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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-136). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-135). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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Partizipative Softwaregestaltung zielt darauf ab, sowohl die Softwarequalität als auch die Kontrolle der NutzerInnen über die Gestaltung ihrer Arbeitssituation und -umgebung zu erhöhen. In diesem Beitrag diskutieren wir anhand der Erfahrungen, die wir mit der (Weiter-) Entwicklung einer Groupware für ein virtuelles Netzwerk von FreiberuflerInnen gesammelt haben, inwiefern und warum sich Vorgehensweisen der partizipativen Softwaregestaltung zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung virtueller Gemeinschaften eignen. Die vorgestellte Fallstudie verdeutlicht, welch wichtige Rolle die Wahl der Vorgehensmethodik für die Entfaltung virtueller Gemeinschaften spielt, wenn es darum geht, das nötige Verständnis und die Kooperationsbereitschaft bei sich ständig ändernden Anforderungen - vor allem auch auf organisatorischer Ebene - zu entwickeln.

In the last ten years or so, many interactive aircraft design software packages have been released into the market. One drawback of these packages is that they assume prior knowledge in the field of aircraft design. Also, their main purpose being the preliminary aircraft design in a commercial environment, and are not intended for instructional use. Aircraft Design is an iterative process, and the students in the formative years of training must realise that one year of study is not enough to embrace all the necessary underlying concepts in this field. Most universities present the aircraft design as a classical Problem-Based Learning scenario, where students work in groups, with the group size varying between 5 and 8 students., each with a designated role, to carry out a specific task. The students work through the classical process of preliminary design based largely on textbook methods. Therefore, the need for a preliminary design tool (software) that helps the students to understand, analyse, and evaluate their aircraft design process exists. The developed software does everything that is needed in the preliminary design environment. Students are interactively guided through the design process, in a manner that facilitates lifelong learning. Comprehensive output is provided to highlight the “what if scenarios”. The software consists of many modules such as input (user interface), weight estimation, flight performance, cost estimation, take-off analysis, parametric studies, optimisation, and dynamic stability. Due to the large number of input design variables, a full interactive Graphical-User-Interface (GUI) is developed to enable students to evaluate their designs quickly. Object-Oriented-Programming (OOP) is used to create the GUI environment. The stability and control derivatives computed in this work are largely based on analytical techniques. However, a facility is provided in the software to create the data input file required to run a software package produced by USAF, called DATCOM, that enables computation of the dynamic stability and control derivatives that can be ultimately used in flight simulation work. Amongst all the variables used in aircraft design, aircraft weight is the most significant. A new weight estimation module has been developed to increase the accuracy of estimation to better than 5%. Its output results agree very favourably with the published data of current commercial aircraft such as Airbus and Boeing. Also, a new formula is proposed to estimate the engine weight based on its thrust in the absence of the data available with high degree of accuracy. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the design under consideration, a comprehensive methodology has been developed that can predict the aircraft price as a function of aircraft weight. The Direct Operating Cost (DOC) is also calculated using methods proposed by ATA, NASA, and AEA. Finally, a walk-through of two case studies are presented, one for large transport aircraft and other for small business jet, to show how typical undergraduate students will proceed with the design and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed software.

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Mitchell L. Neilsen / People are more inclined to use tablets instead of other computing devices due to their portability and ease of use. A number of desktop applications are now becoming available as tablet applications, with increasing demand in the market. Android is one of the largest and most popular open source platforms that offer developers complete access to framework APIs in order to develop innovative tablet applications. The objective of this project is to develop an Android application for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Structural Design Software. The GUI for this software is developed to run on tablet devices powered by Android platform. The main features provided by the User Interface include: • Allowing the input to be saved in ASCII text format and displaying the simulation results in PDF format • Allowing the user to select the type of project or view help contents for the projects • Allowing the user to build the simulation for the selected type of project • Allowing the user to send the simulation results to an e-mail The backend for this software is supposed to replace the old FORTRAN source files with Java source files. FORTRAN to Java translation is performed using the FORTRAN to Java (F2J) translator. F2J is intended to translate old FORTRAN math libraries, but was not completely successful in translating these FORTRAN programs. To accomplish successful translation, some features (such as Common Blocks, IO operations) were removed from the FORTRAN source files before translation. After successful translation, the removed features were added again to the translated Java source files. The simulation results provided by the software are useful to design engineers to develop new structural designs.

The goal of this research project was to develop a methodology for designers that assists and quantifies concept design decisions so designers can; enable increase user access; widen the user demographic of interactive digital media; and improve participation and competence with technolgy through play.

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