Introduction to the Proceedings of the Workshop on User-Focused Service Engineering, Consumption and Aggregation (USECA) 2011

The first User-Focused Service Engineering, Consumption and Aggregation workshop (USECA) in 2011 was held in conjunction with the WISE 2011 conference in Sydney, Australia. Web services and related technology are a widely accepted standard architectural paradigm for application development. The idea of reusing existing software components to build new applications has been well documented and supported for the world of enterprise computing and professional developers. However, this powerful idea has not been transferred to end-users who have limited or no computing knowledge. The current methodologies, models, languages and tools developed for Web service composition are suited to IT professionals and people with years of training in computing technologies. It is still hard to imagine any of these technologies being used by business professionals, as opposed to computing professionals. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Compensation or consideration for a statutory right of user?

Section 180 of the Property Law Act 1974 (Qld) makes provision for an applicant to seek a statutory right of user over a neighbour’s property where such right of use is reasonably necessary in the interests of effective use in any reasonable manner of the dominant land. A key issue in an application under s 180 is compensation. Unfortunately, while s 180 expressly contemplates that an order for compensation will include provision for payment of compensation to the owner of servient land there are certain issues that are less clear. One of these is the basis for determination of the amount of compensation. In this regard, s 180(4)(a) provides that, in making an order for a statutory right of user, the court: (a) shall, except in special circumstances, include provision for payment by the applicant to such person or persons as may be specified in the order of such amount by way of compensation or consideration as in the circumstances appears to the court to be just The operation of this statutory provision was considered by de Jersey CJ (as he then was) in Peulen v Agius [2015] QSC 137.

An analysis of user engagement in student Facebook groups

Analysing the engagement of students in university-based Facebook groups can shed light on the nature of their learning experience and highlight leverage points to build on student success. While post-semester surveys and demographic participation data can highlight who was involved and how they subsequently felt about the experience, these techniques do not necessarily reflect real-time engagement. One way to gain insight into in-situ student experiences is by categorising the original posts and comments into predetermined frameworks of learning. This paper offers a systematic method of coding Facebook contributions within various engagement categories: motivation, discourse, cognition and emotive responses.

Irrational addicts and responsible pleasure seekers: Constructions of the drug user

Historically, drug use has been understood as a problem of epidemiology, psychiatry, physiology, and criminality requiring legal and medical governance. Consequently drug research tends to be underpinned by an imperative to better govern, and typically proposes policy interventions to prevent or solve drug problems. We argue that categories of ‘addictive’ and ‘recreational’ drug use are discursive forms of governance that are historically, politically and socially contingent. These constructions of the drug problem shape what drug users believe about themselves and how they enact these beliefs in their drug use practices. Based on qualitative interviews with young illicit drug users in Brisbane, Australia, this paper uses Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality to provide insights into how the governance of illicit drugs intersects with self-governance to create a drug user self. We propose a reconceptualisation of illicit drug use that takes into account the contingencies and subjective factors that shape the drug experience. This allows for an understanding of the relationships between discourses, policies, and practices in constructions of illicit drug users.

Relationships between user experience and intuitiveness of visual and physical interactions

This paper investigates the effects of experience on the intuitiveness of physical and visual interactions performed by airport security screeners. Using portable eye tracking glasses, 40 security screeners were observed in the field as they performed search, examination and interface interactions during airport security x-ray screening. Data from semi structured interviews was used to further explore the nature of visual and physical interactions. Results show there are positive relationships between experience and the intuitiveness of visual and physical interactions performed by security screeners. As experience is gained, security screeners are found to perform search, examination and interface interactions more intuitively. In addition to experience, results suggest that intuitiveness is affected by the nature and modality of activities performed. This inference was made based on the dominant processing styles associated with search and examination activities. The paper concludes by discussing the implications that this research has for the design of visual and physical interfaces. We recommend designing interfaces that build on users’ already established intuitive processes, and that reduce the cognitive load incurred during transitions between visual and physical interactions.

