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This paper presents the evaluation of a design and architecture for browsing and searching MPEG-7 images. Our approach is novel in that it exploits concept lattices for the representation and navigation of image content. Several concept lattices provide the foundation for the system (called IMAGE-SLEUTH) each representing a different search context, one for image shape, another for color and luminance, and a third for semantic content, namely image browsing based on a metadata ontology. The test collection used for our study is a sub-set of MPEG-7 images created from the popular The Sims 2™ game. The evaluation of the IMAGE-SLEUTH program is based on usability testing among 29 subjects. The results of the study are used to build an improved second generation program – IMAGE-SLEUTH2 – however these results also indicate that image navigation via a concept lattice is a highly successful interface paradigm. Our results provide general insights for interface design using concept lattices that will be of interest to any applied research and development using concept lattices.

Since the emergence of mobile devices, the architecture of mobile applications has been transformed significantly. In mobile applications, the User Interface (UI) is one of the major elements, but its development is complex and time-consuming. Existing practices do not support various presentation issues of the UI at a higher abstraction level, in a retargetable fashion, with complete tool support. Therefore, it is critical to develop a simple and automated framework for the development of mobile UIs by exploiting model-driven engineering concepts. In this paper, a Unified Modeling language (UML) profile for Mobile User Interfaces (UMMUI) has been proposed, which employs some standard UML notations for representing the mobile UI requirements at a higher abstraction level. Subsequently, a complete open-source transformation engine has been developed to automatically transform the high-level source models (in UMMUI) into the target low-level React Native implementation. Finally, the applicability of the proposed framework is validated through two benchmark case studies, i.e., Patient Management System and Library Application. The results verify that the proposed framework allows the modeling of UIs with simplicity and generates the target code automatically with minimum transformation losses.

Usage-centered design is becoming increasingly important in the rapidly growing web environment. In this paper, we propose a development process and algorithm to generate a user interface prototype automatically on the basis of a usage-centered design. For this purpose, the transition objects of the user interface are modeled from the requirement analysis, while abstract modeling rules and algorithms of business events are formed for the generation of the user interface. These processes allow unskilled designers to develop qualified user interface prototypes, improve the user's understanding of the business tasks and reduce the number of prototype iterations.

In current multi-agent systems, the user is typically interacting with a single agent at a time through relatively inflexible and modestly intelligent interfaces. As a consequence, these systems force the users to submit simplistic requests only and suffer from problems such as the low-level nature of the system services offered to users, the weak reusability of agents, and the weak extensibility of the systems. In this paper, a framework for multi-agent systems called the open agent architecture (OAA) which reduces such problems, is discussed. The OAA is designed to handle complex requests that involve multiple agents. In some cases of complex requests from users, the components of the requests do not directly correspond to the capabilities of various application agents, and therefore, the system is required to translate the user's model of the task into the system's model before apportioning subtasks to the agents. To maximize users' efficiency in generating this type of complex requests, the OAA offers an intelligent multi-modal user interface agent which supports a natural language interface with a mix of spoken language, handwriting, and gesture. The effectiveness of the OAA environment including the intelligent distributed multi-modal interface has been observed in our development of several practical multi-agent systems.

Space systems are an important part of everyday life. They provide global positioning data, communications, and Earth science data such as weather information. All space systems require satellite operators to ensure high performance and continuous operations in the presence of off-nominal conditions due to space weather and onboard anomalies. Similar to other high-stress, time critical operations (e.g., piloting an aircraft or operating a nuclear power plant), situation awareness is a crucial factor in operator performance during these conditions. Because situation awareness is largely acquired by monitoring large numbers of parameters, it is difficult to rapidly and accurately fuse the data to develop an accurate assessment. To aid operators in this task, we have developed a prototype Multi-Agent Satellite System for Information Fusion (MASSIF) for automated data fusion and situation awareness. This system is based on human cognitive decision-making models and integrates a fuzzy logic system for semantic data processing, Bayesian belief networks for multi-source data fusion and situation assessment, and rule-bases for automatic network construction. This paper describes initial simulation-based results to establish feasibility and baseline performance. We describe knowledge engineering efforts, belief network construction, and operator-interfaces for automated data fusion and situation awareness for a hypothetical geosynchronous satellite.

