Managing conflict in user-oriented development environments: Effects on information systems success

Today, many organizations are turning to new approaches to building and maintaining information systems (I/S) to cope with a highly competitive business environment. Current anecdotal evidence indicates that the approaches being used improve the effectiveness of software development by encouraging active user participation throughout the development process. Unfortunately, very little is known about how the use of such approaches enhances the ability of team members to develop I/S that are responsive to changing business conditions.^ Drawing from predominant theories of organizational conflict, this study develops and tests a model of conflict among members of a development team. The model proposes that development approaches provide the relevant context conditioning the management and resolution of conflict in software development which, in turn, are crucial for the success of the development process.^ Empirical testing of the model was conducted using data collected through a combination of interviews with I/S executives and surveys of team members and business users at nine organizations. Results of path analysis provide support for the model's main prediction that integrative conflict management and distributive conflict management can contribute to I/S success by influencing differently the manifestation and resolution of conflict in software development. Further, analyses of variance indicate that object-oriented development, when compared to rapid and structured development, appears to produce the lowest levels of conflict management, conflict resolution, and I/S success.^ The proposed model and findings suggest academic implications for understanding the effects of different conflict management behaviors on software development outcomes, and practical implications for better managing the software development process, especially in user-oriented development environments. ^

The effects of semantic and syntactic instruction on user performance and satisfaction in search user interface design

The design of interfaces to facilitate user search has become critical for search engines, ecommercesites, and intranets. This study investigated the use of targeted instructional hints to improve search by measuring the quantitative effects of users' performance and satisfaction. The effects of syntactic, semantic and exemplar search hints on user behavior were evaluated in an empirical investigation using naturalistic scenarios. Combining the three search hint components, each with two levels of intensity, in a factorial design generated eight search engine interfaces. Eighty participants participated in the study and each completed six realistic search tasks. Results revealed that the inclusion of search hints improved user effectiveness, efficiency and confidence when using the search interfaces, but with complex interactions that require specific guidelines for search interface designers. These design guidelines will allow search designers to create more effective interfaces for a variety of searchapplications.

User Interface Design for Electronic Learning Software: Promoting Usability and Facilitating Learning for Children

Computing devices have become ubiquitous in our technologically-advanced world, serving as vehicles for software applications that provide users with a wide array of functions. Among these applications are electronic learning software, which are increasingly being used to educate and evaluate individuals ranging from grade school students to career professionals. This study will evaluate the design and implementation of user interfaces in these pieces of software. Specifically, it will explore how these interfaces can be developed to facilitate the use of electronic learning software by children. In order to do this, research will be performed in the area of human-computer interaction, focusing on cognitive psychology, user interface design, and software development. This information will be analyzed in order to design a user interface that provides an optimal user experience for children. This group will test said interface, as well as existing applications, in order to measure its usability. The objective of this study is to design a user interface that makes electronic learning software more usable for children, facilitating their learning process and increasing their academic performance. This study will be conducted by using the Adobe Creative Suite to design the user interface and an Integrated Development Environment to implement functionality. These are digital tools that are available on computing devices such as desktop computers, laptops, and smartphones, which will be used for the development of software. By using these tools, I hope to create a user interface for electronic learning software that promotes usability while maintaining functionality. This study will address the increasing complexity of computing software seen today – an issue that has risen due to the progressive implementation of new functionality. This issue is having a detrimental effect on the usability of electronic learning software, increasing the learning curve for targeted users such as children. As we make electronic learning software an integral part of educational programs in our schools, it is important to address this in order to guarantee them a successful learning experience.

