The focus of this research are ideation tools and their ability to catalyse ideas to address complex design problems. Complex design problems change over time and the interactions among the components of the problem and the interaction between the problem and its environment are of such that the system as a whole cannot be fully understood simply by analyzing its components (Cilliers 1998, pp. I). Ideation for this research is defined as a process of generating, developing and communicating ideas that are critical to the design process (Broadbent, in Fowles 1979, pp. 15). Based on Karni and Arciszewski, who stated that ideation tools should act more like an observer or suggester rather than controller or an expert, I defne design ideation tools as tools or methods that enhance, increase and improve the user's ability to generate ideas with the client (Karni and Arciszewski 1997; Reineg and Briggs 2007). Based on a survey of over 70 ideation tools, protocol analysis of design activities, a web survey and semistructured interviews, I conclude that designers and clients may not have sufficient knowledge of ideation or ideation tools in either testing or practice as a catalyst for generating possibilities and that measuring ideation tools based on how many ideas they generate is misleading because it relates creativity and idea generation but does not adequately reflect the participants' experience. This research suggests that participants' cultural perceptions of design ideation and the design process actively inhibit idea generation and that a shift from design outcome led ideation tool design to designing ideation tools that engage design contexts are necessary to effectively address complex design problems. This research identifed a gap in ideation tools for designers to collaborate with their clients during the ideation phase to catalyse possibilities to complex design problems as the contribution to new knowledge.

A digraph of z points and br arcs can be represented by its adjacency matrix. Within a computer this means a storage of z elements. By suppress1ng obv1ous information, a reduction can be made 1n the storage reqUired. The branches list representation stores the non-zero elements of the adjacency matr1x and requ1res only (br + z) elements. Any trees reqUired for computer manipulation are rooted and ordered. They can be represented in the two arrays below[j] and posnbr[j]1 where below[j] stores the below of a point j and posnbr[j] its pos1tive neighbour. However, th1s representation is very inconvenient for going up the tree. Thus another representation called the rd, lu representation is defined such that it is nearly as easy to go up the tree as to go down it. A few procedures were written which enabled an ordered-rooted tree to be divided into two parts and rejoined together at different points. This technique forms a basis for Top tree and Transportree. A succesfUl investigation was also carried out to find a relationship between labelled ordered-rooted trees and labelled binary pendant trees. Top tree is a heuristic method of obtaining a good solution in a relatively short time to the Travelling Salesman Problem. It is based on the observation that the majority of lines of a minimal solution (to the problem) appear in the minimal spanning tree (for that same graph). The technique is to reduce multi-membered stars of the minimal spanning tree so as to have all points incident to at most two lines. This seems to give very good results on both random data and published examples. The problem of minimising the bandwidth of a matrix was also examined. The problem was re-stated as that of having to label the points of a large graph so that the maximum difference between the labels of adjacent pOints is a minimum. The problem of doing this quickly was not solved but here again, techniques based on the spanning tree for that graph were evolved which reduced the initial bandwidth considerably. An algorithm was written which did find the minimum bandwidth labelling by going through the permutation list. But due to the size of the list this was slow and impractical for graphs with z greater than 20. The nature or this work was such that it was suitable to tackle the Shortest Paths ( through a digraph) Problem. The tree spanning technique was developed so that for large, highly sparse digraphs ( or networks), it was found to be more erficient than the Cascade method, one of the better matrix type methods. Finally H.I.Scoins method of solving the Transportation Problem was refined (and called Transportree ) so that the tree was not kept in the below array (i.e. as a rooted tree) but in the rd, lu representation. This results in the time spent list processing in order to go up the tree being drasticaly reduced. This last section was merely an exercise in showing how ordered-rooted trees and their manipulation are of use in a wide array of problems.

Although web technology is widely used in today's classrooms, educationists are still unsure of its capacity to generate meaningful learning. As the numbers of web-based learning (WBL) materials keep increasing tremendously, more students will rely on such resources in their learning process. A WBL that applies a constructivist approach offers an alternative as it allows the users to explore the environment based on a given problem. This study investigates the effectiveness of two learning approaches in a WBL environment (constructivist and objectivist) on the achievemnt of students in terms of their knowledge level, retention and motiation with different cognitive style (field independent, FI and field dependent, FD). Two verson of a WBL material (constructivist and objectivist) were developed for this purpose. A 2x2 quasiexperiment pre-test, post-test design was utilized. The sample for this study comprised a total of 141 form four students from two secondary schools in Malaysia. The findings revealed that: (i) the FI students performed significantly better than the FD students after learning through the web learning based on constructivist approach. (ii) there were no significant different between the FI students and the FD student after learning through the web learning based on objectivist approach (iii) the FI students who learned through the web learning based on constructivist approach performed significantly better than the FI studetns who learned through the web learning based on objectivist approach. (iv) there were no significant differences for the FD students after learning using both approaches. (v) there were no significant difference on students' retention and motivation towards web learning. These findings suggest that the constructivist approach has the potential to be an effective learning approachj in a web environment. Other than that, to ensure the web based instruction effectiveness, cognititve style differences is among the factors that should be considered and applied in the said learning material environment.

The purpose of this work is to determine whether the Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) distributed computing architecture, that is so widely used for business applications, can serve as a platform for a parallel processing computing cluster suitable for scientific and numerical processing. This paper describes a research project currently being undertaken to implement a parallel processing computing system using EJB and test it to determine what potential usefulness it may have for solving computationally intensive numerical problems. If an enterprise or organization that is already using EJB for its distributed business or scientific applications could also harness this computing power to solve computationally intensive problems, it could dramatically broaden the usefulness of an existing computing infrastructure. An EJB based parallel processing cluster such as this could also be used as the infrastructure for a Grid Computing Environment (GCE). Class libraries would be used to allow application programs to access grid computational resources, while the services provided by the EJB distributed computing environment would be used to provide a foundation for a computational grid.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis contributes a theory for the field of interaction design based on philosophical pragmatism. The theory frames interaction design as a pragmatic experience shaped by the inquiries of designers. The contributions of the theory are that it positions the designer at the centre of a theory, describes interaction design practice to be more than a collection of methods and strategies, and provides a sound basis for generating and verifying new knowledge through design. The thesis describes and analyzes two interaction design research projects through self-reflexive accounts that illustrate the proposed theory. The projects are a tangible museum guide and a responsive environment for physical play. The thesis examines the value of understanding interaction design through pragmatism and how interaction design when viewed as experience opens the field up to a new theoretical framework. The two interaction design research projects arc described as design inquiries constituted by a design inquirer, designer intentions, and design rationales. Further descriptions of the projects show interaction design to be comprised of design actions based on judgment and interpretation. Interaction design can be assessed by the degree to which there is integrity between the design inquiry and design actions, as well as by the transferability and discursiveness of the design inquiry findings that are relevant to the wider field of interaction design and related disciplines like human-computer interaction. The implications of the theory lead to new ways of mobilizing interaction design research and interaction design education. The pragmatic theory shows capacity for clear descriptions and analysis of interaction design inquiries in ways that extract and communicate new knowledge from interaction design practice and research. The theory shows interaction design to be a distinct and independent field of inquiry that generates knowledge through design.

No description available.