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Software Engineering Research Group - 
Centre for Complex Cooperative Systems
I'm developing a survey on usability, I don't think it's quite right yet, but I would still welcome anyone using it to leave feedback on my research topic (or about the survey) - Click Here to take part in a usability survey, and support my PhD research, for anyone who does not want to remain anonymous, I would be pleased to take an interest in their research.
The survey compares these interfaces -
Taxonomy - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/Flash/FlashHCI.htm.
Diagrammatic - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/InteractiveSVGExamples.htm.
And asks for further advice on end-user programming.
I'm interested in feedback from anyone, whatever their level of IT skills.
A web survey was conducted to establish the viability for this kind of widening of participation. From 234 participants 53 % answered that this was possible and 47% that it was not. This indicates that research into this problem is necessary as just over half of respondents indicated it was possible but this was not a convincing majority. The participants can be assumed to be computer literate as they found and filled in the survey, some may be experienced programmers, while others could be the kind of computer literate end-users who might benefit from wider programming participation.
This screenshot from the web survey shows the results and breakdown of participants. 'Guest' are those who were not logged on and so the web survey could not identify their age or gender. From this it can be seen that responses were across the age range and both genders with male responses probably outnumbering female.
End-User Programming Survey Results - Do You Think End-User Programming can be made possible?
The results for the main Usability Survey are still being collected.
Clicking a link will scroll the page to the relevant section
Programming by Example - Links
Semantic Web research relevant for Translation
Meta-Programming, Translation, Semantic Web
Haskell and End-User Programming
End-User Programming News RSS Feed
Within this research the terms user, and domain expert are used interchangeably. The user is a domain expert who wants a problem represented and modelled using software. The domain is engineering but this research could be applied to other domains. Clarke (2007) examines the characteristics of end-user developers in order to assist with meeting their needs. The users/domain experts may well be computer literate and able to model certain problems using a software tool such as a spreadsheet. Crapo et al. (2002) cite (Savage, 1996) in stating that "Every one of the perhaps 30 million users of spreadsheet software can be considered a potential modeler". Crapo et al. explain that in spreadsheets there is little support for the process of conceiving, building, validating, and communicating models, and that significant advances in modelling tools can be achieved using visualisation. Crapo et al. also state that "the modeler's task is to explore the data, understand the relationships relevant to the problem at hand, and capture those relationships in a computational model that will meet a specific need". This means understandable visualisation is essential to the tasks of modellers, otherwise they will lose track of information. The reasons that spreadsheets are inadequate for representing complex models are connected with difficulties in maintaining, extending, and reusing spreadsheet models. So to be able to model a complex problem, the users/domain experts currently must specify their requirements to other software experts, who may not have domain knowledge themselves. Shim et al. (2006) explain how modern decision support systems need to support teams "DSS once supported individual decision-makers, but later DSS technologies were applied to workgroups or teams, especially virtual teams. The advent of the Web has enabled inter-organizational decision support systems, and has given rise to numerous new applications of existing technology as well as many new decision support technologies themselves." Sometimes these teams can span more than one company. It is difficult to find and employ those who have sufficient expertise in both the software and the domain. Someone without the domain knowledge may not understand the requirements. Project teams will find it hard to model a problem such as a new design unless all team members can access relevant software, to understand the problem to be modelled and solved (Rodgers et al., 2001). Organizations are often geographically dispersed and act as virtual teams, (Fensel et al., 2001) and (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2001) make this point. An additional problem is that novice modellers often have little or no training in modelling. "Little is known about how they go about their tasks and whether they succeed" (Willemain and Powell, 2006). So it is important to make technologies accessible for modellers to use, and to enable models to be shared and navigated, so that expert modellers can assist novices to create better models.
Erwig et al. (2006) explain worries about the error rate in spreadsheets - "Given the billions of spreadsheets in use, this leaves the worlds of business and finance horribly vulnerable to programming mistakes". Erwig et al. demonstrate a system for automatically generating and maintaining correct spreadsheets. Improved spreadsheets can be part of a User Driven Modelling/Programming approach; Erwig et al.'s research has influenced this thesis towards examining an aspect of end-user programming/modelling, investigating both improvements to and alternatives to spreadsheet modelling for this kind of computer literate end-user programmer/modeller. Abraham and Erwig (2007) integrate spreadsheet modelling into the UML modelling process. Enabling users themselves to create software using UML type tools would require development of a new type of UML tool specifically designed for users.
Software development is time consuming and error prone partly because of the need to concentrate so much on the implementation rather than the problem to be modelled. If people could instruct a computer without this requirement they could concentrate their effort on the problem to be solved. Jackiw and Finzer (1993) and Guibert et al. (2004) demonstrate how a view of the problem that is more visual and nearer to the person's way of thinking can assist with the modeller's tasks. This means they could customise software to model problems before and while they are trying to solve them instead of having to request the software provider to add features, at great cost in terms of time, money, and added complexity of software. This personal programming alternative is called User Driven Programming (UDP) within this thesis, and for the examples demonstrated the term User Driven Modelling (UDM) is used to explain the application of User Driven Programming to model development.
Although other researchers have prototyped Semantic Web languages such as RDF (Resource Description Framework) (World Wide Web Consortium, 2007) and XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based search tools, this has not yet been combined into a comprehensive application that is usable for end-user programming of a large range of modelling problems. A flexible interface built with Semantic Web languages can provide an interactive programming environment for computer literate non-programmers to manipulate information and construct models.
Abraham, R., Erwig, M., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - Exploiting Domain-Specific Structures For End-User Programming Support Tools. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1086.
Camarinha-Matos, L. M., Afsarmanesh, H., Osoro, A. L., 2001. Flexibility and safety in a web-based infrastructure for virtual enterprises Computer Integrated Manufacturing Vol 14 (1) pp 66-82.
Clarke, S., 2007. What is an End-user Software Engineer?. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1080.
Crapo, A. W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A., Willemain, T. R., 2002. Visualization and Modelling for Intelligent Systems. In: C. T. Leondes, ed. Intelligent Systems: Technology and Applications, Volume I Implementation Techniques, 2002 pp 53-85.
Erwig, M., Abraham, R., Cooperstein, I., Kollmansberger S., Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets - 2005, Oregan State and Houston University - ICSE 2005 27th International Conference on Software Engineering p 136- 145.
Fensel, D. Van Harmelen, F. Horrocks, I. McGuinness, D. Patel-Schneider, P. F., 2001. OIL: An ontology infrastructure for the semantic web. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 16(2), pp 38-45. - http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2001/IEEE-IS01.pdf.
Guibert, N., Girard, P., Guittet, L., 2004. Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program. Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces. pp 358-361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Jakiw, R. N., Finzer, W. F., 1993. The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry. In: A. Cypher, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, Chapter 1 - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html.
Rodgers, P. A., Caldwell, N. H., M., Clarkson, P.J., Huxor, A. P, 2001. The management of concept design knowledge in modern product development organizations. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 14(1), pp 108-115.
Savage, S. L., 1996. Innovative use of spreadsheets in teaching, OR/MS Today, 23(5).
Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
Willemain, T. R., Powell S. G., 2006, How novices formulate models. Part II: a quantitative description of behaviour, Journal of the Operational Research Society, pp 1-12, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/2602279a.html.
The Dagstuhl seminar report Burnett et al. (2007) explains that end users creating software greatly outnumber professional programmers. Many people would like to make greater use of computer technology but are hampered by the need to learn programming languages if they are to fully interact with software. Instead they are limited to the use of certain general features provided. A further constraint is the cost of software, and for this project we will develop free software and encourage a community of end-user developers, and modellers.
A new approach is required to software creation. This approach should involve developers creating software systems that enable users to perform high level programming, and model the problem for which they are the experts. Dependence on information systems that are supplied and customised by an IT department removes control from domain experts, Spahn et al. (2007) argue for empowering users by enabling abstraction from technical details and concentration on business needs. This is an alternative to the provision by developers of modelling solutions that try to provide an out of the box solution that just needs 'tweaking'. Such an out of the box system is impractical considering both increases in complexity of manufactured products, and of software systems themselves. Cheung (2005) writes "there is no single management tool or data exchange format that can satisfy all requirements and overcome all the obstacles involved within a collaborative product development environment". People like to work on their own solutions providing they are computer literate and confident they have domain knowledge that the developers do not possess. Research cited here from others involved in end-user programming seems to confirm this.
Research in the use and visualization of Semantic Web information provides the tools that end-user programmers have been lacking until recently. Cheung (2005) explains that "With the development of user-friendly ontology editing software and automatic data exchange functions, the application of ontological approaches to exchange information across the WWW is most likely to be an essential aspect of the next generation of global knowledge management tools.
An important area of research is a technique for End-User Programming, that of allowing visual modelling of information. This corresponds to the type of work normally undertaken using spreadsheets. This research involves using Semantic Web technologies to enable end user programming.
The work involves allowing non-programmers to model complex problems visually and without having to use programming languages. Information is created in a visual tree using an Ontology editor, the information is then transformed, and all calculations performed. Further transformations can be performed into any programming language or open standard information representation language, and this can be displayed on the web. Also transformations can be performed between a tree representation and other styles of representation e.g. an interactive CAD style representation, using SVG.
A related area of research is that of Semantic Web and Web 2.0 techniques to enable online interaction with the results visualisation. The intention of this is to enable end user programming, by always allowing the person to see the context of the information and to get immediate feedback on any changes.
The theory behind this is that of showing examples of a program in whatever way most puts across the information in an understandable way. This must illustrate the concept that the information represents. This allows a user to manipulate the information and get immediate feedback on what has changed. This is related to Programming by Example, which is explained below.
In the mid 1970s Smith introduced the technique of Programming by Example with a program called Pygmalion. This demonstrated the need to describe algorithms through concrete examples rather than abstractly. 'Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program' University of Poitiers explains and expands on Smiths work with an example demonstrating how numbers fail to reveal the concept behind them. The example is a numerical representation of a triangle. This representation is 'fregean' because it does not show the concept of a triangle. Next to this is a diagram of the triangle that does show the concept.
Shim et al. (2006) discuss user interface issues for this kind of problem, they investigate techniques for "powerful, yet simple user interface designs that enable interactive queries, reporting, and graphing functions". They also examine end user computing history - "The evolution of the human-computer interface is the evolution of computing. The graphical user interface (GUI) that was refined at Xerox, popularized by Macintosh, and later incorporated into Windows". Recent developments in the use of Meta languages for platform independence should make the development of end-user programming quicker and easier. Bishop (2006) explains current problems "The current practice is for GUIs to be specified by creating objects, calling methods to place them in the correct places in a window, and then linking them to code that will process any actions required. If hand-coded, such a process is tedious and error-prone; if a builder or designer program is used, hundreds of lines of code are generated and incorporated into one's program, often labeled 'do not touch'. Either approach violates the software engineering principles of efficiency and maintainability." Bishop explains the importance of platform independence and re-use of GUIs. Bishop investigates, evaluates and advocates the use of platform independent programming languages. Bishop ascertains that XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has become the base for many Meta-languages. Applying this to GUIs Bishop states "Our premise is that it should be a software engineering tenet that a GUI can be specified as a separate component in a system, and then linked in a coherent way to the rest of the computational logic of the program.".