User Interface Design for Electronic Learning Software: Promoting Usability and Facilitating Learning for Children

Computing devices have become ubiquitous in our technologically-advanced world, serving as vehicles for software applications that provide users with a wide array of functions. Among these applications are electronic learning software, which are increasingly being used to educate and evaluate individuals ranging from grade school students to career professionals. This study will evaluate the design and implementation of user interfaces in these pieces of software. Specifically, it will explore how these interfaces can be developed to facilitate the use of electronic learning software by children. In order to do this, research will be performed in the area of human-computer interaction, focusing on cognitive psychology, user interface design, and software development. This information will be analyzed in order to design a user interface that provides an optimal user experience for children. This group will test said interface, as well as existing applications, in order to measure its usability. The objective of this study is to design a user interface that makes electronic learning software more usable for children, facilitating their learning process and increasing their academic performance. This study will be conducted by using the Adobe Creative Suite to design the user interface and an Integrated Development Environment to implement functionality. These are digital tools that are available on computing devices such as desktop computers, laptops, and smartphones, which will be used for the development of software. By using these tools, I hope to create a user interface for electronic learning software that promotes usability while maintaining functionality. This study will address the increasing complexity of computing software seen today – an issue that has risen due to the progressive implementation of new functionality. This issue is having a detrimental effect on the usability of electronic learning software, increasing the learning curve for targeted users such as children. As we make electronic learning software an integral part of educational programs in our schools, it is important to address this in order to guarantee them a successful learning experience.

An aspect-oriented approach to designing role-based access control services

Access control (AC) limits access to the resources of a system only to authorized entities. Given that information systems today are increasingly interconnected, AC is extremely important. The implementation of an AC service is a complicated task. Yet the requirements to an AC service vary a lot. Accordingly, the design of an AC service should be flexible and extensible in order to save development effort and time. Unfortunately, with conventional object-oriented techniques, when an extension has not been anticipated at the design time, the modification incurred by the extension is often invasive. Invasive changes destroy design modularity, further deteriorate design extensibility, and even worse, they reduce product reliability. ^ A concern is crosscutting if it spans multiple object-oriented classes. It was identified that invasive changes were due to the crosscutting nature of most unplanned extensions. To overcome this problem, an aspect-oriented design approach for AC services was proposed, as aspect-oriented techniques could effectively encapsulate crosscutting concerns. The proposed approach was applied to develop an AC framework that supported role-based access control model. In the framework, the core role-based access control mechanism is given in an object-oriented design, while each extension is captured as an aspect. The resulting framework is well-modularized, flexible, and most importantly, supports noninvasive adaptation. ^ In addition, a process to formalize the aspect-oriented design was described. The purpose is to provide high assurance for AC services. Object-Z was used to specify the static structure and Predicate/Transition net was used to model the dynamic behavior. Object-Z was extended to facilitate specification in an aspect-oriented style. The process of formal modeling helps designers to enhance their understanding of the design, hence to detect problems. Furthermore, the specification can be mathematically verified. This provides confidence that the design is correct. It was illustrated through an example that the model was ready for formal analysis. ^

Next generation of recommender systems: Algorithms and applications

Personalized recommender systems aim to assist users in retrieving and accessing interesting items by automatically acquiring user preferences from the historical data and matching items with the preferences. In the last decade, recommendation services have gained great attention due to the problem of information overload. However, despite recent advances of personalization techniques, several critical issues in modern recommender systems have not been well studied. These issues include: (1) understanding the accessing patterns of users (i.e., how to effectively model users' accessing behaviors); (2) understanding the relations between users and other objects (i.e., how to comprehensively assess the complex correlations between users and entities in recommender systems); and (3) understanding the interest change of users (i.e., how to adaptively capture users' preference drift over time). To meet the needs of users in modern recommender systems, it is imperative to provide solutions to address the aforementioned issues and apply the solutions to real-world applications. ^ The major goal of this dissertation is to provide integrated recommendation approaches to tackle the challenges of the current generation of recommender systems. In particular, three user-oriented aspects of recommendation techniques were studied, including understanding accessing patterns, understanding complex relations and understanding temporal dynamics. To this end, we made three research contributions. First, we presented various personalized user profiling algorithms to capture click behaviors of users from both coarse- and fine-grained granularities; second, we proposed graph-based recommendation models to describe the complex correlations in a recommender system; third, we studied temporal recommendation approaches in order to capture the preference changes of users, by considering both long-term and short-term user profiles. In addition, a versatile recommendation framework was proposed, in which the proposed recommendation techniques were seamlessly integrated. Different evaluation criteria were implemented in this framework for evaluating recommendation techniques in real-world recommendation applications. ^ In summary, the frequent changes of user interests and item repository lead to a series of user-centric challenges that are not well addressed in the current generation of recommender systems. My work proposed reasonable solutions to these challenges and provided insights on how to address these challenges using a simple yet effective recommendation framework.^

