Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisor: Viswanathan Krishnan. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In the aging world of today, more attentions are grabbed towards studies on elderly. New facilities and technologies are emerged to serve to the elderly, maketheir life easier, better and more useful. Having participated in a study on thequality of life of the elderly in Europe, it was aimed to run a similar project toresearch the quality of life of the elderly in a Non-EU country. This was donethrough the research questions “What is the quality of life for them?” and “Howa designer, focused on service design, can improve their quality of life?”The knowledge for the study was obtained from fields Quality of Life of ElderlyPeople, Service Design, Service Design Process, and Qualitative Research. As thekey country for this study, Iran was chosen. Study on the target group in thiscountry was done through Cultural Probes and in analyzing the probes, Processfor Empathy in Design was used. To visualize the results of the target group study,Affinity Diagrams and Personas were drawn.The result was designing a service for the target group, which is presented byConcept Scenario, Storyboards, System Maps and Blueprints. In this concept,called “Virtual Family”, the personas are encouraged to be members of a networkwhich is supported by an organization/community in terms of health, social life,leisure activities and educational programs. This network is forming a virtualfamily regarding the traditional values and ethics which are important for thisage group. Additionally it supports them with entertainment and educationalprograms. Later on, the service concept was evaluated by a number of people inthe same age and social group of the target group. Evaluators found the conceptan excellent complement for mentioned target group who are on the verge oflosing their family and social structure, but the organizational system of the contextcountry should be studied to know if it is planning is practical in that context.

Thesis (PhD) - Swinburne University of Technology, 2005. / Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Swinburne University of Technology - 2005. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

The Rapid Prototyping of Application Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) program seeks an improvement in the time required to take a design from concept to fielded prototype or to upgrade an existing design, with similar improvements in design quality and life cycle cost. The term Rapid System Prototyping signifies the need to develop systems in significantly less time or with significantly less effort, and thus provides a solution to the main problem facing the design community. Entire systems are synthesized from models in hardware description languages (HDLs). The goal of this thesis is to provide a methodology for rapidly creating a database, that can be reused thus decreasing design cost and time for both current and future projects. To demonstrate the methodology, this thesis describes the development of VHDL primitives supporting digital signal processing (DSP) and image processing operations for two of the RASSP specific applications: 1) Synthetic aperture radar image processor (SAR) and 2) Automatic target recognition (ATR) image processing algorithm. Different techniques are investigated to populate these VHDL libraries using commercial tools. The thesis proposes techniques for solving some problems related to the use of commercial tools to generate VHDL code. It includes a full implementation of the SAR processor algorithm developed from DSP primitives. / Master of Science

Påbyggnation är en typ av hållbar stadsutveckling som blir allt vanligare i Sverige. Ett av de gemensamma målen vid påbyggnation, likt andra byggprojekt, är att uppnå en viss förbestämd kvalitet. Designkvalitet kan ses som en del av kvalitetsmålet. Problemet är att designkvalitet är svårdefinierat, ändå finns det ett behov av att mäta och hantera den här typen av värde, dels för kunden och samhället, dels för representanter i design- och byggprocessen. För att tillgodose behovet kan en utvärdering av designkvalitet vara en möjlig lösning. Ett av de senaste verktygen för detta är design quality evaluation (DQE) wheel, utvecklat av Eilouti (2020). Verktyget kan användas för att dra lärdom av projekt vilket blir särskilt viktigt i mindre utforskade områden, till exempel påbyggnation. Frågan är: hur uppnås designkvalitet? Forskning indikerar att arkitekten spelar en central roll. Arkitekten är den aktör som genom sina designintentioner ska se till att kundens mål och behov uppfylls. Däremot finns det få empiriska stöd för kopplingen mellan designintention och designkvalitet. Därför är det relevant att undersöka hur begreppen förhåller sig till varandra. Undersökningen kan ge insikt i hur designkvalitet uppnås, främst genom ökad förståelse för hur arkitektens designintentioner påverkar det slutliga resultatet. För att säkerställa att designintentioner leder till uppnådd designkvalitet pekar forskning på att intentionerna måste kopplas till