Use of platform independent and meta and declarative languages is an important part of the research for this thesis, in order to ease the programming problems explained above by Bishop. Current practice leads to the problems of Maintenance, Extensibility, Ease of Use, and Sharing of Information explained in this research, especially for large and collaborative complex systems, so an alternative approach is required. For calculation based modelling the model/program structure can be reflected in the GUI and they both have the same logical structure. This means it is possible to enable the model to generate a user interface, or the user interface to generate a model. For this thesis model builders and users should be enabled to construct information/model based systems and manage them. This XML XForms page examines how XML can be used to create platform independent interfaces, reduce coding required and improve re-use. More information on Meta Programming is available here.
The solution to these problems involves programming with Semantic Web languages rather than just using them for information representation. This will make translation for interoperability easier and more reliable, and further improve the maintainability of software systems.
My research is a test case for a whole new approach that could be possible, of collaborative end-user programming by domain experts. The end user programmers can use a visual interface where the visualization of the software exactly matches the structure of the software itself, making translation between user and computer, and vice versa, much more practical. Jackiw and Finzer (1993) describe an example where a diagram is translated to a graph representation, the authors explain this as 'spatial programming'. Jackiw and Finzer explain that this type of programming removes the distinction between programmers and users. I have tended to work the opposite way around, translating graph and tree representations to diagrammatic visualisations, but this translation is valid in either direction. Semantic Web languages are ideal for representing graphs and trees in an open standard way. The spatial, and tree/graph forms both have the same underlying semantics, and therefore can both be translated to computer languages. In fact it would be much better in the long run to use the Semantic Web languages as standardised programming languages for such problems as this would avoid the need to further translate into other programming languages, and systems.
Lieberman (2007) blames end user programming difficulties on hard to understand programming languages and techniques and argues for visualisation and translation to code to enable end-user programming. The Dagstuhl report Burnett et al. (2007) argues that existing programming languages are not sufficiently dependable for end-users to reliably use them as programming languages. De Souza (2007) argues that the goal of human-computer interaction (HCI) will evolve from making systems easy to use to making systems that are easy to develop. Ko (2007) explains that end-user programmers must be allowed to focus on their goals, and an important part of the solution is to visualise the whole program execution not just the output. A simple illustration of the techniques we can use to further this research area is a demonstrator we completed for meta-programming of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) based drag and drop trees. Python is used as a translator between the XML representation of the trees and interactive graphical representations. This allows open standards platform independent end-user programming. Repenning (2007) argues that visual programming languages using drag and drop mechanisms as a programming approach make it virtually impossible to create syntactic errors, allowing for concentration on the semantics" Such techniques could be used with other Semantic Web based information representations based on languages and structures such as XML, RDF (Resource Description Framework), and OWL (Web Ontology Language), and provision of other controls. These controls could then be used as graphical components of a simulation system made available over the web. This demonstrator furthered the research of Anderson and Krause (2007). Semantic languages provide a higher level declarative view of the problem to be modelled.
In "End User Programming for Scientists: Modelling Complex Systems" http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1077 Andrew Begel of Microsoft Research explains -
"Model creation cannot be turned over to a programmer-for-hire without causing the model to become a black box. In order to ensure the validity of the model and stand behind its experimental results, the scientist must be intimately knowledgeable about its innards as well as its outward behaviors."
Text based Computer languages are often too obscure for end-user programmers, Begel explains -
"Learning a text-based programming language is difficult for novices who want to be programmers. In the first few weeks of learning a language, syntax rules are often the most difficult to comprehend, with semantics interleaved. Non-programmers face these problems, in addition to lacking an engineering mindset to help form mental models of how they want to make the computer do what they want."
Begel emphasizes that if programming is left only to programmers rather than allowing domain experts to be involved, the program becomes a 'black box' and the domain expert cannot trust or verify the results. Begel argues that end-users may lack a mindset to form mental models of how to make the computer do what they want. Begel also explains that text based computer languages are often too obscure for end-user programmers.
These problems of software languages being a black box and the obscurity of some text based programming language semantics were mentioned repeatedly by engineers during this thesis. So these became important issues for the thesis, and it was judged necessary to visualise software language semantics and translate these into appropriate representations. It is necessary to research and develop a visualisation and modelling environment that helps translate engineers’ ideas into computer models.
Dagstuhl Seminar End - User Software Engineering Article - Ezine.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 1 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 1 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 2 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 2 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_26.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 3 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 3 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_27.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 4 - Information about linking Meta Programming Model Driven Programming, Service Oriented Architecture and UML for End-User Programming - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_28.html.
Drag and Drop Programming - Example and Information - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
Drag and Drop Programming - Post - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/08/drag-and-drop-programming.html.
More information in this article - Dagstuhl Seminar End - User Software Engineering - Summary - Peter Hale.
Anderson, S, Krause D, 2007, Sample code using drag and Drop with a tree, http://lists.wxwidgets.org/archive/wxPython-users/msg11332.html.
Begel, A., 2007. End User Programming for Scientists: Modeling Complex Systems. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1077.
Berners-Lee T, Hall W, Hendler J, Shadbolt N, Weitzner D J. 2006. Web Science Publications - Creating a Science of the Web - Science 11 August 2006:Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 769 - 771.
Bishop, J., 2006. Multi-platform user interface construction: a challenge for software engineering-in-the-small. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering pp 751-760.
Burnett, M. M., Engels, G, Myers, B. A., Rothermel, G., 2007. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081.
Cheung, W. M., Maropoulos, P. G., Gao, J. X., Aziz, H., 2005. Ontological Approach for Organisational Knowledge Re-use in Product Developing Environments. In: 11th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising - ICE 2005, University BW Munich, Germany.
De Souza, C., 2007. Designers Need End-User Software Engineering. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1083.
Jakiw, R. N., Finzer, W. F., 1993. The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry. In: A. Cypher, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, Chapter 1 - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html.
Ko, A. J., 2007. Barriers to Successful End-User Programming. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1091.
Lieberman, H., 2007. End-User Software Engineering Position Paper. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1092.
Repenning, A., 2007. End-User Design. End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1099.
Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
Spahn, M., Scheidl, S., Stoitsev, T., 2007, End-User Development Techniques for Enterprise Resource Planning Software Systems - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1097/pdf/07081.SpahnMichael.Paper.1097.pdf - SAP AG, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, End-User Software Engineering M. H. Burnett, G. Engels, B. A. Myers, G. Rothermel (Eds.) - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/index.php?semnr=07081.
Price et al. (1996) examined testing of applications developed by end-user programmers and of the development process. Ernst et al. (2003) examine the issues of testing knowledge engineering applications, particularly those of access to expert users, and domain knowledge confusing the results of surveys. An important finding is that this research is intended to simplify computing not complicate it. Ernst et al. decided to publish their work and seek feedback, the same approach was used in this thesis. An important factor in the research for my thesis, and that of Ernst et al. has been to provide support for collaboration in the tools and in the visualisation. Fischer (2007) hypothesises that this emphasis on end-user development also changes the emphasis on testing "Software testing is conducted differently. Because domain expert developers themselves are the primary users, complete testing is not as important as in the case when the developers are not the users." Testing of usability for collaboration is complex and (Johnson et al., 2003) explain how this requires interdisciplinary expertise from several fields. Johnson (2004) has developed sophisticated ways of understanding and providing for complex human activity and testing the success of this.
Further Information on testing for end-user programming - Dagstuhl Seminar Post 3 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 3 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_27.html.
Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya. In: Workshop on Visualization in Knowledge Engineering at KCAP - http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.
Fischer, G., 2007. Meta-Design: A Conceptual Framework for End-User Software Engineering. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1087.
Johnson, P., May, J., Johnson, H., 2003. Introduction to Multiple and Collaborative Tasks - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 10 (4) December 2003 pp 277-280.
Johnson, P., 2004. Interactions, collaborations and breakdowns - TAMODIA 2004 INVITED TALKS - Peter Johnson - 15-16 November - Prague, Czech Republic.
Price, S., Cheah, L. L., Hobbs, P., 1996. Software Quality Management in End-User Programming and Object Based Rapid Application Development (RAD). In: British Computer Society, Quality Specialist Group 4th International Conference, SQM 96.
It would be interesting and useful to create an environment where people could use example models and evaluate their usability and usefulness. For this thesis there has only been time to test the usability of systems by putting them online and assessing user feedback ad hoc. This follows a similar model to that used for the development of open source software or collaborations such as Wikipedia, and the Semantic Web Environmental directory SWED. Fischer (2007) hypothesises that this emphasis on end-user development also changes the emphasis on testing "Software testing is conducted differently. Because domain expert developers themselves are the primary users, complete testing is not as important as in the case when the developers are not the users." Testing of usability for collaboration is complex and (Johnson et al., 2003) explain how this requires interdisciplinary expertise from several fields. Semantic Web research also requires an interdisciplinary approach as explained by Berners-Lee et al. (2006). As the models created and explanations for this thesis are now online, and the source code made open this makes them available for others to research and test. A project such as this can bring together people with diverse backgrounds, interests and expertise. Cheung et al. (2007) make the point that open source development can avoid vendor lock-in, eliminate unnecessary complexity, give freedom to modify applications, and provide platform and application independence. It is important to establish a way of prototyping the technologies created for this thesis, in different situations such as using the modelling and end-user programming systems for teaching, student projects, industry modelling, e-science, and finally branching out into the arts. Johnson (2004) has developed sophisticated ways of understanding and providing for complex human activity and testing the success of this.
Usability Metrics - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010121.html - Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a product. - Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 21, 2001.
User Experience 2007 Conference - http://www.nngroup.com/events/ - Barcelona - 4-9th November - Las Vegas - 2nd-7th December - In place of scattered, shallow talks, UE offers up to 6 days of deep learning as international experts lead 31 full-day tutorials on topics such as:
Turning usability data into interaction design
Improving usability for complex applications
Writing for the Web
Applying information architecture (IA) principles
Managing user experience strategy.
A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Smith, D. C. (1977) Basel: Birkhauser. 187p.
Alan Kay, Allen Cypher - Watch What I Do - Programming by Example.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program (2004) - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Programming by Example - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/PBE/index.html - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT Lab.
Pygmalion: A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought. Stuttgart, Basel - http://sern.ucalgary.ca/courses/SENG/611/F99/ConceptMaps/slides/tsld004.htm - University of Calgary Summary - Smith, D. C. 1977.
Watch What I Do Programming by Demonstration - Cypher, A, 1993, MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html.
A trend in recent times has been towards partnerships that can further end user programming by means of collaboration and sharing of ideas. These collaborations include the End Users Shaping Effective Software (EUSES) (2006) research collaboration mainly in the USA, and Network of Excellence on End User Development in Europe (EUD.Net) (2006), and the Institute for End User Computing, (IEUC) (2007). Fabio Paternò has investigated this subject as part of the End User Development in Europe network (Paternò, 2005). This kind of collaborative research is important because end user programming requires interdisciplinary research that includes co-ordinated research of Semantic Web, Visualization, Human Computer Interaction, and Collaboration. Much of user-driven modelling will require some sort of sharing of information in an understandable way to others. The multi-levelled translation process between the user's view of the information and the representation required by computers requires a range of skills and knowledge.