An approach for design and analysis of User-centric Communication Middleware

Today, the development of domain-specific communication applications is both time-consuming and error-prone because the low-level communication services provided by the existing systems and networks are primitive and often heterogeneous. Multimedia communication applications are typically built on top of low-level network abstractions such as TCP/UDP socket, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) APIs. The User-centric Communication Middleware (UCM) is proposed to encapsulate the networking complexity and heterogeneity of basic multimedia and multi-party communication for upper-layer communication applications. And UCM provides a unified user-centric communication service to diverse communication applications ranging from a simple phone call and video conferencing to specialized communication applications like disaster management and telemedicine. It makes it easier to the development of domain-specific communication applications. The UCM abstraction and API is proposed to achieve these goals. The dissertation also tries to integrate the formal method into UCM development process. The formal model is created for UCM using SAM methodology. Some design errors are found during model creation because the formal method forces to give the precise description of UCM. By using the SAM tool, formal UCM model is translated to Promela formula model. In the dissertation, some system properties are defined as temporal logic formulas. These temporal logic formulas are manually translated to promela formulas which are individually integrated with promela formula model of UCM and verified using SPIN tool. Formal analysis used here helps verify the system properties (for example multiparty multimedia protocol) and dig out the bugs of systems.

Blurring the lines between public and private spaces in residential design

This thesis explores the role of public space as an integral part of residential design to promote a sense of community, where neighbors can congregate and children can play in safety. ^ Through research and analysis of successful public spaces, I evaluated relationships between dwellings and public spaces that offer progressive levels of privacy, and between indoor and outdoor spaces. Further research of published studies on child development, human behavior and relationships with nature identified a human preference for natural environments, a need for adequate recreation space for children's development and the potential of open spaces to build a strong sense of community. ^ My project develops multiple transitional spaces between the street and the interior of dwellings that provide varying degrees of privacy closely related to the community's green spaces. The result is a community-oriented pedestrian environment that encourages family and community values and contributes to the healthy living of its residents without depriving them of their privacy. ^

Ensemble fuzzy belief intrusion detection design

With the rapid growth of the Internet, computer attacks are increasing at a fast pace and can easily cause millions of dollar in damage to an organization. Detecting these attacks is an important issue of computer security. There are many types of attacks and they fall into four main categories, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Probe, User to Root (U2R) attacks, and Remote to Local (R2L) attacks. Within these categories, DoS and Probe attacks continuously show up with greater frequency in a short period of time when they attack systems. They are different from the normal traffic data and can be easily separated from normal activities. On the contrary, U2R and R2L attacks are embedded in the data portions of the packets and normally involve only a single connection. It becomes difficult to achieve satisfactory detection accuracy for detecting these two attacks. Therefore, we focus on studying the ambiguity problem between normal activities and U2R/R2L attacks. The goal is to build a detection system that can accurately and quickly detect these two attacks. In this dissertation, we design a two-phase intrusion detection approach. In the first phase, a correlation-based feature selection algorithm is proposed to advance the speed of detection. Features with poor prediction ability for the signatures of attacks and features inter-correlated with one or more other features are considered redundant. Such features are removed and only indispensable information about the original feature space remains. In the second phase, we develop an ensemble intrusion detection system to achieve accurate detection performance. The proposed method includes multiple feature selecting intrusion detectors and a data mining intrusion detector. The former ones consist of a set of detectors, and each of them uses a fuzzy clustering technique and belief theory to solve the ambiguity problem. The latter one applies data mining technique to automatically extract computer users’ normal behavior from training network traffic data. The final decision is a combination of the outputs of feature selecting and data mining detectors. The experimental results indicate that our ensemble approach not only significantly reduces the detection time but also effectively detect U2R and R2L attacks that contain degrees of ambiguous information.