mätbara resultat. DQE kan vara en lösning som erbjuder dessa mätbara resultat. Examensarbetets syfte är att bidra med ökad förståelse för hur designkvalitet uppnås genom att undersöka relationen mellan designkvalitet och designintention. Undersökningen möjliggörs genom en tillämpning av DQE. Verktyget kan erbjuda den struktur som behövs för att erhålla arkitektens utvärdering av designkvalitet och ta reda på bakomliggande designintentioner. För att uppnå syftet används två primära metoder: först en litteraturundersökning, sedan en fallstudie. I den första delen jämförs och kontrasteras olika teoretiska synsätt på designkvalitet och designintention. Därefter föreslås en definition av begreppen som blir gällande i arbetets kontext. Arbetets andra del innebär en djupdykning i sju olika påbyggnadsprojekt där uppdragsansvarig eller handläggande arkitekt intervjuas. Intervjuerna genomförs för att erhålla arkitektens utvärdering av designkvalitet och ta reda på bakomliggande designintentioner. Resultatet analyseras i tre steg för att kunna dra slutsatser om relationen mellan designkvalitet och designintention. Litteraturundersökningen resulterar i två föreslagna definitioner. (Se avsnitt 3.1.4 respektive 3.3.4 för fullständiga definitioner.) Designkvalitet används i regel för att beskriva en byggnads goda egenskaper med avseende på design. Begreppet är svårdefinierat på grund av dess subjektiva karaktär och därmed omöjliga separation från personliga, samhällsenliga och kulturella förutsättningar. Designintention är en designers beskrivning av mål, syften eller orsaker bakom designrelaterade beslut. Designintentioner skapas utifrån en designers tolkning av kundens prioriterade mål. Resultatet blir därför en kombination av designerns och kundens värderingar. Fallstudien visar att estetik, stads- & miljömässig lämplighet samt identitet & karaktär är de parametrar som prioriteras högst av arkitekterna. Samma parametrar leder även till högst designkvalitet i arkitekternas utvärderingar. Resultatet talar för att arkitekternas prioriterade designintentioner tenderar att resultera i uppnådd designkvalitet. Det betyder att relationen mellan designkvalitet och designintention existerar och att arkitekten är nyckelpersonen i sammanhanget. Analysen indikerar att relationen utgörs av en problemlösande process där arkitekten ansvarar för att säkerställa att designintentionerna leder till uppnådd designkvalitet. Processen är känslig eftersom den påverkas av kundens vilja och arkitektens förmåga att tillämpa sina designintentioner i praktiken. Examensarbetet belyser vikten av arkitektens arbete från intention till slutlig produkt eftersom det kan främja designkvalitet i den färdiga byggnaden. Avgränsningen till påbyggnadsprojekt bidrar till att vidga tillämpningsområdet för designkvalitet och designintention. Tillämpningen av DQE var en förutsättning för examensarbetets genomförande. Däremot kan det argumenteras för att verktyget gör större nytta som diskussionsunderlag än för att kvantifiera designkvalitet. / Vertical extensions of buildings are a type of sustainable urban development with increasing occurrence in Sweden. One of the commonly held goals when vertically extending a building, as in other construction projects, is to achieve a certain pre-determined quality. Design quality can be seen as a part of the quality goal. The problem is that design quality is difficult to define, still there is a need for measuring and managing this type of value, not only for the client and society, but also for actors within the design and building process. To satisfy the need an evaluation of design quality might be a possible solution. One of the most recent tools for this is the design quality evaluation (DQE) wheel, developed by Eilouti (2020). The tool can be used to learn lessons from a project which is especially important in less researched areas, e.g. vertical extensions of buildings. The question is: how is design quality achieved? Research indicates that the architect plays a crucial role. The architect is the actor who through their design intentions should ensure that the clients’ goals and needs are fulfilled. However, there are few empirical studies supporting the connection between design intentions and design quality. That is why it is relevant to examine how these concepts relate to one another. The examination can provide insight into how design quality is achieved, mainly by increased understanding of how the architects’ design intentions are affecting the result. To ensure that the design intentions lead to achieved design quality research imply that the intentions must be connected to testable outcomes. DQE might be a solution providing these testable outcomes.  