This paper investigates model-based tools for design of interactive systems. Paternò outlines research that identifies abstraction levels for a software system. These levels are 'task and object model', 'abstract user interface', 'concrete user interface', and 'final user interface'. This is important in enabling end-user programming, such as for engineers to model problems and create programs at a high level of abstraction. Stages take development through to a user interface that consists of interaction objects.
This approach can be used for automating the design of the user interface and the production of the underlying software. Paternò states that "One fundamental challenge for the coming years is to develop environments that allow people without a particular background in programming to develop their own applications".
Paternò goes on to explain that "Natural development implies that people should be able to work through familiar and immediately understandable representations that allow them to easily express relevant concepts". Visualisation and Interaction for provision of a system for enabling end-user development such as this is discussed in here - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm.
Paternò, F. (2005) Model-based tools for pervasive usability. Interacting with Computers 17 (3), 291-315 - http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/cameleon/pdf/last-model-based%20approaches-IwC.pdf - Science Direct.
Constructionism - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/EndUserHistory/Logo.htm - Constructionism and Logo Programming.
End User Programming - End User Programming Research.
History of End User Programming - End User Research Information and Links.
Semantic Web Applications - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2008/05/semantic-web-applications.html - This article is about the need for provision of Semantic Web applications to increase the amount of Semantic Web information that could be searched. This could result in a virtuous circle of Semantic Web applications creating Semantic Web information, and so justifying the creation of more Semantic Web applications to access it. The article advocates the use of Semantic Web applications for modelling and end-user programming, and integration into business applications. - 5th May 2008
Semantic Web Collaboration - http://ezinearticles.com/?Semantic-Web-Collaboration&id=1160019 - This article discusses how Semantic Web/Web 2.0 collaboration can enable ontology editing. This helps reach agreement on the meaning of terms, and encourages end-user modelling/programming by enabling simplified development of online applications. This could be an efficient way of managing large ontologies with multiple users. - 9th May 2008.
User Driven Modelling Semantic Wiki - http://www.visualknowledge.com/wikikey/A143074S3496911 - Community.
UWE HCI Group - HCI Group - Human Computer Interaction.
This graph shows that users are by far the biggest group many of these develop their own programs, there are two intermediate groups, and a small group of professional programmers.
Based on data from US bureau of Labour Statistics.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language based representation of the chart above - End User Development.
There are many computer literate people who do not have the time to learn, or access programming tools, but nevertheless try to accomplish programming type tasks (Scaffidi, 2005). The proportion of domain experts in a particular domain (aerospace engineering for example) who can develop their own programs and have access to such facilities is fairly low, but the proportion that are computer literate in the everyday use of computers is much higher (Scaffidi et al., 2006).
Sources - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/papers/EUPchi2006overviewColor.pdf - Myers et al.
Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cscaffid/papers/eu_20050923_vlhcc.pdf - Scaffidi et al.
Myers, B., Ko, A., Burnett M. (2006). Invited Research Overview: End-User Programming Extended Abstracts, CHI'2006: pp. 75-80, Montreal, Canada.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~natprog/EUPchi2006overview.pdf - Myers et al.
In the Dagstuhl Seminar report (Burnett et al. 2007) http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf it is stated that "The number of end users creating software is far larger than the number of professional programmers. These end users are using various languages and programming systems to create software in forms such as spreadsheets, dynamic web applications, and scientific simulations. This software needs to be sufficiently dependable, but substantial evidence suggests that it is not." This point relates to that of (Ko, 2007) in 'Barriers to Successful End-User Programming' http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1091 who explains that the goals of end-users may be unrelated to production of code, but instead they are interested in their domain problem, this means they perceive programming barriers as distractions. Ko explains that end-user programmers must be allowed to focus on their goals, and an important part of the solution is to visualise the whole program execution not just the output. A further problem outlined by Ko is that of programs which were intended to be temporary and owned by a particular person becoming central to a company, this often happens with spreadsheets.
An explanation of my End User Programming Research is available as a post Research Summary - Enabling End User Programming on my Blog.
Dagstuhl Seminar End - User Software Engineering Article - Ezine.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 1 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 1 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 2 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 2 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_26.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 3 - End-User Software Engineering - Part 3 - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_27.html.
Dagstuhl Seminar Post 4 - Information about linking Meta Programming Model Driven Programming, Service Oriented Architecture and UML for End-User Programming - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/07/dagstuhl-seminar-end-user-software_28.html.
Drag and Drop Programming - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/08/drag-and-drop-programming.html.
Enabling Decision Support and Costing of Product Designs by using Visual Metaphors - HTML - HTML Version - Word - Word Adobe Acrobat PDF
End User Development - SEEDS - End User to Software Translation
End-User Programming - Modelling of Information - Article
End-User Programming using the Semantic Web - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#EndUserProgrammingusingtheSemanticWeb
End User to Software Translation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#EndUsertoSoftwareTranslation.
History of End User Programming - Article
History of End User Programming - End User Research Information and Links
Language and Tool Mapping - Language and Tool Mapping.
Modelling and Semantic Web Methodology - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Modelling.htm.
Program Transformation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/ProgramTransformation.htm.
Programming with XML - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PeterHale/XML/XML.htm#ProgrammingwithXML.
Scientific Modelling and End User Programming - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScience.htm#ScientificModelling.
Scientific Visualisation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/PublicScience.htm#UWEExamples.
Software Engineering - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/softwareengineeringing.htm
Software Engineering Research Group SERG - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
User Driven Content Creation - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/#userdrivencontentcreation.
User Driven Programming - here - User Driven Programming, and here - Translation and Aspect-Oriented Programming, and Translation for De-abstraction.
Visualisation and Interaction - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Visualisation.htm.
Web Taxonomy Creation - Article - Ezine Article - An important contribution to Public Understanding of Science and for enabling of new insights would be creation of an online systematic representation of scientific information that gives a holistic view of related knowledge. This would reuse information and ideas provided by other researchers. These systems organise and visualise information...
Acadia University - Support for End-User Programming in a Cooperative Environment - Ivan Tomek, Rebecca Gong, Elhadi Shakshuki, Rick Giles.
ACM SIGCHI - http://sigchi.org/ - the ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, brings together people working on the design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use.
Alan Blackwell - University of Cambridge - Human Computer Interaction - End User Programming.
Alice v2.0, v3.0 - http://www.alice.org/ - Learn to Program Interactive 3D Graphics.
An Enduring Legacy - Randy Pausch Inspired Millions - http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml - Randy Pausch, the professor at Carnegie Mellon University who inspired countless students in the classroom and others worldwide through his highly acclaimed last lecture, has died of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47. - Also a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, Pausch co-founded the Entertainment Technology Center and led researchers who created Alice, a revolutionary way to teach computer programming. He was widely respected in academic circles for a unique interdisciplinary approach, bringing together artists, dramatists and designers to break new ground by working in collaboration with computer scientists. - Outside the classroom, he gained public fame for delivering what would come to be known as "The Last Lecture." On Sept. 18, 2007, only a month after doctors told him that he had three-to-six months to live following a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, he presented a lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" to a packed auditorium at Carnegie Mellon. - Carnegie Mellon - Human-Computer Interaction Institute - http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ - Our Mission: To understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities, goals, and social environments through interdisciplinary research and education in design, computer science, and behavioral and social sciences. - Alice - http://www.alice.org/ - Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
An EUD Approach for Making MBUI Practical. Macías, J. A., Castells, P., - http://astreo.ii.uam.es/%7Eatlas/desk/cadui2004.pdf - Intelligent User Interfaces and Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces Conference (IUI/CADUI'2004). Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal, 13-16 January.
An Introduction to Haskell, Part 1: Why Haskell - http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2007/05/21/an-introduction-to-haskell---part-1-why-haskell.html - Adam Turoff - 24th May 2007.
Bath University - HCI Group - http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/department/hci/ - Research is concerned with theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the design, development and evaluation of computer systems to support work and leisure activities of individuals and groups.
Bath University - Peter Johnson - http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/dept/people/p.johnson.html - Professor of Computing Science - Head of Department of Computer Science Head of HCI Group.
BBC Technology News - Free tool offers 'easy' coding - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm - A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed - Jonathan Fildes - 14 May 2007.
BBC Technology News - Nasa investigates virtual space - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7195718.stm - The US space agency is exploring the possibility of developing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. - The virtual world would be aimed at students and would "simulate real Nasa engineering and science missions". - BBC News Technology - 18 January 2008.
BBC Technology News - Teach-yourself game design site - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7189694.stm - A new social networking site in the US has been launched with the aim of helping disadvantaged young people by teaching them how to be game designers. - 15 January 2008.
BBC Technology news - Virtual worlds opened up to all - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7002479.stm - A free tool that allows anyone to create a virtual world has been launched. - Users of Metaplace, as it is known, can build 3D online worlds for PCs or even a mobile phone without any knowledge of complex computer languages. - Jonathan Fildes - Science and technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco - 19 September 2007.
BBC Technology news - Who will write tomorrow's code? - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7324556.stm - Bill Thompson puts out a call for more programmers. - 1 April 2008.
Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics - Tisdall, James - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/begperlbio/chapter/ch10.html - October 2001 - O'Reiily Network - Chapter 10 (Sample Chapter) GenBank - GenBank (Genetic Sequence Data Bank) is a rapidly growing international repository of known genetic sequences from a variety of organisms. Its use is central to modern biology and to bioinformatics. - This chapter shows you how to write Perl programs to extract information from GenBank files and libraries. Exercises include looking for patterns; creating special libraries; and parsing the flat-file format to extract the DNA, annotation, and features. You will learn how to make a DBM database to create your own rapid-access lookups on selected data in a GenBank library. - Perl is a great tool for dealing with GenBank files. It enables you to extract and use any of the detailed data in the sequence and in the annotation, such as in the FEATURES table and elsewhere. When I first started using Perl, I wrote a program that searched GenBank for all sequence records annotated as being located on human chromosome 22. I found many genes where that information was so deeply buried within the annotation, that the major gene mapping database, Genome Database (GDB), hadn't included them in their chromosome map. I think you'll discover the same feeling of power over the information when you start applying Perl to GenBank files.
British HCI Group - http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/ - The web site of the British HCI Group offers a service to practitioners, researchers, consumers, students and anyone with an interest in highly usable computing and communications systems.
Carnegie Mellon - Human-Computer Interaction Institute - http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/ - Our Mission: To understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities, goals, and social environments through interdisciplinary research and education in design, computer science, and behavioral and social sciences. - Alice - http://www.alice.org/ - Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
Catherine Letondal - http://www.pasteur.fr/~letondal/ - Pasteur Institute, Computing Center.
Dagstuhl Seminar - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl.
Distributed Constructionism - http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) - This paper introduces the concept of distributed constructionism, building on previous research on constructionism and on distributed cognition. It focuses particularly on the use of computer networks to support students working together on design and construction activities, and it argues that these types of activities are particularly effective in supporting the development of knowledge-building communities. The paper describes three main categories of distributed constructionist activities: discussing constructions, sharing constructions, and collaborating on constructions. In each category, it describes ongoing research projects at the MIT Media Lab and discusses how these projects support new ways of thinking and learning.