The right to a voice and the fight to be heard: The experience of being an ESL user in Australia

This paper focuses on the fundamental right to be heard, that is, the right to have one’s voice heard and listened to – to impose reception (Bourdieu, 1977). It focuses on the ways that non-mainstream English is heard and received in Australia, where despite public policy initiatives around equal opportunity, language continues to socially disadvantage people (Burridge & Mulder, 1998). English is the language of the mainstream and most people are monolingually English (Ozolins, 1993). English has no official status yet it remains dominant and its centrality is rarely challenged (Smolicz, 1995). This paper takes the position that the lack of language engagement in mainstream Australia leads to linguistic desensitisation. Writing in the US context where English is also the unofficial norm, Lippi-Green (1997) maintains that discrimination based on speech features or accent is commonly accepted and widely perceived as appropriate. In Australia, non-standard forms of English are often disparaged or devalued because they do not conform to the ‘standard’ (Burridge & Mulder, 1998). This paper argues that talk cannot be taken for granted: ‘spoken voices’ are critical tools for representing the self and negotiating and manifesting legitimacy within social groups (Miller, 2003). In multicultural, multilingual countries like Australia, the impact of the spoken voice, its message and how it is heard are critical tools for people seeking settlement, inclusion and access to facilities and services. Too often these rights are denied because of the way a person sounds. This paper reports a study conducted with a group that has been particularly vulnerable to ongoing ‘panics’ about language – international students. International education is the third largest revenue source for Australia (AEI, 2010) but has been beset by concerns from academics (Auditor-General, 2002) and the media about student language levels and falling work standards (e.g. Livingstone, 2004). Much of the focus has been high-stakes writing but with the ascendancy of project work in university assessment and the increasing emphasis on oracy, there is a call to recognise the salience of talk, especially among students using English as a second language (ESL) (Kettle & May, 2012). The study investigated the experiences of six international students in a Master of Education course at a large metropolitan university. It utilised data from student interviews, classroom observations, course materials, university policy documents and media reports to examine the ways that speaking and being heard impacted on the students’ learning and legitimacy in the course. The analysis drew on Fairclough’s (2003) model of the dialectical-relational Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to analyse the linguistic, discursive and social relations between the data texts and their conditions of production and interpretation, including the wider socio-political discourses on English, language difference, and second language use. The interests of the study were if and how discourses of marginalisation and discrimination manifested and if and how students recognised and responded to them pragmatically. Also how they juxtaposed with and/or contradicted the official rhetoric about diversity and inclusion. The underpinning rationale was that international students’ experiences can provide insights into the hidden politics and practices of being heard and afforded speaking rights as a second language speaker in Australia.

An economical, adaptable and user-friendly drip-perfusion bioreactor system designed for in vitro three dimensional cell culturing

This research project investigated a bioreactor system capable of high density cell growth intended for use in regenerative medicine and protein production. The bioreactor was based on a drip-perfusion concept and constructed with minimal costs, readily available components, and straightforward processes for usage. This study involved the design, construction, and testing of the bioreactor where the results showed promising three dimensional cell growth within a polymer structure. The accessibility of this equipment and the capability of high density, three dimensional cell growth would be suitable for future research in pharmaceutical drug manufacturing, and human organ and tissue regeneration.

Multi-user resource-sharing problem for the Internet

In this thesis we study a series of multi-user resource-sharing problems for the Internet, which involve distribution of a common resource among participants of multi-user systems (servers or networks). We study concurrently accessible resources, which for end-users may be exclusively accessible or non-exclusively. For all kinds we suggest a separate algorithm or a modification of common reputation scheme. Every algorithm or method is studied from different perspectives: optimality of protocols, selfishness of end users, fairness of the protocol for end users. On the one hand the multifaceted analysis allows us to select the most suited protocols among a set of various available ones based on trade-offs of optima criteria. On the other hand, the future Internet predictions dictate new rules for the optimality we should take into account and new properties of the networks that cannot be neglected anymore. In this thesis we have studied new protocols for such resource-sharing problems as the backoff protocol, defense mechanisms against Denial-of-Service, fairness and confidentiality for users in overlay networks. For backoff protocol we present analysis of a general backoff scheme, where an optimization is applied to a general-view backoff function. It leads to an optimality condition for backoff protocols in both slot times and continuous time models. Additionally we present an extension for the backoff scheme in order to achieve fairness for the participants in an unfair environment, such as wireless signal strengths. Finally, for the backoff algorithm we suggest a reputation scheme that deals with misbehaving nodes. For the next problem -- denial-of-service attacks, we suggest two schemes that deal with the malicious behavior for two conditions: forged identities and unspoofed identities. For the first one we suggest a novel most-knocked-first-served algorithm, while for the latter we apply a reputation mechanism in order to restrict resource access for misbehaving nodes. Finally, we study the reputation scheme for the overlays and peer-to-peer networks, where resource is not placed on a common station, but spread across the network. The theoretical analysis suggests what behavior will be selected by the end station under such a reputation mechanism.

