Human factors in cargo X-ray examination systems

The project investigated factors which may determine operator performance in X-ray screening of cargo, which is of similar importance to aviation security screening. A target detection paradigm showed significant difference in several measures of performance between baggage and postal contexts which provides evidence that these may constitute separate expertise domains.

Human-computer interaction in ubiquitous computing environments

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore characteristics of human-computer interaction when the human body and its movements become input for interaction and interface control in pervasive computing settings.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper quantifies the performance of human movement based on Fitt's Law and discusses some of the human factors and technical considerations that arise in trying to use human body movements as an input medium.

Findings – The paper finds that new interaction technologies utilising human movements may provide more flexible, naturalistic interfaces and support the ubiquitous or pervasive computing paradigm.

Practical implications – In pervasive computing environments the challenge is to create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. Application domains that may utilize human body movements as input are surveyed here and the paper addresses issues such as culture, privacy, security and ethics raised by movement of a user's body-based interaction styles.

Originality/value – The paper describes the utilization of human body movements as input for interaction and interface control in pervasive computing settings.

The factors that affect the cost estimation activities in the tender preparation process in the Malaysian construction industry

The possibility of winning the tender is subject to the cost estimation proposed by the contractors compared to the cost estimation prepared by the client’s representative. Studies indicated that one of the construction company failures in the tendering process is due to the uncertain, incorrect, and unrealistic cost estimation. Failure to provide a competitive cost estimation on time is the main reason the contractor is not successful in winning the tender, and will not be considered for the tender evaluation stage. The aim of this paper is to validate the key factors that affect the cost estimation activities in the tender preparation process. This paper describes the results of a pilot study, from a questionnaire survey on the factors that affect the cost estimation activities in the tender preparation process. The study shows the importance of all the factors in the cost estimation activities in the tender preparation process in terms of human factors, working culture, and information technology.

A preliminary survey of factors affecting software testers

Most software testing research has focused on the development of systematic, standardised, and automated testing methodologies and tools. The abilities and expertise needed to apply such techniques and tools - such as personality traits, education, and experience - have attracted a comparatively small amount of research attention. However, the limited research in the area to date provides some indication that the human traits of software testers are important for effective testing. This paper presents the opinions of software testers themselves, collected through an online survey, on the importance of a variety of factors that influence effective testing, including testing-specific training, experience, skills, and human qualities like dedication and general intelligence. The survey responses strongly suggest that while testing tools and training are important, human factors were similarly considered highly important. Domain knowledge, experience, intelligence, and dedication, amongst other traits, were considered crucial for a software tester to be effective. As such, while systematic methodologies are important, the individual most clearly does matter in software testing. The results of our research have implications for education, recruitment, training and management of software testers.

Power, politics and legitimacy in information systems implementation : an ethnographic study

Systems implementation is inherently a political process. However, the majority of the literature in the area of systems implementation takes a simplistic look at factors attributed to success. These studies provide empirical evidence that “human factors” such as “top management support” contribute to a successful implementation. Rather than accept this, we challenge this view and explore two “human” issues – power and legitimacy inside systems implementation. By exploring the implementation of a learning management system at the University of New Zealand, issues such as power and legitimacy affect the way an implementation team collaborates. Systems implementation is a complex and messy process and we need to understand the implementation process, acknowledging that top management support is not always necessary to “successfully” implement a system.

Simulation-based support tool for operator performance in batch manufacturing

In industry, the workload and utilization of shop floor operators is often misunderstood. In this paper, we will present several real case studies, using Discrete Event Simulation (DES) models, which allow us to better understand operators in a batch manufacturing environment. The first study investigates labour in a machining plant consisting of multiple identical CNC machines that batch produce parts. The second study investigates labour in an eight station, gravity die casting rotary table. The results from these studies have shown that there can be potential improvements made by the production planners in the current labour configuration. In the first case study, a matrix is produced that estimates what the operator's utilization levels will be for various configurations. From this, the preferred operator to machine ratio over a range of cycle times is presented. In the second study, the results have shown that by reducing the casting cycle time, the operator would be overloaded. A discrete event simulation of these two cases highlighted areas that were misunderstood by plant management, and provided them with a useful decision support tool for production planning.