Dmoz Open Directory Project - Programming Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Alphabetic List of Programming Languages - Definitions and Links.
Dmoz Open Directory Project - Visual Languages - Programming Languages Reference - Visual Languages.
End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
EUSES - End-Users Shaping Effective Software - http://eusesconsortium.org/ - The EUSES Consortium is a collaboration by researchers at Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Penn State University, University of Nebraska, Cambridge University, and IBM whose goal is to develop and investigate end-user software engineering technologies for enabling End Users to Shape Effective Software.
EUSES - End-Users Shaping Effective Software - News and Events - http://eusesconsortium.org/news-events/news-events.php - The EUSES Consortium is a collaboration by researchers at Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Penn State University, University of Nebraska, Cambridge University, and IBM whose goal is to develop and investigate end-user software engineering technologies for enabling End Users to Shape Effective Software.
Euses Presentation - End User Programming - Invited Research Overview - Brad Myers, Andrew Co, Margaret Burnett - Carnegie Mellon, Oregon State Universities.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - 2004 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
gary.cornelius.bz - XML and HCI - http://gary.cornelius.bz/topics.html - Tree and menu of Useful information about XML and HCI.
Gartner Group Report - Gartner Says Business Application Vendors Face Challenge to Move to ' The Process of Me' - http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_152638_11.html - Person to Process Interaction is the Next Innovation Step in Business Software Press Release 2006.
Generative Programming - Generative Programming - Methods, Tools, and Applications - Krzysztof Czarnecki and Ulrich W. Eisenecker - Addison-Wesley, June 2000.
Getting started with Yi, the haskell editor - http://nobugs.org/developer/yi/index.html - Yi is an emacs-like editor written in haskell.
GoalDebug: Goal-Directed Debugging of Spreadsheets - http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~erwig/GoalDebug/ - Spreadsheets that are used in the real world are full of errors and cause companies and organizations to lose millions of dollars every year. Finding and correcting spreadsheet errors is a very difficult and time-consuming activity.
Hackety Hack - http://hacketyhack.net/ - In this century, you may have dozens of programming languages lurking on your machine. But how to use them?? A fundamental secret! Well, no more. We cannot stand for that. Hackety Hack will not stand to have you in the dark!!
Henry Lieberman - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/ - Research Scientist - MIT Media Laboratory.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
IBM developerWorks Interviews: Rod Smith - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int062806.html - IBM vice president of Emerging Internet Technologies on the business of watching, encouraging, and leveraging new technologies.
IBM - Ease of Use - http://www-03.ibm.com/easy/page/558 - User Engineering.
IBM - End User Development Tools - https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/sites/dublin/dsl.shtml - IBM Dublin.
IBM eyes programming for the masses - http://www.news.com/IBM-eyes-programming-for-the-masses/2100-1007_3-6065324.html - C/Net News - IBM is working on a project, called QEDwiki, that takes a stab at a long-held industry promise: end-user programming. - Rod Smith, IBM's vice president of emerging technology, plans to talk about QEDwiki and Big Blue's growing fondness for scripting languages, a relatively lightweight approach to writing applications, at a PHP Web development conference on Wednesday - By Martin LaMonica - April 26, 2006.
IBM QED Wiki - IBM eyes programming for the masses - By Martin LaMonica - CNET News.com.
I'm sick of users - The more I write and read about social media, the more frustrated I get with the term "users." - http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/07/im-sick-of-user.html - Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff - Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies - Forrester Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog.
Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The Chronicles of End User Computing... http://www.ieuc.org/home/chronicles.html as edited on Saturday, January 22, 2005.
Institute for End User Computing, Inc. The IEUC Homepage - http://www.ieuc.org/home.html - as edited on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.
Institute for End User Computing - The Market's Failure to Meet End User Needs - http://www.ieuc.org/home/market-failure.html.
IPGems - Strategic Design to Improve Knowledge and Performance - http://www.ipgems.com/ - IPGems explores the integration of concepts from various professional disciplines in the fields of user-centered system design, information and knowledge management, semantic integration, and performance improvement.
IPGems - The Usability Imperative Inherent in the Semantic Web Duane Degler and Renee Lewis - http://www.ipgems.com/writing/usability_imperative_in_semweb_6-2004.pdf - A tremendous amount of hope - and hype - has been attached to Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web, where machine-readable 'meaning' enriches the promise of the web. Creating a positive, successful, trust-worthy experience for users is crucial to its success. What does that mean? What is imperative for it to become the 'next generation' web? Most importantly, why must the usability community play a leading role to shape the Semantic Web in a positive, user-centered way?
IPGems - The Usability Professional as Visionary / Strategist - The following is a summary of ideas presented at the UPA DC usability conference, October 2006. - http://www.ipgems.com/present/degler_visiontalk_upadc2006.pdf - This talk is not prescriptive - I can't really tell you how to be "visionary" or even "strategic" - although I will try to offer some suggestions and hopefully instill a sense of purpose. My goal is to explore what it means to consider both vision and strategy in the practice of user-centered design and usability, and through this exploration to identify some practical things we can do to take on a "thought leadership" role within organizations and projects.
IPGems - User-Centered Design and Usability for XML and e-Government - http://www.ipgems.com/present/xmlwg03-2004ucd.pdf - Duane Degler, IPGems - XML Working Group, March 17, 2004.
IPGems - User Interaction with the Semantic Web - http://www.ipgems.com/swui/ - Academics and practitioners from the semantic web community are seeking the involvement of usability professionals as they define the "next generation web." Recently, workshops at various conferences have focused on user needs and user interaction. .
IPGems - What is "usable" software? - http://www.ipgems.com/pcd-hci.asp - Usable software is the kind of software you can use effectively and understand easily -- where it is clear what you can do, your goals and tasks are supported, controls are consistently presented, the view is pleasing to the eye and uncluttered, feedback is relevant and helpful, and your questions are answered simply and immediately -- in other words, something that helps you be successful, and that you would enjoy and find easy to use.
ISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy - - http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/cameleon/pdf/last-model-based%20approaches-IwC.pdf - Science Direct. - Fabio Paternò.
Lambda the Ultimate - http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ - Mostly this site deals with issues directly related to programming languages, and programming language research. However, we allow ourselves moderate forays to bordering issues like programmability and language in general.
Lambda the Ultimate - Interactivity considered harmful - http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2167 - After reading many posts lauding interactive tools as an integral part of the next big thing in software development, I figured I could offer this as counterpoint. The paper Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface very eloquently argues that most software today, especially information-intensive software (think IDEs and many other GUI-based PL tools) are really badly designed. The most memorable section subtitle being interactivity considered harmlful. This is a real treasure trove of wonderful design ideas for interfaces for information-rich applications. - By Jacques Carette at 2007-04-02. - This paper follows in the grand tradition of Edward Tufte, whose book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information was an incredible revelation for me.
LPA VisiRule 1.0 - http://www.lpa.co.uk/vsr.htm - LPA VisiRule 1.0 - VisiRule is a graphical tool for developing and delivering business rules systems and components simply by drawing the decision logic.
MediaDoc Project - http://www.isi.edu/isd/media-doc/media-doc-body.html - At USC's Information Sciences Institute we have been studying the process that people go through when they are trying to understand software, and have developed a tool called MediaDoc that generates software explanations to support this understanding process.
Metaplace - Online Virtual World Builder - http://www.metaplace.com/.
Metaplace - Online Virtual World Builder My Blog Post - http://userdrivenmodelling.blogspot.com/2007/09/metaplace-online-virtual-world-builder.html.
MOdel driven MOdernisation of Complex Systems - http://www.viewzone.org/momocs/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=20&Itemid=17 -MOMOCS aims at studying a methodology and related tools for fast reengineering complex systems. The project is studying how to solve the dilemma between rigorous methodologies and agile and unstructured one, allowing the modernisation engineer to concentrate on what to do and not how to do it.
Network of Excellence on End User Development - Network of Excellence on End User Development - EUD-Net
NLP (Natural Language Processing) for NLP (Natural Language Programming) - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Publications/NLP4NLP.pdf - Rada Mihalcea, Hugo Liu, and Henry Lieberman.
Oregan State and Houston University - Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets - Martin Erwig, Robin Abraham, Irene Cooperstein, Steve Kollmansberger, 2005, ICSE 2005 27th International Conference on Software Engineering p 136- 145.
Pure Usability - http://www.pureusability.co.uk/ - Designing a more usable web - Websites and web applications can often be incomprehensible, confusing or even downright annoying to those who use them. By understanding the needs of your users and the needs of your business, Pure Usability can help you to produce effective, enjoyable and successful web experiences.
Raskin Center - http://rchi.raskincenter.org/index.php?title=Home - Exploting New Interface Directions.
Simon Price - Institute for Learning & Research Technology - Bristol University.
Socratic Arts - http://www.socraticarts.com/ - Online learning services.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
The Semantic Discovery System - http://www.insilicodiscovery.com/v2/index.php - We aim to Accelerate Research in Information Discovery focused Organisations. - The Semantic Web will put enormous new power in the hands of everyone trying to get valuable answers from the web - instead of frustrating Google searches, people will get fast, accurate and highly valuable answers - because they will finally be able to ask the exact questions they really want. Our product - SDS - focuses this new Semantic Web power not just on the 'Web' but also on the valuable information locked inside organisational databases - for the first time, ordinary people will be able to get answers that would otherwise have taken impossible amounts of programming. - http://www.meaning2go.com/ - Ian Goldsmid - http://www.linkedin.com/in/iangoldsmid.
Tinderbox - http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/ - Tinderbox is a personal content management assistant.
Tisdall, James - Why Biologists Want to Program Computers - http://www.oreilly.com/news/perlbio_1001.html - 15th October 2001 - O'Reiily Network - The students (from vice presidents to principle investigators to junior lab assistants) who attend these courses do so to learn about programming for biology research. I've often been asked to give my perspective on the benefits of learning programming, considering the expenditure of time and effort that is required to learn this new and important laboratory skill. - Over the last decade there has been an accelerating interest in acquiring programming skills on the part of biologists. My new book Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics from O'Reilly & Associates is designed to address the need for training in this area by teaching programming in the context of biologically relevant data and results. - This article will examine why a biologist would want to learn to program. There are two main reasons: scientific, and economic. I hope that the discussion will also be of some use to programmers thinking of entering the bioinformatics field. But first, I'll take a short tour of some history, define some terms, and make some general comments about how programming fits into biology research..
The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry - http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html - R. Nicholas Jackiw and William F. Finzer - from Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration - edited by Allen Cypher co-edited by Daniel C. Halbert, David Kurlander, Henry Lieberman, David Maulsby, Brad A. Myers, and Alan Turransky.
The Tech Lab: Greg Papadopoulos - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6225398.stm - As part of a series inviting some of the world's leading technologists to speculate about the future, Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer of Sun Microsystems, calls for technology and design to be married to people's needs. - 21 June 2007.
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Dr José A. Macías - publications - Research - End User Development (EUD).
UWE HCI Group - HCI Group - Human Computer Interaction.
VastPark - http://www.vastpark.com/ - VastPark is a virtual content platform that enables you to create and deploy your own 3D virtual world within minutes.
