1,720,992 research outputs found
Introducing agile methods in a large software development organisation: a case study
No full textThe adoption of agile methods of software development has gained momentum within the software industry. NW Soft Solutions Ltd. (a pseudonym) is a large software development unit that develops large-scale network centric software solutions. NW Soft Solutions Ltd decided to adopt an agile development methodology. Martin Fowler in his article “The New Methodology”, states that in his opinion “Since agile methods are so fundamentally people-oriented, it\u27s essential that you start with a team that wants to try and work in an agile way”. Using NW Soft Solutions as a case study, this thesis sets out to show how the developer’s attitudes towards agile methods change during the course of a transition from a more traditional waterfall methodology to agile methods. We see a shift in focus from agile practices at a superficial level towards the core values that underpin agile methods. Object-oriented metrics are used to evaluate and characterise the source code produced by teams using agile methods. The results obtained from the source code produced using agile methods are compared with the results for source code produced using a more traditional methodology. The contrast is stark. This case study shows that agile methods have guided the developers to produce code that manifests better quality and maintainability characteristics. Correlations between the degree of agility in a team and the characteristics of the code produced by that team are also explored
Computer Code as a Medium for Human Communication: Are Programming Languages Improving?
Get PDFProgramming languages are not only useful to command computers, they also increasingly are a medium for human communication. I will use the framework of distributed cognition to discuss how knowledge is shared in a team of programmers and to show that computer code plays an important role in it. The resulting model of how programmers comprehend code suggests that common grounds play an important role in it. I propose two hypotheses concerning the means used by programmers to refer to common grounds from within their code. The hypotheses imply that modern languages, such as Scala, offer advantages as human communication mediums. I describe an experiment, using an eye-tracking device, that measures the performance of code comprehension. The hypotheses are tested by varying the degree of reference to common grounds.LAMP
Designing interactive technology (IT) for/with children with T1DM: exploring methods, techniques and tools facilitating participatory approach
No full textThe central question of this thesis is: How to design Interactive Technology (IT) for/with children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) and their parents/guardians? To address this question, this research has two main goals: firstly to gain a deeper understanding of paediatric diabetes everyday care experienced by children and parents in domestic environments and to identify an application area to explore the potential role of IT in supporting (some) self-care practice, and secondly to explore a series of collaborative user-centred and participatory design approaches in an attempt to examine the participants’ role in design and to facilitate users’ participation (e.g. children and parents) better in the technology development and design. This investigation is heavily influenced by the design process; the second goal is central to framing the contribution of this study.
To help answer this thesis’ question, the investigation focuses on the four main phases of User Centred Design (UCD) (i.e. research, design, prototyping and evaluation) and explores a series of methods to investigate the role of the users in developing an IT interactive technology that may support diabetes education and sense-making in newly children and their families: Participatory Design (PD), Cooperative Inquiry (CI), and Informant Design (ID).
Based on the empirical results, I stress the benefits of employing a participatory approach in the design of IT for paediatric diabetes. In particular, I highlight the limitations of the current tools supporting education in newly diagnosed children (with diabetes), and how participation in the design contributed in identifying critical areas of potential intervention which resulted in the prototyping of an educational eBook for newly diagnosed children and their families. Two clear aspects emerged from reflection on and analysis of the design process: the first is that the emotional response of affected participants was a crucial factor during design and these potential responses need to be taken into account when planning participatory design activities; the second highlights the benefit of participatory approaches based on narratives and storytelling to support participants in communicating their concepts and knowledge successfully. It also became evident that applying UCD, PD and CI by involving both parents and children as design partners was essential for the interactive technology design; their contribution to the educational content and main characteristics of the IT design was based on their distinct experience and acquired responsibilities in diabetes care (e.g. having diabetes and caring for a child with T1DM)
Lossless exchange of data: limitations of localisation data exchange standards and their effect on interoperability
No full textLocalisation is a relatively new field, one that is constantly changing with the latest technology to offer services that are cheaper, faster and of higher quality. As the complexity of localisation projects increases, interoperability between different localisation tools and technologies becomes ever more important. However, lack of interoperability is a significant problem in localisation. One important aspect of interoperability in localisation is the lossless exchange of data between different technologies and different stages of the overall process.