There are always two sides to a story: the use of social dramas as a mode of data analysis in information systems

With the continually evolving social nature of information systems research there is a need to identify different “modes of analysis” (Myers, 1997) to uncover our understanding of the complex, messy and often chaotic nature of human factors. One suggested mode of analysis is that of social dramas, a tool developed in the anthropological discipline by Victor Turner. The use of social dramas also utilises the work by Goffman (1959; 1997) and enables the researcher to investigate events from the front stage, reporting obvious issues in systems implementation, and from the back stage, identifying the hidden aspects of systems implementation and the underpinning discourses. A case study exploring the social dramas involved in systems selection and implementation has been provided to support the use of this methodological tool.

Teaching digital forensics to undergraduate students

Digital forensics isn't commonly a part of an undergraduate university degree, but Deakin University in Australia recently introduced the subject as part of an IT security course. As instructors, we've found that digital forensics complements our other security offerings because it affords insights into why and how security fails. A basic part of this course is an ethics agreement signed by students and submitted to the unit instructor. This agreement, approved by Deakin University's legal office and consistent with Barbara Endicott-Popovsky's approach, requires students to maintain a professional and ethical attitude to the subject matter and its applications. Assignments regularly cast students in the role of forensic professional. Our teaching team emphasizes throughout the course that professional conduct establishes credibility with employers and customers as well as colleagues, and is required to perform the job effectively. This article describes our experiences with this course.

Investigation of stakeholders commitment to information security awaremess programs

Organisations have become increasingly dependent on technology in order to compete in their respective markets. As IT technology advances at a rapid pace, so does its complexity, giving rise to new IT security vulnerabilities and methods of attack. Even though the human factors have been recognized to have a crucial role in information security management, the effects of weakness of will and lack of commitment on the stakeholders (i.e., employers and employees) parts has never been factored into the design and delivery of awareness programs. To this end, this paper investigates the impacts of the availability of awareness programs and end-user drive and lack of commitment to information security awareness program design, delivery and success.

Power and politics in a system implementation

The central concern of this study is to identify the role of power and politics in systems implementation. The current literature on systems implementation is typically divided into two areas, process modelling and factor based studies. Process modelling classifies the implementation into a linear process, whereas factor based studies have argued that in order to ‘successfully’ implement a system, particular critical factors are required. This literature misses the complexities involved in systems implementation through the human factors and political nature of systems implementation and is simplistic in its nature and essentially de-contextualises the implementation process. Literature has investigated some aspects of human factors in systems implementation. However, it is believed that these studies have taken a simplistic view of power and politics. It is argued in this thesis that human factors in systems implementation are constantly changing and essentially operating in a dynamic relationship affecting the implementation process. The concept of power relations, as proposed by Foucault (1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982), have been utilised in order to identify the dynamic nature of power and politics. Foucault (1978) argued that power is a dynamic set of relationships constantly changing from one point in time to the next. It is this recognition that is lacking from information systems. Furthermore, these power relations are created through the use of discourse. Discourse represents meaning and social relationships, forming both subjectivity and power relations. Discourses are also the practices of talk, text and argument that continuously form that which actors speak. A post-structuralist view of power as both an obvious and hidden concept has provided the researcher a lens through which the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system can be observed. The framework aimed to identify the obvious process of system selection implementation, and then deconstruct that process to expose the hegemonic nature of policy, the reproduction of organisational culture, the emancipation within discourse, and the nature of resistance and power relations. A critical case study of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia was presented providing an in-depth investigation of the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system, spanning five years. This critical case study was analysed using social dramas to distinguish between the front stage issues of power and the hidden discourses underpinning the front stage dramas. The enterprise-wide learning management system implemented in the University of Australia in 2003 is a system which enables academic staff to manage learners, the students, by keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. Through telling the story of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia discourses emerged. The key findings from this study have indicated that the system selection and implementation works at two levels. The low level is the selection and implementation process, which operates for the period of the project. The high level is the arena of power and politics, which runs simultaneously to the selection and implementation process. Challenges for power are acted out in the front stage, or public forums between various actors. The social dramas, as they have been described here, are superfluous to the discourse underpinning the front stage. It is the discourse that remains the same throughout the system selection and implementation process, but it is through various social dramas that reflect those discourses. Furthermore, the enactment of policy legitimises power and establishes the discourse, limiting resistance. Additionally, this research has identified the role of the ‘State’ and its influence at the organisational level, which had been previously suggested in education literature (Ball, 1990).