VIDE - VIsualize all moDel drivEn programming - http://vide.tnmsoft.de/ - To enable the development of flexible, robust and evolvable software based on UML. Build a fully visual action programming platform.
Why a Web 2.0 User Interface Matters - Intalio - http://www.intalio.com/news/bpm-20-blog-post/?post=2006/05/29 - Written by Ismael Ghalimi for IT|Redux - This is the twelfth edition of our weekly BPM 2.0 post. Today, I will try to explain why a web 2.0 user interface matters. Like with any other application, the most difficult part in deploying a business process powered by a BPMS of sorts is in getting active support from end users. For the deployment to succeed, the application has to be actually used by end users, and user interfaces play the most critical role in this.
Why Accessibility? Because It's Our Job! - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/10/16/why-accessibility-because-its-our-job/ - by brothercake.
World Usability Day 2007 - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/10/16/world-usability-day-2007/ - Lisa Herrod - World Usability Day is an international, annual event that will be held on November 8th this year with the theme of Health. - November 8th 2007.
AOSD.net - http://aosd.net/ - aosd.net is home to the annual Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference and is intended to provide a comprehensive source of information about AOSD.
AspectXML - This research is especially useful where software functions can't be neatly attached to particilar objects or nodes in a hierarchy. These are known as cross-cutting concerns as they may affect several nodes.
These are useful links to an renowned researcher and writer on XML, XSLT, XUL, SVG, Java, and on the general direction of software and web research.
Kurt Cagle - Kurt Cagle - Web site
Kurt Cagle - Kurt Cagle - Article - Thoughts on Complexity
M. David Peterson - User Driven Programming and AspectXML - O'Reilly Blog.
Russ Miles - O'Reilly Blog - AspectXML, AspectJ, Java.
Russ Miles - SOA Ranch - Service-oriented architecture.
Russ Miles - UML Ranch - Unified Modeling Language.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
The AspectXML site is being developed by this team also including M. David Peterson, and Russel Miles
Explanation
AspectXML - Article - http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/09/part_3_assets_atom_feeds_and_a.html - [Part 3] Assets, Atom Feeds, and AspectXML - The Triple Threat of Web Development? - O'Reilly XML.com - M. David Peterson.
Community site
AspectXML - http://www.aspectxml.org/ - Community Open Source Project.
British Computer Society - Ubiquitous computing: experience, design and science - Grand Challenges in Computing.
British Computer Society - 2006 Grand Challenges Conference: Blue Skies Research over 15 years - Grand Challenges Conference.
EXist - http://exist.sourceforge.net/ - Open Source Native XML Database.
Google Web Toolkit - XML.com - Google Web Toolkit - Brusce Perry - Translates from Java to Ajax - Highly Interactive Web Pages can be good user interface for User Driven Programming.
Himalia - http://www.himalia.net/index.html - Model-driven user interfaces - Himalia is the first and only high-abstraction level User Interface Builder.
Jeffrey G. Gray, Assistant Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham - Home Page - Department of Computer and Information Sciences - Software Composition and Modeling Laboratory.
Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.onboard.jetbrains.com/is1/articles/04/10/lop/ - Language Oriented Programming: The Next Programming Paradigm - Sergey Dmitriev.
Jetbrains - Meta Programming System - http://www.jetbrains.com/mps/ - MPS is an implementation of Language Oriented Programming.
Meta Programming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaprogramming - Wikipedia.
MetaL - http://www.meta-language.net/ - MetaL: An XML based Meta-Programming language.
Model-Driven Program Transformation of a Large Avionics Framework - http://www.cis.uab.edu/gray/Pubs/gpce-2004.pdf - Jeff Gray, Jing Zhang, Yuehua Lin, Suman Roychoudhury, Hui Wu, Rajesh Sudarsan, Aniruddha Gokhale, Sandeep Neema, Feng Shi, and Ted Bapty - Third International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering GPCE.
the Model Driven Semantic Web - 1st International Workshop on the Model-Driven Semantic Web (MDSW2004) - Enabling Knowledge Representation and MDA® Technologies to Work Together.
OpenLaszlo - http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/OpenLaszlo - Developer Zone.
Orbeon - http://www.orbeon.com/ - Orbeon XForms Presentation Server.
program-transformation.org - Home Page - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
program-transformation.org - Program Transformation - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
program-transformation.org - Model Transformation - Program-Transformation.Org: The Program Transformation Wiki.
Rats - Softpedia - Rats! is an easily extensible parser generator for C-like languages.
Service-Oriented Architecture - XML.com - Service-oriented architecture - Hao He.
Service-Oriented Architecture - Wikipedia - Service-oriented architecture.
Simkin - http://www.simkin.co.uk/ - A high-level lightweight embeddable scripting language which works with Java or C++ and XML.
The diagram shows a plan for weaving Aspect-Oriented Programming http://aosd.net/ into translation that are provided for end-user-computer communication. Aspect-Oriented Programming can be used where certain tasks or properties do not fall within a natural hierarchy. These are called Cross-Cutting Concerns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-cutting_concern, these Cross-Cutting Concerns could be tasks the program needs to perform such as providing printing or security. This same technique could also be used for attributes that the program is to model for example if the program is to model an aircraft wings, a user with sufficient computer literacy skills can model the representation of the wing as a hierarchical diagram. The user can specify relationships between these items that make it possible to make calculations and decisions. For this model some parameters such as efficiency, weight and cost might not fit well in this hierarchical representation. So these parameters could be weaved into the program as cross-cutting concerns in a similar way to the computing parameters.
Once all parameters are weaved into the program it can be translated from a format most suitable to visualisation and user interaction (e.g. OWL Web Ontology Language) to users into a computer language such as Java for implementation. The program would calculate results, and these could be translated back to the user. The results would be fed back in the language used for user interaction and visualisation. The results could be visualised using stylesheets and interactive software, and where useful translated further into other kinds of representations other than trees e.g. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) diagrams and graphs.
Highly interactive web pages that act like programs to provide a user interface can be used to provide an interactive user driven programming environment.
In order to make user driven modelling and programming possible, it is essential that a communication mechanism is established, which allows users to generate changes and receive changes generated by the modelling system.
Types of Change
There are two types of change that can be applied to the model driven programming system, User Generated, and Model Generated.
User Generated
Figure 1 shows a user initiating a change, which is to delete a node from the bottom left and attach a new node to a branch in the top tight. The tree is translated to structured text, and this is further translated to Code.
Figure 1 - User Generated Change
For the second user generated change shown in figure 2 an object represented by a tree is visualised as a diagram. The user can amend either the diagram or the tree, in either case the change is filtered to the alternative representation and translated to the structured text and code.
Figure 2 - User Generated Change, Alternative Interfaces
Model Generated
A model generated change is initiated by the model itself, which changes the code and the structured text in response to a calculation (that may have been requested by the user). The model passes a translated result tree to the user interface to let the user know that the recalculations have been finished, and give the user the results using a suitable visualisation. This is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3 - Model Generated Change
Research Theory influencing this Translation Mechanism
The use of the Semantic Web in my thesis is to be a means for open standard representation of information (built on XML), transformation into different representations as required, and for provision of a high level interface as a tool for model creation, and translation to program code. An 'elaborator', is used, this is a translator that converts the diagrammatic representation of the problem into software code. Translations can be performed into any programming or meta-programming language or open standard information representation language, the visualisation of the model created can be displayed on the web. This translation builds on research in program and model transformation. The translation software performs transformations as required between different programming languages and visual model views. This has been prototyped, but it is important to further this research in order to establish a user base, and make the translation generic. Figure 1 shows the process.
Figure 1 Translation Process
Implementation
Translation Process
This research involves finding alternative ways of representing models, which do not require the user to write code. The intention is to make it easier to interact with and change the models, and to share information with colleagues. The information used in the models resides in an ontology, and from this ontology models can be automatically produced via a recursive translation tool that has been prototyped.
The research for my thesis uses a technique of interpreting information in order to create decision support programs automatically in response to user choices. This technique is then extended for use in the automatic creation of programs in other computer languages and systems. This can be achieved by automated translation of the Vanguard Studio information into other languages. The basis of this is that elaborators are nodes in the tree, which are automatically created and dynamically write objects. This allows the wing box definition to be translated to the decision support system for costing and then to other software such as web pages for further processing or visualization. An open standard semantic editor Protégé created by Stanford University, http://protege.stanford.edu/, was used to structure this information into related taxonomies. This ontology holds the definitions of nodes representing information, and calculations to be performed. Taxonomies are created in Protégé for 'Parts', 'Materials', 'Consumables', 'Processes', 'Rates', and 'Tooling' for a prototype costing system. 'Parts' is the core taxonomy. New categories can be produced as required. Domain experts would edit the taxonomies; these experts can specify the relationships of classes and the equations to be used via a visual user interface in Protégé. These relationships are evaluated and translated to produce computer code. Figure 2 illustrates how code is produced from the semantic relationships.
Figure 2 Translation Process Implementation
This model can be used as it is, or be a template for the generation of a further model(s). An example interface, a section from a model produced automatically, is shown in figure 3. This information is saved using a generic structure based on keys that define all relationships, into a relational database. This enables storage of hierarchical data in a relational database and also allows for separation of information into tables according to category, and the use of SQL (Structured Query Language) to automatically query and structure the information as required. Vanguards' tree based decision support tool Vanguard Studio (2007) reads this information and represents it as colour-coded nodes. The code written for this thesis automatically queries the taxonomies that make up the ontology and links the information as required for the model. The code builds in all the links required for the equations and thus links up information from different taxonomies, the information is colour coded according to which taxonomy it is from. This same code can be reused for any modelling problem, it builds the equations and follows the links to build each equation tree, and attach this to the rest of the tree. The decision support tool can perform calculations and so output results. Figure 3 shows how the decision support tool can automatically construct and represent a branch in the tree, visualize an equation and calculate a result. Red nodes represent processes, green nodes represent the part definition and magenta nodes represent resources. This illustrates how 3 taxonomies have been automatically linked because they are needed in this calculation. In this prototype hundreds of calculations have been related to each other, this example illustrates that 'Area' was also calculated, and that this forms part of the tree for the 'Hand Layup Tool Cleaning Cost', which in turn is passed into other calculations. Hundreds of calculations using information from all the taxonomies are linked as required in this costing example. The time taken to perform the translation from the ontology and to perform all the calculations is a less than a second.
Figure 3 Ontology to Model Conversion
The translation steps are intended to ensure that users who are computer literate, but have little time to program, or knowledge of programming languages, can create software to represent a problem they want solved. Users would not have to write computer code. Instead diagrams, natural language (Mihalcea et al., 2006), and formulae would be used to define the source model. Mihalcea et al., challenge the assumption that formal programming languages are the only way to communicate with computers, and offer an alternative of mapping human language to program structures; they call this approach 'Programming Semantics'. The aim is to convert natural language into program code.
My Research concentrates mainly on diagrammatic and formulae based representations, and translation tools to convert this to code.
Mihalcea, R., Hugo, L., Lieberman, H., NLP (Natural Language Processing) for NLP (Natural Language Programming) In: International Conference on Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, Mexico City, Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, February 2006. - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Publications/NLP4NLP.pdf.
Bristol University - Department of Experimental Psychology - BS8 Human Factors Group - http://human-factors.psy.bris.ac.uk/.