Standards play a key role in enabling interoperability. Several standards exist that address data-exchange interoperability. The XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) has been developed by a Technical Committee of Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) and is an important standard for enabling interoperability in the localisation domain. It aims to enable the lossless exchange of localisation data and metadata between different technologies. With increased adoption, XLIFF is maturing. Solutions to significant issues relating to the current version of the XLIFF standard and its adoption are being proposed in the context of the development of XLIFF version 2. Important matters for a successful adoption of the standard, such as standard-compliance, conformance and interoperability of technologies claiming to support the standard have not yet been adequately addressed. In this research, we aim to fill this gap by focusing on the identification of limitations of the XLIFF standard and the implementations which are leading to interoperability issues.
First, we conducted a pilot study to gain an in-depth understanding of the features of the localisation data-exchange standards. The pilot study involved a systematic comparison of XLIFF and Localisation Content Exchange, Microsoft’s internal localisation data-exchange format. Having gained a better understanding of the features of localisation data-exchange standards, in our main experiment we focused on identifying the limitations of XLIFF and its implementations. For this purpose we have constructed the first large corpus of XLIFF files that has enabled us to perform various statistical
analyses on the real usage of features of the XLIFF specification. From this research, we could not only identify the limitations that are leading to interoperability issues, but also important features of the standard for successful syntactic and semantic interoperability. In parallel to our main experiment, we designed and created a prototype based on service oriented architecture to investigate interoperability issues among distributed localisation tools and technologies used in the localisation process.
As the main contribution of our thesis, we propose a framework called XML - Data Interoperability Usage Evaluation (XML-DIUE), a systematic approach based on our main experiment, to the identification of limitations of data-exchange standards and implementations. The framework accomplishes this by helping the standard developers to empirically identify the most important elements, the less important elements, the problematic areas, usage patterns, associated tools, and so on. The proposed framework provides a practical approach for improving interoperability of data-exchange formats
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A mixed methods investigation on perceived quality in crowdsourced localisation
No full textWith thousands of language communities worldwide and ever growing access to technology and internet communication, the demand for translation of content has been growing steadily. Traditional forms of language translation cannot cope with the future needs and demands of humanity. One of the solutions described and practiced has been localisation crowdsourcing.
However, one of the concerns that have been expressed is that crowdsourced localisation might not provide sufficiently high quality. One perspective on quality is that of perceived quality, which can be influenced by extrinsic cues rather than the actual, objectively observable attributes of a product.
This research asks the following questions:
1. How is quality in localisation defined and to what extent do different groups agree on which aspects of quality are important?
2. What are prevalent attitudes, \u27naive theories\u27 and opinions on crowdsourcing and quality within the localisation field?
3. What is the impact of \u27naive theories\u27 on perceived quality in localisation?
This research uses a mixed methods approach that includes a survey as well as a set of experiments. It targets a range of groups in localisation, from translators and buyers to students and lecturers of translation studies. As a special focus, it includes volunteers and organisations that collaborate with the non-profit organisation The Rosetta Foundation1 (TRF) to provide voluntary, crowdsourced localisation for not-for-profit projects via the platform Trommons2.
Based on the data collected and analysed, this research concluded that accurate representation of meaning was of primary concern for all groups. In addition, specific aspects were raised for each group that were congruent with their main interests and perspectives. Overall, attitudes towards crowdsourced localisation were positive. However,
1 https://www.therosettafoundation.org/
2 https://trommons.org/
crowdsourcing also introduced quality uncertainty, which was especially prevalent in respondents with lower levels of training, experience and specialisation
An empirical study on the influence of translation suggestions’ provenance metadata
No full textIn the area of localisation there is a constant pressure to automate processes in order to reduce the cost and time associated with the ever growing workload. One of the main approaches to achieve this objective is to reuse previously-localised data and metadata using standardised translation memory formats –such as the LISA Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) format or the OASIS XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF).