The effects of major change : a case study of an Australian university

Organisational RestructuringLeading higher education organisational restructuring is not an easy task. It involves various degree of engagement, decision making and strategic alliances to make the change a success. Research has shown that organisational restructuring has impact on individuals of the organization and vice versa. Studies have shown that imposed change may create negative emotions such as fear of losing something important, anger and anxiety. On the contrary, planned change is accompanied by excitement and hope. Thus, the call for best practices in leading successful organizational change is greater than ever. Factors such as the fundamental characters and practices of higher education, as well as the presence of various human factors (academics and administrative) need to be taken into account. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a case study on organisational restructuring at a higher education institution in Australia. The restructuring in focus involves the amalgamation of two university faculties into one. This paper seeks to present the experiences and life accounts of faculty members with regards to leadership during the amalgamation process. Interviews were carried out with both the academic and administrative staff. Analysis of the interviews found a variation of views on leadership at different levels of the organisation, the emergence of leadership in times of crisis, the gap between the academics and administrative as well as the importance of organisational members to make the restructuring a success. The paper ends with useful suggestions for leaders and their role towards leading successful change in today’s complex higher education scenario.

IMCE : integrated media creation environment

We discuss the design goals for an integrated media creation environment (IMCE) aimed at enabling the average user to create media artifacts with professional qualities. The resulting requirements are implemented and we demonstrate the efficacy of the resulting system with the generation of two simple home movies. The significance for the average user seeking to create home movies lies in the flexible and automatic application of film principles to the task, removal of tedious low-level editing by means of well-formed media transformations in terms of high-level film constructs (e.g., tempo), and content repurposing powered by those same transformations added to the rich semantic information maintained at each phase of the process.

Sensing and using social context

We present online algorithms to extract social context: Social spheres are labeled locations of significance, represented as convex hulls extracted from GPS traces. Colocation is determined from Bluetooth and GPS to extract social rhythms, patterns in time, duration, place, and people corresponding to real-world activities. Social ties are formulated from proximity and shared spheres and rhythms. Quantitative evaluation is performed for 10+ million samples over 45 man-months. Applications are presented with assessment of perceived utility: Socio-Graph, a video and photo browser with filters for social metadata, and Jive, a blog browser that uses rhythms to discover similarity between entries automatically.

Flickr hypergroups

The amount of multimedia content available online constantly increases, and this leads to problems for users who search for content or similar communities. Users in Flickr often self-organize in user communities through Flickr Groups. These groups are particularly interesting as they are a natural instantiation of the content + relations social media paradigm. We propose a novel approach to group searching through hypergroup discovery. Starting from roughly 11,000 Flickr groups' content and membership information, we create three different bag-of-word representations for groups, on which we learn probabilistic topic models. Finally, we cast the hypergroup discovery as a clustering problem that is solved via probabilistic affinity propagation. We show that hypergroups so found are generally consistent and can be described through topic-based and similarity-based measures. Our proposed solution could be relatively easily implemented as an application to enrich Flickr's traditional group search.