Bristol University - Martin Groen - http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~psmgmg/research.htm.
Visualization and the process of modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view - Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Data - Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining - Andrew W. Crapo, Laurie B. Waisel, William A. Wallace, Thomas R. Willemain.
Components Drag and Drop AJAX Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/components.html - Based on Example from Scand dhtmlxTree.
Components Example Using XQuery and XForms (FormFaces) Combined - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/xmldb/rest//db/PeterHale/tutorials/components/listComponents.xql - Adapted from research of Chris Wallace.
Drag and Drop - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/Ajax/ajax.htm#DragandDropProgramming.
Flash Interactive Tree - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration1.htm.
SVG Interactive Wing Component - With short explanation of use for E-Learning - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/ELearning/ELearningDemonstration2.htm.
Wingbox Product Ordering Example - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/seeds/FormFaces/Examples/WingBox/index.html - Based on the FormFaces - BookStore example - http://www.formfaces.com/faces/Examples/index.html.
A visual GUI can provide a high-level abstracted view of a model that could then be translated through a layered architecture, into a machine understandable format. Hudak et al. (2007) explain the history of Haskell (a language based on functions/expressions), its support for XML and Web scripting languages, and Haskell Graphical User Interface (GUI) research. A GUI is necessary for end-users to program/model using such a language in order to visualise the expressions. So some form of diagrammatic modelling environment is needed as an interface for whatever language is used. Functions have the advantage of being similar to what engineers use in spreadsheets, and can be easily visualised in tree form. Experienced programmers could build a modelling environment that could then be used by non programmers to create models or solve other software problems. Hanna (2005) uses this approach and makes use of a declarative functional language Haskell (Hudak et al., 2007) to build user environments.
Hanna (2005) discussed the declarative nature of spreadsheets; this makes them suitable for end-user programming. However, he criticises the lack of structure which makes the semantics of spreadsheet models hard to understand and interpret. This can make it difficult to maintain, re-use, collaborate on and extend spreadsheet models. Declarative semantics provide a means for end-user programming as long as this is within a structured environment, and as long as a sufficiently understandable graphical front end is provided that visualises the structure and semantics to allow interaction. Wakeling (2007) investigates creation of a spreadsheet using Haskell (Hudak. et al., 2007) in order to introduce spreadsheet users to functional programming. Hudak et al. explain the history of Haskell, its support for XML and Web scripting languages, and Haskell Graphical User Interface (GUI) research.
Hanna, K., 2005. A document-centered environment for Haskell. In: 17th International Workshop on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages IFL 2005 Dublin, Ireland - September 19-21 2005.
Hudak, P., Hughes, J., Jones, S. P., Wadler, P., 2007. A History of Haskell: being lazy with class. In: The Third ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) San Diego, California, June 9-10, 2007.
Wakeling, 2007. Spreadsheet functional programming, Journal of Functional Programming, 17(1)(January 2007) pp 131-143 - ISSN:0956-7968.
A Computer Program to Model and Stimulate Creative Thought, Smith, D. C. (1977), Basel: Birkhauser. 187p.
Addressing cognitive issues in knowledge engineering with Jambalaya. Ernst, N. A., Storey, M., Allen, P., Musen, M., 2003. In: Workshop on Visualization in Knowledge Engineering at KCAP - http://www.neilernst.net/docs/pubs/ernst-kcap03.pdf.
Automatic Generation and Maintenance of Correct Spreadsheets, 2005, ICSE 2005 27th International Conference on Software Engineering p 136- 145.
Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics - Tisdall, James - http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/begperlbio/chapter/ch10.html - October 2001 - O'Reiily Network - Chapter 10 (Sample Chapter) GenBank - GenBank (Genetic Sequence Data Bank) is a rapidly growing international repository of known genetic sequences from a variety of organisms. Its use is central to modern biology and to bioinformatics. - This chapter shows you how to write Perl programs to extract information from GenBank files and libraries. Exercises include looking for patterns; creating special libraries; and parsing the flat-file format to extract the DNA, annotation, and features. You will learn how to make a DBM database to create your own rapid-access lookups on selected data in a GenBank library. - Perl is a great tool for dealing with GenBank files. It enables you to extract and use any of the detailed data in the sequence and in the annotation, such as in the FEATURES table and elsewhere. When I first started using Perl, I wrote a program that searched GenBank for all sequence records annotated as being located on human chromosome 22. I found many genes where that information was so deeply buried within the annotation, that the major gene mapping database, Genome Database (GDB), hadn't included them in their chromosome map. I think you'll discover the same feeling of power over the information when you start applying Perl to GenBank files.
Designers Need End-User Software Engineering. Gross, M. D., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar February 2007. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1090/pdf/07081.GrossMark.ExtAbstract.1090.pdf
Distributed Constructionism - Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Northwestern University (accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996) http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/Distrib-Construc.html - Resnick, M., 1996.
End-User Design. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. Repenning, A., 2007. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1099.
End-User Development Techniques for Enterprise Resource Planning Software Systems - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1097/pdf/07081.SpahnMichael.Paper.1097.pdf - Michael Spahn, Stefan Scheidl, Todor Stoitsev - SAP AG, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, End-User Software Engineering M. H. Burnett, G. Engels, B. A. Myers, G. Rothermel (Eds.) - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/portals/index.php?semnr=07081.
End User Programming for Scientists: Modeling Complex Systems - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2007/1077/ - Andrew Begel - Microsoft Research - In: End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl.
End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
End-User Software Engineering Position Paper - Lieberman, H., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1092.
Estimating the Numbers of End Users and End User Programmers, Scaffidi, C., Shaw, M., Myers, B. (2005). IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (VL/HCC'05): 207-214 Dallas, Texas.
Example-based Programming: a pertinent visual approach for learning to program (2004) - University of Poitiers - Nicolas Guibert - Patrick Girard - Laurent Guittet - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - Pages: 358 - 361 - ISBN:1-58113-867-9.
Exploiting Domain-Specific Structures For End-User Programming Support Tools. - Abraham, R., Erwig, M., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1086.
Himalia: Model-Driven User Interfaces Using Hypermedia Controls and Patterns, Vernazza, L., 2007. - Model-Driven User-Centric Design and Engineering - MDUCDE 2007 - http://www.zmmi.de/MDUCDE2007/ - IFAC/IFIP/IFORS IEA Symposium - Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems - http://www.ifac-hms-2007.com/ - Seoul, Korea - September 4-6th 2007 - International Federation of Automatic Control.
Interaction-Oriented Software Development (2001) Huhns M N, International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering 11 3 259-277 - http://www.cse.sc.edu/~huhns/journalpapers/HuhnsIJSEKE.pdf.
Interactions, collaborations and breakdowns - TAMODIA 2004 INVITED TALKS - Peter Johnson - 15-16 November - Prague, Czech Republic.
Introduction to Multiple and Collaborative Tasks - ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction - Johnson, P., May, J., Johnson, H., 2003. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 10 (4) December 2003 pp 277-280.
Participatory Programming: Developing programmable bioinformatics tools for end-users. Letondal C, 2005. In H. Lieberman, F. Paterno, & V. Wulf (Eds.), End-User Development. Springer/Kluwer Academic Publishers - http://www.pasteur.fr/~letondal/Papers/EUD-letondal.pdf.
Meta-Design: A Conceptual Framework for End-User Software Engineering. Fischer, G., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1087.
Meta-User Interfaces for Ambient Spaces: Can Model-Driven-Engineering Help?. Coutaz, J., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar.
Model-based tools for pervasive usability, 2005, Paterno Fabio, Interacting with Computers 17, 291-315 - http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/cameleon/pdf/last-model-based%20approaches-IwC.pdf - Science Direct.
Model-Driven Program Transformation of a Large Avionics Framework - http://www.cis.uab.edu/gray/Pubs/gpce-2004.pdf - Jeff Gray, Jing Zhang, Yuehua Lin, Suman Roychoudhury, Hui Wu, Rajesh Sudarsan, Aniruddha Gokhale, Sandeep Neema, Feng Shi, and Ted Bapty - Third International Conference on Generative Programming and Component Engineering GPCE.
Multi-platform user interface construction: a challenge for software engineering-in-the-small. Bishop, J., 2006. In: International Conference on Software Engineering, Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering pp 751-760.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) for NLP (Natural Language Programming) - http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Publications/NLP4NLP.pdf - Rada Mihalcea, Hugo Liu, and Henry Lieberman.
Ontological Approach for Organisational Knowledge Re-use in Product Developing Environments. - Cheung, W. M., Maropoulos, P. G., Gao, J. X., Aziz, H., 2005. - In: 11th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising - ICE 2005, University BW Munich, Germany.
Past, present, and future of decision support technology. - Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, - Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
Position paper for EUSE 2007 at Dagstuhl. Rosson, M. B., A., 2007. In: End-User Software Engineering Dagstuhl Seminar. - http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=1094.
Software Quality Management in End-User Programming and Object Based Rapid Application Development (RAD) Simon Price, Li Lin Cheah and Phil Hobbs, 1996, British Computer Society, Quality Specialist Group 4th International Conference, SQM 96.
The beauty of software - British Computer Society Turing Lecture March 2007 Grady Booch - Full write up - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.10367 - This year's Turing Lecture was given by Grady Booch under the title 'The promise, the limits, the beauty of software.' - 13 March 2007
The Geometer's Sketchpad:Programming by Geometry. Jakiw, R. N., Finzer, W. F., 1993. In: A. Cypher, ed. Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. MIT Press, Chapter 1 [online]. Available from: http://www.acypher.com/wwid/Chapters/13Sketchpad.html.
Past, present, and future of decision support technology. Shim, J.P., Warkentin, M., Courtney, J. F., Power, D J., 2002, Decision Support Systems 33 pp 111-126.
UML for Interactive Systems: What is Missing, Palanque, P., Bastide R., 2003. http://www.se-hci.org/bridging/interact/p96-99.pdf - INTERACT 2003 Closing the Gaps: Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction Zürich, Switzerland.
Watch What I Do Programming by Demonstration - Cypher, A, 1993, MIT Press, ISBN:0262032139.
Why Biologists Want to Program Computers - Tisdall, James - http://www.oreilly.com/news/perlbio_1001.html - 15th October 2001 - O'Reiily Network - The students (from vice presidents to principle investigators to junior lab assistants) who attend these courses do so to learn about programming for biology research. I've often been asked to give my perspective on the benefits of learning programming, considering the expenditure of time and effort that is required to learn this new and important laboratory skill. - Over the last decade there has been an accelerating interest in acquiring programming skills on the part of biologists. My new book Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics from O'Reilly & Associates is designed to address the need for training in this area by teaching programming in the context of biologically relevant data and results. - This article will examine why a biologist would want to learn to program. There are two main reasons: scientific, and economic. I hope that the discussion will also be of some use to programmers thinking of entering the bioinformatics field. But first, I'll take a short tour of some history, define some terms, and make some general comments about how programming fits into biology research..
http://www.acypher.com/wwid/FrontMatter/index.html.
Your Wish is My Command: Giving Users the Power to Instruct their Software, Lieberman, H., 2000. - Morgan Kaufmann.
