1,721,076 research outputs found
An Interactive Environment for Dialogue Development: Its Design, Use and Evaluation
No full textThe Author's Interactive Didogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue Management System is an integrated set of direct manipulation tools used by a dialogue author to design and implement human-computer interfaces without writing source code. This paper presents the conceptua! dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based, describes AIDE, and illustrates how a dialope author develops an interface using AIDE. A preliminary empirical evaluation of the use of AIDE versus the use of a programming language to implement an interface shows very encouraging results
An Interactive Environment for Dialogue Development: Its Design, Use and Evaluation
Get PDFThe Author's Interactive Didogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue
Management System is an integrated set of direct manipulation tools used by a dialogue
author to design and implement human-computer interfaces without writing source code.
This paper presents the conceptua! dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based,
describes AIDE, and illustrates how a dialope author develops an interface using AIDE.
A preliminary empirical evaluation of the use of AIDE versus the use of a programming
language to implement an interface shows very encouraging results
On the performance of B-trees using dynamic address computation
No full textThe B-tree is a one of the more popular methods in use today for indexes and inverted files in database management systems. The traditional implementation of a Bâ tree uses many pointers (more than one per key), which can directly affect the performance of the B-tree. A general method of file organization and access (called Dynanic Address Computation) has been described by Cook that can be used to implement B-trees using no pointers. A minimal amount of storage (in addition to the keys) is required. An implementation of Dynamic Address Computation and a B-tree management package is described. Analytical performance measures are derived in an attempt to understand the performance characteristics of the B-tree. It is shown that the additional costs associated with Dynamic Address Computation result in an implementation that is competitive with traditional implementations only for small applications. For very large B-trees, additional work is required to make the performance acceptable. Some examples of possible modifications are discussed.Master of Scienc
A Prototype Assistance Manager for the Simulation Model Development Environment
No full textThe Assistance Manager, one of the tools of the Simulation Model Development Environment (SMDE), is required to provide assistance to a user during the process of model development. This thesis describes the research effort to prototype the SMDE Assistance Manager.
Requirements are set forth and a design is established for the Assistance Manager prototype. The implementation is described, and the Assistance Manager is shown to provide a highly flexible interface between the user and the database of assistance information.
Assessment criteria are established, and the prototype is evaluated. Results of the evaluation indicate that the Assistance Manager incorporates the characteristics considered desirable in online assistance systems, and serves as a basis for future enhancement and development.Master of Scienc
UAN (User Action Notation) Tutor
No full textDevelopment strategies of user-interlaces have been changing rapidly. User-interlaces are no longer the byproducts of the traditional software development process. Interface designers are now more concerned with the usability of the product rather than its pure technical optimization. It has been recognized that higher usability can only be achieved if interfaces are designed by human factors specialists and implemented by software engineers. Clearly, there exists a need for an effective and unambiguous (i.e. non-prose) form of communication between the designers and implementers of user-interlaces.Master of Information System
Vizability: Visualizing Usability Evaluation Data Based on the User Action Framework
No full textOrganizations have recognized usability engineering as a needed step in the development process to ensure the success of any product. As is the case in all competitive settings areas for improvement are scouted and always welcomed. In the case of usability engineering a lot of time, money, equipment, and other resources are spent to gather usability data to identify and resolve usability problems in order to improve their product. The usability data gained from the expenditure of resources is often only applied to the development effort at hand and not reused across projects and across different development groups within the organization. More over, the usability data are often used at a level that forces the organization to only apply the data to that specific development effort. However, if usability data can be abstracted from the specific development effort and analyzed in relation to the process that created and identified the data; the data can then be used and applied over multiple development efforts. The User Action Framework (UAF) is a hierarchical framework of usability concepts that ensures consistency through completeness and precision. The UAF by its nature classifies usability problems at a high level. This high level classification affords usability engineers to not only apply the knowledge gained to the current development effort but to apply the knowledge across multiple development efforts. This author presents a mechanism and a process to allow usability engineers to find insights in their usability data to identify both strengths and weaknesses in their process. In return usability practitioners and companies can increase their return on investment by extending the usefulness of usability data over multiple development efforts.Master of Scienc
A Taxonomy of Usability Characteristics in Virtual Environments
No full textDespite intense and wide-spread research in both virtual environments (VEs) and usability, the exciting new technology of VEs has not yet been closely coupled with the important characteristic of usability --- a necessary coupling if VEs are to reach their full potential. Although numerous methods exist for usability evaluation of interactive computer applications, these methods have well-known limitations, especially for evaluating VEs. Thus, there is a great need to develop usability evaluation methods and criteria specifically for VEs. Our goal is to increase awareness of the need for usability engineering of VEs and to lay a scientific foundation for developing high-impact methods for usability engineering of VEs.