Social NUI: Social perspectives in natural user interfaces

Natural User Interfaces (NUI) offer rich ways for interacting with the digital world that make innovative use of existing human capabilities. They include and often combine different input modalities such as voice, gesture, eye gaze, body interactions, touch and touchless interactions. However much of the focus of NUI research and development has been on enhancing the experience of individuals interacting with technology. Effective NUIs must also acknowledge our innately social characteristics, and support how we communicate with each other, play together, learn together and collaboratively work together. This workshop concerns the social aspects of NUI. The workshop seeks to better understand the social uses and applications of these new NUI technologies -- how we design these technologies for new social practices and how we understand the use of these technologies in key social contexts.

Modelling user profiles for recommender systems

Recommender systems assist users in finding what they want. The challenging issue is how to efficiently acquire user preferences or user information needs for building personalized recommender systems. This research explores the acquisition of user preferences using data taxonomy information to enhance personalized recommendations for alleviating cold-start problem. A concept hierarchy model is proposed, which provides a two-dimensional hierarchy for acquiring user preferences. The language model is also extended for the proposed hierarchy in order to generate an effective recommender algorithm. Both Amazon.com book and music datasets are used to evaluate the proposed approach, and the experimental results show that the proposed approach is promising.

User centred design for engineering e-government web usability

E-government provides a platform for governments to implement web enabled services that facilitate communication between citizens and the government. However, technology driven design approach and limited understanding of citizens' requirements, have led to a number of critical usability problems on the government websites. Hitherto, there has been no systematic attempt to analyse the way in which theory of User Centred Design (UCD) can contribute to address the usability issues of government websites. This research seeks to fill this gap by synthesising perspectives drawn from the study of User Centred Design and examining them based on the empirical data derived from case study of the Scottish Executive website. The research employs a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of data. The triangulated analysis of the findings reveals that e-government web designers take commercial development approach and focus only on technical implementations which lead to websites that do not meet citizens' expectations. The research identifies that e-government practitioners can overcome web usability issues by transferring the theory of UCD to practice.

Making usability affordable in the design of e-government services: User-centred design for public sector websites

E-government provides a platform for governments to implement web-enabled services that facilitate communication between citizens and the government. However, technology-driven design approach and limited understanding of citizens' requirements have led to a number of critical usability problems on the government websites. Hitherto, there has been no systematic attempt to analyse the way in which theory of User-Centred Design (UCD) can contribute to address the usability issues of government websites. This research seeks to fill this gap by synthesising perspectives drawn from the study of UCD and examining them based on the empirical data derived from case study of the Scottish Executive (SE) website. The research employs a qualitative approach in the collection and analysis of data. The triangulated analysis of the findings reveals that e-government web designers take commercial development approach and focus only on technical implementations, which lead to websites that do not meet citizens' expectations. The research identifies that e-government practitioners can overcome web usability issues by transferring the theory of UCD to practice. © Copyright 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Three-User Cognitive Channels with Cumulative Message Sharing: An Achievable Rate Region

In this paper, an achievable rate region for the three-user discrete memoryless interference channel with asymmetric transmitter cooperation is derived. The three-user channel facilitates different ways of message sharing between the transmitters. We introduce a manner of noncausal (genie aided) unidirectional message-sharing, which we term cumulative message sharing. We consider receivers with predetermined decoding capabilities, and define a cognitive interference channel. We then derive an achievable rate region for this channel by employing a coding scheme which is a combination of superposition and Gel'fand-Pinsker coding techniques.

Augmenting process elicitation with visual priming: An empirical exploration of user behaviour and modelling outcomes

Business process models have become an effective way of examining business practices to identify areas for improvement. While common information gathering approaches are generally efficacious, they can be quite time consuming and have the risk of developing inaccuracies when information is forgotten or incorrectly interpreted by analysts. In this study, the potential of a role-playing approach to process elicitation and specification has been examined. This method allows stakeholders to enter a virtual world and role-play actions similarly to how they would in reality. As actions are completed, a model is automatically developed, removing the need for stakeholders to learn and understand a modelling grammar. An empirical investigation comparing both the modelling outputs and participant behaviour of this virtual world role-play elicitor with an S-BPM process modelling tool found that while the modelling approaches of the two groups varied greatly, the virtual world elicitor may not only improve both the number of individual process task steps remembered and the correctness of task ordering, but also provide a reduction in the time required for stakeholders to model a process view.