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~phale/Events.htm.
BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216.
Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government
The Hawthorns, Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol
British Computer Society BCS Bristol Branch
Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of Government bodies, enabled by the use of Information Systems & Technology in the back-office. It is expected to deliver major efficiency savings across the public sector without any further investment beyond existing budgets.
What does Transformational Government look like in practice within a Local Authority? How can it be implemented without any additional funding? How can intensely technical subjects like open source and open standards contribute to business change? Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, will attempt to answer these questions and give an overview of Bristol's successes and challenges to date.
Gavin has been a central figure in Bristol's strategic use of Open Source and Open Standards since 2002; was a founder of the Open Source Academy; and works actively with a variety of EU interest groups and government bodies on the adoption of ODF.
Further Information - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/44.
Informing Digital Futures: Strategies for Citizen Engagement
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Leela Damodaran, Loughborough University
Summary
In the present digital revolution we often seem trapped in a Kafkaesque world of technological advances, some desired, some disliked or even feared, which we cannot influence but must accept.
This talk discusses the urgent need to redress this situation. It will argue that technologies succeed or fail according to their relevance and value to people, who need to be actively engaged in order to create shared visions, and influence their implementation.
All too often ICT advances are regarded purely as a technical challenge where the designers believe that systems analysis will of itself yield complete and comprehensive functional specifications.
The talk will highlight the crucial benefits and added value to be gained from empowering citizens to shape ICT design decisions. Finally, it will provide specific practical guidance, based on sound academic research, for policy makers, administrators and ICT professionals on the strategies, methodologies, tools and techniques needed to change design practice.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20503 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216. - British Computer Society BCS Bristol page - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/49.
A Re-conceptualisation of the Interpretive Flexibility of Information Technologies: Redressing the balance between the Social and the Technical
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Neil Doherty Loughborough University
Summary
Interpretive flexibility - the capacity of a specific technology to sustain divergent opinions - has long been recognised as playing an important role in explaining how technical artefacts are socially constructed. What is less clear is how a system's technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly.
This gap in the literature has largely arisen because recent contributions to this debate have tended to be rather one-sided, focussing almost solely upon the role of the human agent in shaping the technical artefact, and in so doing either downplaying or ignoring the artefact's shaping potential.
The broad aim of this presentation is to reappraise the nature and role of interpretive flexibility but giving as much consideration to how an information system's technical characteristics might limit its ability to be interpreted flexibly, as we do to its potential for social construction.
In this presentation the results of two in-depth case studies, are used in order to propose a re-conceptualisation of the role of interpretive flexibility. In short, this model helps explain how the initial interpretations of stakeholders are significantly influenced by the scope and adaptability of the system's functionality.
Stakeholder interpretations will then, in turn, influence how the system's functionality is appropriated and exploited by users, to allow divergent interpretations to be realised and sustained.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20504 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216. - British Computer Society BCS Bristol page - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/50.
Extending Collaboration with Social Software
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Paula Dantas Senior IT Specialist for Lotus at IBM UK Ltd
Summary
The days when "Collaboration" meant "E-Mail" are well and truly over. Not only is real time collaboration becoming an accepted part of office life, but it is being extended to deliver Unified Communications and Collaboration.
However this is just the start. Web 2.0 is extending traditional Team Collaboration and Document Sharing solutions with Social Software designed to run within an enterprise and encourage better dissemination of information and faster decision making, as well as empowering employees to deliver the innovation companies need to maintain their competitive advantage.
This session looks at IBM's internal experiences from our research into social software and the impact it is having on the way we do business.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20505 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216.
Semantic Web Interest Group - SWIG-UK event
==== SWIG-UK - A Semantic Web Community Event
Hewlett-Packard Bristol
==== SWIG-UK - A Semantic Web Community Event
We would like to invite users and developers interested in the semantic web to attend a community event to be held at HP Labs Bristol, UK on Tuesday 11 November 2008. This will be an opportunity for you to meet other users and developers and to share experiences with semantic web applications.
The day will a mixture of discussion, demos, short presentations, with a few longer presentations if offered. The objective is to allow people to share experiences of using the semantic web. The agenda will be driven by the attendees; it is not limited to Jena applications nor limited to the UK.
Please register early so we know there is critical mass for the event.
Registration: swig-uk-2008@sparql.net
Further Information - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/semanticweb-southwest/ - Directions: http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/directions.html.
Goals and challenges for the co-evolution of social and technical defence capability
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Karen Carr Head of Centre for Human Systems at Cranfield University
Summary
The threats and constraints faced by our defence capability appear to be increasingly demanding. The diversity of threats taking place in complex political, social and physical environments require defence mechanisms that are at once agile, accurate, global, minimal, rapid and sustainable. Network Enabled Capability, Effects Based Operations and the Comprehensive Approach are some of the initiatives that attempt to meet these requirements.
The manner in which the MoD attempts to develop these aspects of defence capability is subject to many challenges, including the traditionally disjointed approach to the so-called 'moral' and 'physical' components: effectively equipment and personnel. A major part of the new initiatives across defence is the use of Information Technologies to support collaboration between distributed people from different national and professional cultures.
As is well known in many fields, successful collaboration of this sort requires an integrated approach to the development of supporting technology, process, organization and social factors. This lecture will review the obstacles and opportunities within the MoD organization for achieving this integrated approach.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20513 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216.
The NHS National Programme for Information Technology: A Sociotechnical Perspective
BCS Sociotechnical group South West
University of the West of England - room 2B020 - in B block - http://www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_map.shtml - 18:30 for 19:00 start
Professor Emeritus Ken Eason Bayswater Institute / Loughborough University
Summary
Launched in 2002 the NHS National Programme for Information Technology is a very large 10-year programme to create electronic patient records that can be shared across all the NHS Trusts in England.
It is funded to deliver interoperable technical systems but has as its fundamental objective the development of healthcare practices based on electronic records. This implies major changes to the work practices of nearly a million NHS staff and means that the Programme is an attempt at very large-scale sociotechnical systems change.
This presentation will review the progress of the programme from a sociotechnical systems perspective after 6 years and examine whether and how changes in working practice are being accomplished. The findings show not only the impact of the Programme on the NHS Trusts but also the effect of the Trusts on the technology suppliers and the organisation of the programme itself.
Further Information - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20506 - BCS Sociotechnical group South West - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10216. - British Computer Society BCS Bristol page - http://www.bristol.bcs.org.uk/?q=node/52.
Bristol & Area Regional Group of the Ergonomics Society (BARGES) - http://www.ergonomics.org.uk/page.php?p=31&s=11 - BARGES meetings are held on Tuesdays at 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start. The location is Ergo Innovation, Unit 1.16 Paintworks, Bath Road, Bristol BS4 3EH. Dates to be advised.
British Computer Society's Sociotechnical group - Currently we have a two-centre lecture series and are now intending to establish a further centre in the South West. This would enable both interested industry and academic bodies to benefit. - Further Information - Word - Adobe PDF.
British Computer Society's Sociotechnical group - London - http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~coakese/lecture_series.htm - Sunderland - http://www.cet.sunderland.ac.uk/webedit/allweb/news/SocioTechNorth.htm - The British Computer Society's SocioTech group hosts talks and events that relate to IT technology and its social impact. The talks are an excellent opportunity to find out about the variety of work in academic research and industry.
2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://vlhcc07.eecs.wsu.edu/ - Coeur d'Alène, Idaho, USA - 22-26 September 2007.
2008 Lovelace Lecture - A tribute to Karen Sparck Jones. - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8997 - Ann Copestake will be presenting the 2008 Lovelace Lecture entitled 'What do we mean? Computational approaches to natural language semantics'. - Ann is Reader in Computational Linguistics in the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge. - Date: Tuesday 13 May 2008 Time: 6.30pm registration for 7pm lecture Venue: Main Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor - The Royal Society of Medicine - 1 Wimpole Street - London W1G 0AE.
20th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering - http://ase.cs.uni-essen.de/ase/past/ase2005/ - Long Beach, California, USA, November 7-11, 2005 - papers, demonstrations, tutorials.
30th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) - http://icse08.upb.de/ - The International Conference on Software Engineering is the premier software engineering conference, providing a forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences, and concerns in the field of software engineering. - 10 - 18 May, 2008 in Leipzig, Germany - Fourth Workshop on End-User Software Engineering (WEUSE IV) - May 12, 2008 In conjunction with ICSE 2008 - http://eusesconsortium.org/weuseiv/ - The Fourth Workshop on End-User Software Engineering is a one-day workshop intended to focus on the challenges faced in helping end users create dependable software. The proposed workshop aims to bring together software engineering researchers who wish to address these challenges, and is the next one planned in the series that has proven to be an invaluable forum for bringing together researchers working on this problem in disparate domains.
BCS (British Computer Society) - Usability: beyond just the website - http://www.sussex.bcs.org.uk/meetings.htm - 13 February, Brighton - BCS Sussex Branch Meetings 2007-2008 - Meetings held at Chichester 1, University of Sussex, Brighton. (But check individual meetings for changes of exact venue.) - 7:00 for 7:30 p.m.- Desmond Boksan-Cullen, CPLUS IT Services, Eastbourne - The term usability is often referred to by IT professionals when discussing website design. Whilst it is true that websites should be constructed using usability and accessibility features, the term usability is much more that just websites. Many companies have excellent websites, but use forms that are difficult to read and understand. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are often notorious for their bad usability and one of the most used computer terminals often has a GUI that is difficult to read, understand and interact with, this being the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) or cash-point machine.
BCS Sociotechnical group - London - http://www.cet.sunderland.ac.uk/webedit/allweb/news/SocioTechNorthCalendar.htm - The British Computer Society's SocioTech group hosts talks and events that relate to IT technology and its social impact. The talks are an excellent opportunity to find out about the variety of work in academic research and industry.
BCS Sociotechnical group - London - http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~coakese/lecture_series.htm - Professor George Rzevski and Anastasios Smeros - Complexity and Multi-Agent Technology - (Practical Applications) - Univ of Westminster - December 5th 2007.
BCS Sociotechnical group - London - http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~coakese/lecture_series.htm - 2008 - January date tba - Dr John P Carney - Industrial and Academic Co-ordinator DSTL/MOD - Confessions of a Knowledge Manager.
BCS Sociotechnical group - London - http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~coakese/lecture_series.htm - Dr Nadia Papamichail - Manchester Business School - 7th May 2008 - Best practice in decision making.
CHI - http://www.chi2008.org/ - CHI 2008 focuses on the balance between art and science, design and research, practical motivation and the process that leads the way to innovative excellence. It is about balance in our rapidly evolving field, the balance between individuals and groups, collocated and remote, stationary and mobile, in both our local and global communities. - Florence, Italy. - April 5 - 10 2008.
CHI'09: ACM Conf. Human-Computer Interaction: due Sep. 19. - http://www.chi2009.org/ - Boston, Mass., USA
Code Generation 2008 - http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php - 25th-28th June 2008 - Cambridge, UK - A growing number of developers are using or planning to use model-based code generation - are you ready for the next evolutionary step in software? - WHO'S CG2008 FOR? - CG2008 is for software practitioners and those with a stake in the future of their development organisation..