Design of an automated book reader as an assistive technology tool for blind persons

This dissertation introduces a novel automated book reader as an assistive technology tool for persons with blindness. The literature shows extensive work in the area of optical character recognition, but the current methodologies available for the automated reading of books or bound volumes remain inadequate and are severely constrained during document scanning or image acquisition processes. The goal of the book reader design is to automate and simplify the task of reading a book while providing a user-friendly environment with a realistic but affordable system design. This design responds to the main concerns of (a) providing a method of image acquisition that maintains the integrity of the source (b) overcoming optical character recognition errors created by inherent imaging issues such as curvature effects and barrel distortion, and (c) determining a suitable method for accurate recognition of characters that yields an interface with the ability to read from any open book with a high reading accuracy nearing 98%. This research endeavor focuses in its initial aim on the development of an assistive technology tool to help persons with blindness in the reading of books and other bound volumes. But its secondary and broader aim is to also find in this design the perfect platform for the digitization process of bound documentation in line with the mission of the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a nonprofit Alliance at making reading materials available in digital form. The theoretical perspective of this research relates to the mathematical developments that are made in order to resolve both the inherent distortions due to the properties of the camera lens and the anticipated distortions of the changing page curvature as one leafs through the book. This is evidenced by the significant increase of the recognition rate of characters and a high accuracy read-out through text to speech processing. This reasonably priced interface with its high performance results and its compatibility to any computer or laptop through universal serial bus connectors extends greatly the prospects for universal accessibility to documentation.

Hospitality Information Systems: Intuitive, Object-Oriented, and Wireless Technology

Automated information system design and implementation is one of the fastest changing aspects of the hospitality industry. During the past several years nothing has increased the professionalism or improved the productivity within the industry more than the application of computer technology. Intuitive software applications, deemed the first step toward making computers more people-literate, object-oriented programming, intended to more accurately model reality, and wireless communications are expected to play a significant role in future technological advancement.

A comparison of the effects of classroom and Multi-User Virtual Environments on the perceived speaking anxiety of adult post-secondary English Language Learners

The population of English Language Learners (ELLs) globally has been increasing substantially every year. In the United States alone, adult ELLs are the fastest growing portion of learners in adult education programs (Yang, 2005). There is a significant need to improve the teaching of English to ELLs in the United States and other English-speaking dominant countries. However, for many ELLs, speaking, especially to Native English Speakers (NESs), causes considerable language anxiety, which in turn plays a vital role in hindering their language development and academic progress (Pichette, 2009; Woodrow, 2006). ^ Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), such as simulation activities, has long been viewed as an effective approach for second-language development. The current advances in technology and rapid emergence of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) have provided an opportunity for educators to consider conducting simulations online for ELLs to practice speaking English to NESs. Yet to date, empirical research on the effects of MUVEs on ELLs' language development and speaking is limited (Garcia-Ruiz, Edwards, & Aquino-Santos, 2007). ^ This study used a true experimental treatment control group repeated measures design to compare the perceived speaking anxiety levels (as measured by an anxiety scale administered per simulation activity) of 11 ELLs (5 in the control group, 6 in the experimental group) when speaking to Native English Speakers (NESs) during 10 simulation activities. Simulations in the control group were done face-to-face, while those in the experimental group were done in the MUVE of Second Life. ^ The results of the repeated measures ANOVA revealed after the Huynh-Feldt epsilon correction, demonstrated for both groups a significant decrease in anxiety levels over time from the first simulation to the tenth and final simulation. When comparing the two groups, the results revealed a statistically significant difference, with the experimental group demonstrating a greater anxiety reduction. These results suggests that language instructors should consider including face-to-face and MUVE simulations with ELLs paired with NESs as part of their language instruction. Future investigations should investigate the use of other multi-user virtual environments and/or measure other dimensions of the ELL/NES interactions.^