The first step in our multi-year research plan has been accomplished, yielding a comprehensive multi-dimensional taxonomy of usability characteristics specifically for VEs. This taxonomy was developed by collecting and synthesizing information from literature, conferences, World Wide Web (WWW) searches, investigative research visits to top VE facilities, and interviews of VE researchers and developers.
The taxonomy consists of four main areas of usability issues: Users and User Tasks in VEs, The Virtual Model, VE User Interface Input Mechanisms, and VE User Interface Presentation Components. Each of these issues is progressively disclosed and presented at various levels of detail, including specific usability suggestions and context-driven discussion that include a number of references. The taxonomy is a thorough classification, enumeration, and discussion of usability issues in VEs that can be used by VE researchers and developers for usability assessment or simply design.
The author can be reached through http://csgrad.cs.vt.edu/~jgabbard/Master of Scienc
The structure and development of human-computer interfaces
No full textThe Dialogue Management System (DMS), the setting for this research, is a system for designing, implementing, testing, and modifying interactive human-computer systems. As in the early stages of software engineering development, current approaches to human-computer interface design are ad hoc, unstructured, and incomplete. The primary goal of this research has been to develop a structural, descriptive, language-oriented model of human-computer interaction, based on a theory of human-computer interaction. This model is a design and implementation model, serving as the framework for a dialogue engineering methodology for human-computer interface design and interactive tools for human-computer interface implementation.
This research has five general task areas, each building on the previous task. The theory of human-computer interaction is a characterization of the inherent properties of human-computer interaction. Based on observations of humans communicating with computers using a variety of interface types, it addresses the fundamental question of what happens when humans interact with computers. Formalization of the theory has led to a muIti-dimensional dialogue transaction model, which encompasses the set of dialogue components and relationships among them. The model is based on three traditional levels of language: semantic, syntactic, and lexical. Its dimensions allow tailoring of an interface to specific states of the dialogue, based on the sequence of events that might occur during human-computer interaction.
This model has two major manifestations: a dialogue engineering methodology and a set of interactive dialogue implementation tools. The dialogue engineering methodology consists of a set of procedures and a specification notation for the design of human-computer interfaces. The interactive dialogue implementation tools of AIDE provide automated support for implementing human-computer interfaces. The AIDE interface is based on a "what you see is what you get" concept, allowing the dialogue author to implement interfaces without writing programs.
Finally, an evaluation of work has been conducted to determine its efficacy and usefulness in developing human-computer interfaces. A group of subject dialogue authors using AIDE created and modified a prespecified interface in a mean time of just over one hour, while a group of subject application programmers averaged nearly four hours to program the identical interface. Theories, models, methodologies, and tools such as those addressed by this research promise to contribute greatly to the ease of production and evaluation of human-computer interfaces.Ph. D
Implementation of Predicate-Based Protection in MULTISAFE
Get PDFThis paper reports some implementation work done within the MULTI SAFE database protection research project group at Virginia Tech. It describes the evolution of an approach to database security from a formal model of predicate-based protection, through an implementation model, to an on-going implementation. The implementation model is based on a relational database approach to the management of protection information (stored representations of authorizations). Classes of access decision dependency are reviewed. Protection policies, design deci¬sions, and special implementation problems are discussed. Detailed examples are used to illustrate the use of this flexible and generalized approach to database security within the MULTI SAFE system architecture
Teaching Protection in Computing: A Research-oriented Graduate Course
Get PDFThis paper describes a graduate course entitled "Protection in
Computing" given at Virginia Tech.
The course emphasizes selected
computer Science and research aspects of protection.
Following a
general course description, the various topics and reading references
are detailed. A chronological course outline indicates the sequence
of coverage and shows the correlation of reading references to the
topical areas. The use of oral presentations is described
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