In the link analysis phase, the Web services are modelled as nodes of a graph and an allpair shortest-path algorithm is applied to find the optimum path at the minimum cost for traversal. The third phase which is the system integration, integrates the results from the preceding two phases by using an original fusion algorithm in the fusion engine. Finally, the recommendation engine which is an integral part of the system integration phase makes the final recommendations including individual and composite Web services to the user. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, extensive experimentation has been performed. Results of the proposed support-based semantic kernel method of Web service discovery are compared with the results of the standard keyword-based information-retrieval method and a clustering-based machine-learning method of Web service discovery. The proposed method outperforms both information-retrieval and machine-learning based methods. Experimental results and statistical analysis also show that the best Web services compositions are obtained by considering 10 to 15 Web services that are found in phase-I for linking. Empirical results also ascertain that the fusion engine boosts the accuracy of Web service discovery by combining the inputs from both the semantic analysis (phase-I) and the link analysis (phase-II) in a systematic fashion. Overall, the accuracy of Web service discovery with the proposed method shows a significant improvement over traditional discovery methods.

Empowerment games : empathic design probes for user participation in community housing

This paper documents the empowering process of a group of public housing residents through different design probing exercises. These exercises worked along with existing social processes without any involvement of designers. This paper shows how a design researcher devised a series of probing tools called "empowerment games" with a group of active users. These games are self-learning tools for making the abstract language of design legible to users. The main purpose of this intitiative was to change the preconception of govenmental bodies and professional designers of the passivity of the users with regard to their designed environment. This was the first case of the application of a participatory design process in Hong Kong subsidized housing. Design empathy is a central skill when working with users throughout the whole design research project.

Encounters and content sharing in an urban village : reading texts through an archaeological lens

Archaeology provides a framework of analysis and interpretation that is useful for disentangling the textual layers of a contemporary lived-in urban space. The producers and readers of texts may include those who planned and developed the site and those who now live, visit and work there. Some of the social encounters and content sharing between these people may be artificially produced or manufactured in the hope that certain social situations will occur. Others may be serendipitous. With archaeology’s original focus on places that are no longer inhabited it is often only the remaining artefacts and features of the built environment that form the basis for interpreting the social relationships of past people. Our analysis however, is framed within a contemporary notion of archaeological artefacts in an urban setting. Unlike an excavation, where the past is revealed through digging into the landscape, the application of landscape archaeology within a present day urban context is necessarily more experiential, visual and based on recording and analysing the physical traces of social encounters and relationships between residents and visitors. These physical traces are present within the creative content, and the built and natural elements of the environment. This chapter explores notions of social encounters and content sharing in an urban village by analysing three different types of texts: the design of the built environment; content produced by residents through a geospatial web application; and, print and online media produced in digital storytelling workshops.

Demonstration of Software Agents Prototype System : [AIMM] Agents for Improving Maintenance Management

This report presents the demonstration of software agents prototype system for improving maintenance management [AIMM] including: • Developing and implementing a user focused approach for mining the maintenance data of buildings. This report presents the demonstration of software agents prototype system for improving maintenance management [AIMM] including: • Developing and implementing a user focused approach for mining the maintenance data of buildings. • Refining the development of a multi agent system for data mining in virtual environments (Active Worlds) by developing and implementing a filtering agent on the results obtained from applying data mining techniques on the maintenance data. • Integrating the filtering agent within the multi agents system in an interactive networked multi-user 3D virtual environment. • Populating maintenance data and discovering new rules of knowledge.