Final Call for Speakers:
Submission Deadline: Friday January 18th 2008
We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering topics on model-driven software development (including Software Factories, Model-Driven Architecture (MDA), Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs), Generative Programming, Software Product Lines and related areas).
Sessions could cover topics such as:
- Code Generation and Model Transformation tools and approaches
- Defining and implementing modelling languages
- Domain Analysis and Domain Engineering
- Language evolution and modularization
- Meta Modelling
- Runtime virtual machines versus direct code generation
- Tool and technology adoption
http://www.codegeneration.net/conference/index.php.
Connecting Communities for the Digital Economy Workshop - Call for Participants - http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/CallsForProposals/ConnectingCommunitiesDigitalEconomyWorkshop.htm - This is a call for participants to take part in a two-day workshop aimed at building a multi-disciplinary community of researchers to take on challenges in the Digital Economy. - The workshop will take place on 4-5 December 2007 at a location to be confirmed.
End-User Software Engineering - Dagstuhl Seminar - Summary - http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/program/calendar/semhp/?semnr=2007081 - PDF Abstracts and links to papers - http://eusesconsortium.org/docs/dagstuhl_2007.pdf - Margaret M. Burnett, Gregor Engels, Brad A. Myers and Gregg Rothermel - From 18.01.07 to 23.02.07, the Dagstuhl Seminar 07081 End-User Software Engineering was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed.
EUD'09: Symp. End-User Development: due Sep. 8. - http://www.eud2009.uni-siegen.de/ - Siegen, Germany
EUROMEDIA 2008 - 14TH ANNUAL MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCE - http://www.eurosis.org/cms/index.php?q=node/461 - UNIVERSITY OF PORTO - PORTUGAL - APRIL 9-11, 2008 - The 2008 Euromedia conference covers the latest developments in web-multimedia and communications technology while also looking at their implementation in Broadband networking, mobile computing, broadband networking, distributed computing, telematics, E-technology and real world environments like embedded systems, security systems and training systems. - More info about the event can be found on: http://www.eurosis.org/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/100 - The workshops page has been updated: http://www.eurosis.org/cms/index.php?q=node/476 - especially the track on D-TV - The venue page has been updated: http://www.eurosis.org/cms/index.php?q=node/478 - The hotel page has been updated: http://www.eurosis.org/cms/index.php?q=node/471.
FUBUTEC 2008 - http://www.eurosis.org/cms/?q=taxonomy/term/94 - April 9-11, 2008, FEUP-University of Porto, Porto, Portugal - 5th Annual Future Business Technology Conference 2008 - Limiting Risk in Business through Simulation.
Grand Challenges in Computing Research - GCCR'08 - From computers to ubiquitous computing, by 2020 - British Computer Society BCS - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9891 - GCCR'08 will take place over two days from 18-19 March 2008 in London. It is timed to follow on from the Ubiquitous Computing discussion meeting being held at the Royal Society on 17-18 March - As indicated in the title GCCR'08 will focus on the research grand challenges that were established by UKCRC in 2002.
HCI 2007 - http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2007/ - Happy 21st HCI! - 3-7 September 2007 - at Lancaster University - Our field is constantly changing, with useful and ground breaking research being conducted in such areas as design methodology, tangible user interfaces and collaborative interaction, to name but a few. The desire to improve and innovate, coupled with the drive to keep moving forward and 'explore new frontiers', in human-computer interaction, will be constant throughout this conference and so is reflected in the title 'not as we know it'.
History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) - http://research.ihost.com/hopl/ - The Third ACM SIGPLAN - History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPL-III) - San Diego, California, June 9-10, 2007 - (co-located with FCRC 2007, June 9-16, 2007) - in cooperation with ACM SIGSOFT.
ICSE'09: ACM/IEEE Int. Conf. Software Engineering: due Sep. 5. - http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/events/icse2009/home/ - Vancouver, Canada
IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/vlhcc/ - 2006 - Brighton, UK.
IFAC/IFIP/IFORS IEA Symposium - Analysis, Design, and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems - http://www.ifac-hms-2007.com/ - Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel Seoul Korea - September 4-6th 2007 - International Federation of Automatic Control.
IUI'09: ACM Int. Conf. Intelligent User Interfaces: due Oct. 3 - http://www.iuiconf.org - Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
Knowledge and Skills for a Digital Future Conference - http://www.equalitec.org.uk/equalitec_main/images/67SepFlyerEbook.pdf - Information Technology Electronics Communication - 6-7 SEPTEMBER 2007 - INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY - SAVOY PLACE, LONDON - FREE.
Model-Driven User-Centric Design and Engineering - MDUCDE 2007 - http://www.zmmi.de/MDUCDE2007/ - Sheraton Grande Walkerhill Hotel Seoul Korea - September 5th 2007 - The workshop aims to: - Bring together a community integrating people and knowledge from human-computer interaction as well as human-machine interaction - Discuss issues on advanced and future user interface design, engineering, and automatic generation - Leveraging model-driven and automatic application of ergonomic knowledge in software and system engineering - Identify needs, goals, and future research areas in user-centric design.
SWIG-UK Powerpoint Presentation - at Hewlett-Packard - Bristol UK - semantic web interest group - InteractiveModellingandVisualisationofInformation.ppt - November 23rd 2007 - other presentations are at http://swig.networkedplanet.com/special.html - including a UWE presentation http://swig.networkedplanet.com/cccs_hp.ppt - Health-e-Child.
The Ergonomics Society - http://www.ergonomics.org.uk/section.php?s=6 - Ergonomics is a multi-disciplinary subject and the variety of conferences and events that may be of interest to ergonomists reflects this. Worldwide events are listed with information and contact details.
The Ideal of Program Correctness - BCS, The Computer Journal - Lecture Tony Hoare - Microsoft Research, Cambridge - Wednesday 25th October 2006.
The International Workshop on Metamodelling - Utilization in Software Engineering and ICSoft - http://www.icsoft.org/MUSE.htm - July 5, 2008 - Porto, Portugal and ICSoft - July 5-8 - Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Metamodelling and modelling theory - Metamodelling and ontologies - Impact of metamodelling on standards development - Use of metamodelling in agent-oriented software engineering - Use of metamodelling in object-oriented software engineering - Metamodels as underpinnings for modelling languages - The role of metamodels in MDA and model transformations - Metamodelling in relation to tool building - Metamodel support for process measurement and improvement - Business reasons for adopting a metamodel - in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Software and Data Technologies (ICSOFT 2008).
ToolBook User's Conference / e-Learning Authoring Conference - http://www.tbcon.com/ - July 30 - August 1, 2007 (preconference training July 28 and 29) - Colorado College Colorado Springs - The ToolBook User's Conference is the leading conference for developers who author with ToolBook. Co-located with the e-Learning Authoring Conference, this is the best source for "how to" tips on creating e-Learning content in ToolBook, Flash, and other technologies. It is also has a special track for e-Learning managers.
TP.CG.08 - The UK Chapter of the Eurographics Association presents The sixth Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics 2008 Conference (TP.CG.08) - http://www.eguk.org.uk/TPCG08/ - University of Manchester, UK - 9-11th June 2008 - Hosted by Research Computing Services - in co-operation with Eurographics - (Paper submission deadline March 10th 2008) - PAPER SUBMISSION TOOL IS NOW ONLINE - Proceedings published by EG and placed on the EG Digital Library - TP.CG.08 is the 26th conference organised by the UK chapter of the Eurographics Association. The aim of the conference is to focus on theoretical and practical aspects of Computer Graphics and to bring together top practicioners, users and researchers, which will hopefully inspire further collaboration between participants particularly between academia and industry. - VizNET competition - Selected entries will feature in the vizNET website. The Eurographics UK Chapter (EGUK) will host a session at their annual conference, TP.CG '08 which will be held at the University of Manchester, UK June 9th-11th to showcase the winning entries. EGUK will pay for a full conference ticket - entrance, tutorials, socials and accommodation - for the winning submission.
USAB 2007 - Usability & HCI for Medicine and Health Care - http://www.meduni-graz.at/imi/usab-symposium/ - 22nd November 2007 - 3rd Symposium of the Austrian Computer Society, HCI&UE Group. Technological performance increases exponentially and Medical Information Systems and Decision Support Systems are extremely sophisticated. However, human cognitive performance does not advance at the same speed. USAB 07 further promotes the collaboration between Psychology and Computer Science.
User Experience 2007 Conference - http://www.nngroup.com/events/ - Barcelona - 4-9th November - Las Vegas - 2nd-7th December - In place of scattered, shallow talks, UE offers up to 6 days of deep learning as international experts lead 31 full-day tutorials on topics such as:
Turning usability data into interaction design
Improving usability for complex applications
Writing for the Web
Applying information architecture (IA) principles
Managing user experience strategy.
Visions of Computer Science - http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9878 - Imperial College London September 22-24, 2008 - Paper Submission Deadline May 20, 2008 - The BCS is launching its first international academic conference, intended as a major international event to take place in the UK. This year's theme is 'Visions of Computer Science. We aim to establish the pattern of a high-quality wide-spectrum UK-based conference, with a strong international profile. Moreover, the aim is to energise the UK community and bring it together around positive and inspiring visions of our discipline. - Keynote speakers will include the following ACM Turing Award Winners: Fran Allen, Vint Cerf, Tony Hoare, Dick Karp, Robin Milner, Michael Rabin, Joseph Sifakis.
VL/HCC'08 - 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing - http://vlhcc08.cs.unibw.de/ - http://vlhcc08.cs.unibw.de/cfp.php - Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany - 16-20th September 2008 - From the beginning of the computer age, researchers and computing practitioners have sought ways to make interactions with computers more human-oriented. For example, visual languages have long been used to provide effective communication between humans and computers. Visual languages have been successfully employed for end-user programming, modeling, and rapid prototyping; they have supported design activities by people of many disciplines and backgrounds including architects, artists, children, engineers, and scientists. In addition, visual languages and technologies are increasingly being used to facilitate human-human communication through Internet/Web technology and electronic mobile devices. - SOFTVIS'08 - ACM Symposium on Software Visualization - http://www.st.uni-trier.de/~diehl/softvis/org/softvis08/ - September 16-17 2008, Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany. - Diagrams '08 - Fifth International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams - Diagrams is an international and interdisciplinary conference series on the theory and application of diagrams in any scientific field of enquiry. - http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/diagrams2008/.
World Usability Day 2007 - http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/10/16/world-usability-day-2007/ - Lisa Herrod - World Usability Day is an international, annual event that will be held on November 8th this year with the theme of Health. - November 8th 2007.
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for these HCI (Human Computer Interaction) events - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=eDP1LCou3RGXNH6nX0sBXw.
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for these end-user programming stories - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=64dff5a0341b85d818012fc1d99d4441.
Implementation based on Space Horizons - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/amrc/JANS/spacehorizons/ - Project for Information Technology Management for Business - Year 2.
Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed for this HCI (Human Computer Interaction) news - http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=51041518210f9ac5a904740a4f22da1f.
SEEDS Page - SEEDS Home Page
Software Engineering Research Group - http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/cccs/researchgroup.php?menu=off&group=serg - SERG's mission is to bridge the gap between software engineering research and its application to different disciplines.
Peter Home Page - Peter Hale Home Page
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