This research aims to study the effectiveness and importance of the localisation metadata associated with the translation suggestions provided by Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Firstly, we analysed the way in which localisation data and metadata can be represented in the current specification of XLIFF (1.2). Secondly, we designed a new format called the Localisation Memory Container (LMC) to organise previously-localised XLIFF files in a single container. Finally, we developed a prototype (XLIFF Phoenix) to leverage the data and metadata from the LMC into untranslated XLIFF files in order to improve the task of the translator by helping CAT tools, not only to produce more translation suggestions easily, but also to enrich those suggestions with relevant metadata.
In order to test whether this “CAT-oriented” enriched metadata has any influence in the behaviour of the translator involved in the localisation process, we designed an experimental translation task with translators using a modified CAT tool (Swordfish II). A pilot study with translation students was carried out in December 2010 to test the validity of our methodology. The main study took place between December 2011 and January 2012 with the participation of 33 professional translators divided into three groups.
The analysis of the gathered data indicated that groups which received the translation memory obtained on average significantly better results (less time and better quality scores) than the group which did not receive any translation memory. In terms of participants’ attitude towards the metadata received, most of the participants did not find it distracting, and the majority of them would prefer a translation memory which
contained metadata; finally, half of participants could mention a case where it was helpful for them.
In this thesis we present our research objectives, the methodology and procedures, an analysis of the results of the experiments and finally we extract reasoned conclusions based on evidence of the importance of metadata during the localisation process
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Towards more reliable cross-comparison of feature location techniques
No full textFeature location (FL) is the task of finding the source code that implements
a specific, user-observable functionality in a software system. Given its key
role in many software maintenance tasks, it is an area of much research and a
wide variety of Feature Location Techniques (FLTs), that rely on source code
structure, dynamic or textual analysis, have been proposed by researchers.
As FLTs evolve and more novel FLTs are introduced, it is important to
perform comparison studies to investigate Which FLTs are relatively better?
However, this thesis shows through a systematic survey of the FL literature
that performing such comparisons would be an arduous process, based on
the large number of techniques to be compared, the heterogeneous nature of
the empirical designs employed to evaluate those FLTs, the lack of openly
available, executable FLTs for re-evaluation, and existing, contradictory per-
formance\u27s results.
This thesis builds on this Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to present
an empirical design cognisant of FL goals which is based on best empirical
practice and common empirical design elements. Then, in order to facilitate
the cross-comparison of FLTs going forward, this thesis employs the resultant
empirical design to cross-compare replicable FLTs, in order to relate their performance.
The results suggest that Vector Space Model (VSM) with lucene
implementation is frequently the best performing openly-available, Information
Retrieval(IR)-based FLT but that the performance of specific FLTs is
(partially) driven/controlled by feature-sets differences.
Towards understanding the impact of feature-set differences, this thesis de-
fines a feature-metric suite that is assessed in terms of its effect on FLTs\u27
performance, holistically across FLTs and on the individual FLTs.
As contributions, this thesis presents empirical guidelines and an empirical
framework that allows better goal-cognisant, performance-based ranking of
FLTs and also helps to explain the performance of FLTs in relation to the
employed feature-set. It is intended that these advances will, ultimately, allow
a standard selection of the systems and benchmarks during FLT evaluation
which will not only facilitate increased reliability across FLTs\u27 evaluations but
will also greatly improve generality knowledge towards FLT\u27s recommendation
for practitioners given a specific software system. This work is seen as a step
towards standardizing evaluation in the field, thus facilitating comparison
across FLTs
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