ABSolute is a general-purpose, multi-dimensional decision support system which has a highly sophisticated visualization-based user interface for direct data manipulation. The interface and analysis facilities of this system enable the users to effectively view, explore, search, compare and classify data items to make discoveries, decisions or explanations about patterns, groups of items, or individual items with the highest level of confidence and knowledge. The usefulness of this system is demonstrated in solving a complex decision-making problem in a business environment: a bid evaluation and selection problem in corporate procurement using a RFQ (Request-For-Quotes) process.

This paper introduces a graphical user interface approach to facilitate an efficient and timely generation of statistic data from input videos. By means of a carefully-designed graphical user interface, users can interactively add in various kinds of markers, known as the statistic inducers, on the screen of an input video to specify the areas of interest corresponding to the locations of relevant events. These inducers are in the form of two-dimensional points, lines, polygons, and grids, and can be put on the video screen with great ease. Using these inducers, we not only can efficiently customize the system for a given statistic generation task; in addition, we can also precisely constrain the time-consuming space-time video analysis process (as well as any additional analysis process like optical flow computation or object recognition) on the user-specified areas. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach, we developed a prototypic system and experimented it in two different statistic generation cases: dormitory light switching and road traffic. In both cases, we just need a few minutes of UI customization time to set up the inducers; once this is done, timely statistics can be automatically generated subsequently.

The rapid development of mobile user interfaces for students’ websites and the constant utilization of such interfaces by students have witnessed a significant upsurge in growth. However, mobile service providers may lack valuable feedback on user satisfaction, particularly for Arabic users, because the sites are designed and implemented without students’ participation. This paper empirically investigates the user satisfaction of a mobile banner system for the University of Ha’il in Saudi Arabia. Users’ satisfaction was evaluated across six scales: overall reactions, screens, terminology and system information, learning, system capabilities, and technical manuals and online help. A quantitative research method was utilized, involving a questionnaire survey of 235 students. We found that female students have significant concerns about user satisfaction. The paper proposes theoretical and practical implications for future work.

Restoration work of archaeological artifacts broken into pieces is similar to putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The purpose of this study is to construct an intelligent computer assistance system to conveniently restore archaeological discoveries from some fragments. AReal-Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA) was applicable for solving the positioning problem of a three-dimensional (3D) restoration. The fitness function value for RCGA was calculated from image similarity between the target and correct patterns in plane images at multiple camera angles. Image features of a 3D object were obtained by the ORB (Oriented FAST and Rotated BRIEF), BRISK (Binary Robust Invariant Scalable Keypoints), and Accelerated KAZE (AKAZE) techniques; they were considered as a part of the fitness function value. Simulation study revealed that the RCGA approach was capable of automatically and efficiently adjusting the positions of 3D fragments, especially in the AKAZE technique. A user interface with the functions of design drawing was also created to assist in repair work. The interactive assistance interface for 3D restoration based on RCGA and followed by the hill-climbing algorithm would be applied to practical applications for digital archives of artifacts.

Incomplete or misinterpreted requirements are a significant source of customer and user dissatisfaction in development of software user interfaces. In these systems, where consideration of the human factor is a vital part of the development, the undertaking of understanding the real needs of the user must not be underestimated. Unfortunately, there are often organizational boundaries which restrict or limit the developer's opportunities to communicate with the customer and stakeholders. The result is often a weak link between the stakeholder needs, system requirements and the realization of the user interface system.

This paper addresses how an approach to requirements engineering based on a combination of rapid prototyping and demonstrator sessions can be used to elicit requirements and obtain early feedback and acceptance from system stakeholders. The method was conducted on a user interface development project for gas turbine driven generator and compressor packages in operation at offshore oil-rigs. Stakeholders were presented with module prototypes with a varying degree of dynamics, simulation and interaction based on the stage of the development. Together with rationale-based questioning, the demonstrator sessions provided a context for constructive discussions and feedback. The developers returned with a better understanding of the rationale for stakeholder need and clarification of misinterpreted or poorly defined requirements. This enabled us to create an application better aligned with customer and user needs and a minimal amount of rework and updates after system deployment.