Fair and QoS-oriented resource management in heterogeneous networks

In this paper, a heterogeneous network composed of femtocells deployed within a macrocell network is considered, and a quality-of-service (QoS)-oriented fairness metric which captures important characteristics of tiered network architectures is proposed. Using homogeneous Poisson processes, the sum capacities in such networks are expressed in closed form for co-channel, dedicated channel, and hybrid resource allocation methods. Then a resource splitting strategy that simultaneously considers capacity maximization, fairness constraints, and QoS constraints is proposed. Detailed computer simulations utilizing 3GPP simulation assumptions show that a hybrid allocation strategy with a well-designed resource split ratio enjoys the best cell-edge user performance, with minimal degradation in the sum throughput of macrocell users when compared with that of co-channel operation.

ASDN : Automated Software Design Notebook tool

Software Engineering is one of the most widely researched areas of Computer Science. The ability to reuse software, much like reuse of hardware components is one of the key issues in software development. The object-oriented programming methodology is revolutionary in that it promotes software reusability. This thesis describes the development of a tool that helps programmers to design and implement software from within the Smalltalk Environment (an Object- Oriented programming environment). The ASDN tool is part of the PEREAM (Programming Environment for the Reuse and Evolution of Abstract Models) system, which advocates incremental development of software. The Asdn tool along with the PEREAM system seeks to enhance the Smalltalk programming environment by providing facilities for structured development of abstractions (concepts). It produces a document that describes the abstractions that are developed using this tool. The features of the ASDN tool are illustrated by an example.

Ensemble Fuzzy Belief Intrusion Detection Design

With the rapid growth of the Internet, computer attacks are increasing at a fast pace and can easily cause millions of dollar in damage to an organization. Detecting these attacks is an important issue of computer security. There are many types of attacks and they fall into four main categories, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Probe, User to Root (U2R) attacks, and Remote to Local (R2L) attacks. Within these categories, DoS and Probe attacks continuously show up with greater frequency in a short period of time when they attack systems. They are different from the normal traffic data and can be easily separated from normal activities. On the contrary, U2R and R2L attacks are embedded in the data portions of the packets and normally involve only a single connection. It becomes difficult to achieve satisfactory detection accuracy for detecting these two attacks. Therefore, we focus on studying the ambiguity problem between normal activities and U2R/R2L attacks. The goal is to build a detection system that can accurately and quickly detect these two attacks. In this dissertation, we design a two-phase intrusion detection approach. In the first phase, a correlation-based feature selection algorithm is proposed to advance the speed of detection. Features with poor prediction ability for the signatures of attacks and features inter-correlated with one or more other features are considered redundant. Such features are removed and only indispensable information about the original feature space remains. In the second phase, we develop an ensemble intrusion detection system to achieve accurate detection performance. The proposed method includes multiple feature selecting intrusion detectors and a data mining intrusion detector. The former ones consist of a set of detectors, and each of them uses a fuzzy clustering technique and belief theory to solve the ambiguity problem. The latter one applies data mining technique to automatically extract computer users’ normal behavior from training network traffic data. The final decision is a combination of the outputs of feature selecting and data mining detectors. The experimental results indicate that our ensemble approach not only significantly reduces the detection time but also effectively detect U2R and R2L attacks that contain degrees of ambiguous information.