According to the National Literacy Trust, e-books have advantages in improving children’s reading abilities and attitudes. This action research was conducted in “English for Young Children” course of a private university in Taiwan. Students were taught the knowledge and skills of teaching young children English. Then they were encouraged to design and create their English-learning e-books using the Pixabay database and SIMMagic ebook software. Features of SIMMagic ebook included inserting photos, sounds, videos, links to google map/YouTube, puzzle, games, etc. Themes of English learning e-books included alphabets, colors, animals, transportations, food, family, body, sports, counting, fruit, and so forth. Students integrated text to speech technology, and created interactive and fun English-learning media. Overall, students had positive attitudes and experiences towards e-book creations. They also provided a feedback to improve the user interface of e-book software.

The maturity and prosperity of 4G LTE in recent years keep the retail business model evolving. Retailers have employed the technology of the mobile commerce platforms to perform just-in-time interactive platforms, human interface, and orienting-marketing, which is deeply concerned with customer’s experiences. Due to the popularity of the Internet and the upgrade of signals, mobile communication software has become an important bridge for everyone’s communication in recent years.

The development of mobile phones and networks makes users more inclined to use mobile communication software than making calls. It not only spurs the development of Mcommerce but takes its services to a new level, allowing more to experience the new service model. This also makes the interface design of mobile applications more and more important. Most service providers do not have a simple user interface, which often leads to operation failure. The software UI design has a strong correlation with the consumer experience. The important functions of mobile communication software are to invite friends’ function.

This study explores the user’s use of the QR code plus friend function of the LINE mobile communication software and optimizes the QR code plus friend shortcut function to make the user faster and more convenient in operation. The user experience and human interface help the back-end designer adjust the software interface to make the interface design closer to the user.

We are now touching a problem how we add soft computing aspects to logic programming and we have been discussing a new framework for handling incomplete attribute values on logic programs. For handling incomplete information, we depend upon the concept 'Rule of Thumb' and we syntactically introduce a functor set into logic programs. This functor set causes some soft computing aspects to logic programs. In this chapter we first show our new framework, then we apply our realized theorem prover to simulation and diagnosis in digital circuits. We have also realized an user interface for managing a theorem prover, a program translator and a knowledge base with several rules, so every user does not have to know the logic programs and he can easily operate our system.

To accommodate the needs of local mobile communications, the interface of data marts are designed using the data warehouse and ETL2. The interface of the data warehouse is composed by the user interface, the interface traffic, the billing interface, etc. ETL2 is designed by processes involving extracting, FTP, clearing and loading. The results demonstrate that the designs can reduce the impact and stress of the data warehouse, and are important supplements to the extension of the data warehouse.

Purpose – Considering a lack of database designers' attention to the features of user information seeking behavior in designating user-interfaces, the aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which user interface characteristics of some main databases (Ebsco, Emerald, Proquest and Science Direct) are in accordance with Ellis' model of information seeking behavior.

Design/Method/Approach – Using a heuristic evaluation method frequently used in human-computer interaction research, the necessary information was collected by direct observation of these databases' user interface against a checklist containing six features of Ellis' model.

Findings – Interface designers have rarely applied these features in the design and structure of the studied user interfaces. Some features of Ellis' model, i.e., starting, chaining and differentiating were relatively found in these interfaces. However, other three features of this model, namely browsing, monitoring and extracting were not supported by the interfaces. The degree of match between these user interfaces with Ellis' model is at average.

Originality/value – Taking information seeking behavior into account when designing user interfaces will improve them and help users in accessing more relevant information with ease and speed.

New technologies and instruments of computer are widely used, and it is the time to make efforts in shaping the computer world to the user's world. One of the efforts is improvement of a programming language. In the area of database systems, some fourth generation languages adopted visual representations in order to improve their user interfaces. These are, however, not sufficient for naive users because of poor capability for describing procedural programs and difficulty of understanding. This paper proposed a new visual language named MOL, which can be used by nonprogrammers to develop application systems. The structure of database is represented as a special diagram which is referred to a “map” in this paper. On the map, there are some information centers which manage a collection of data. These centers are connected by avenues, when there are certain relationships between respective data of two information centers. A program is represented as a trail of the map. In order to access data with MOL, a user orders a messenger to trace avenues, visit information centers, collect data, fill a reporting sheet with the data and bring back it. The collected data can be processed on a spread sheet. By using MOL, user interface can be improved to be more friendly for non-programmers than the other fourth generation languages without loss of powerful capability of procedural languages.