The purpose of this master thesis is to contribute with increased understanding of how design quality is achieved by examining the relation between design quality and design intention. The examination is enabled due to the application of DQE. The tool can offer a structure for acquiring the architect’s evaluation of design quality and finding out the underlying design intentions. To achieve the purpose two primary methods are being used: first a literature review, then a case study. The first part compares different theoretical viewpoints on design quality and design intention. Thereafter two definitions are proposed which are applicable within the context of this thesis. The second part takes a deeper dive into seven different vertical extension projects where each responsible architect is interviewed. The interviews are conducted to acquire the architect’s evaluation of design quality and to find out the underlying design intentions. The results are analysed in three stages in order to make conclusions about the relation between design quality and design intention.  The literature review results in two proposed definitions. (See section 3.1.4 and 3.3.4 for the complete Swedish definitions.) Design quality is often used to describe a building’s good properties regarding design. The concept is difficult to define because of its subjective nature and therefore impossible separation from personal, societal, and cultural conditions. Design intention is a designer’s description of goals, purposes or reasons behind design related decisions. Design intentions are based on a designer’s interpretation of the client’s prioritised goals. The result is therefore a combination of the designer’s and the client’s values. The case study shows that aesthetics, urban & environmental fit, and identity & character are the parameters which the architects prioritise the highest. The same parameters lead to the highest design quality according to the architects’ evaluations. The results show that the architects’ prioritised design intentions tend to lead to achieved design quality. This means that the relation between design quality and design intention exists and that the architect is the key person in this context. The analysis indicates that the relation consists of a problem-solving process where the architect is responsible of ensuring that the design intentions lead to achieved design quality. The process is sensitive because it is affected by the client’s will and the architect’s ability to apply their design intentions in practise.  This thesis highlights the importance of the architect’s work from intention to product because it can favour the design quality of the finished building. The demarcation to vertical extensions of buildings contribute to widen the areas of applicability for design quality and design intention. The application of DQE was a prerequisite for the realisation of this thesis. However, it can be argued that the tool is better used as a basis for discussion rather than to quantify design quality. / Timber on Top

O trabalho propõe diretrizes e métodos que contribuem para a qualidade do projeto de edifícios, orientados tecnologicamente e baseados em princípios de racionalização e construtibilidade, dando suporte a uma nova organização do projeto para implantação em programas de qualidade total de empresas construtoras. Os principais conceitos da qualidade são discutidos e as relações projeto-processo de produção são analisadas sob os prismas históricos e contemporâneo, levando a revisão das funções do projeto no empreendimento em um enfoque global. Os conceitos de desenvolvimento tecnológico, racionalização e construtibilidade são apresentados e analisados, explicitando como eles alteram o processo de projeto e aumentam a eficiência da produção. Duas experiências inovadoras de projeto são descritas: o trabalho realizado por um escritório piloto da universidade, envolvendo o uso de protótipos; e uma pesquisa sobre coordenação de projetos, em convênio com empresas de incorporação e construção. A metodologia proposta resulta das diretrizes da qualidade, racionalização e construtibilidade, sugerindo mudanças nos esquemas tradicionais de arranjo de equipe, desenvolvimento e coordenação de projeto para obter a garantia da qualidade do processo. Conclui-se com o exame das dificuldades de implantar a proposta dentro de programas da qualidade total nas empresas de incorporação e construção. / This thesis proposes guidelines and methods to improve the building design quality, based on technological needs and on constructive rationalization and buildability principles. It results into an innovative design procedure that can be put inside total quality management programs for private building companies. The main concepts related to construction quality are discussed as well as the relationship between building design and production process, which is analyzed under historical and up-dated points of view. The concepts for construction technology development, constructive rationalization and buildability are presented and their effects in changing the building design process and improving the efficiency of the construction activities are analyzed. Two different experiences of innovative design methods are described. The first one involves a prototype-aided design carried on by a civil engineering student training group at this University and the second one is a result of a cooperative research program between a private company and the University. The proposed design methodology includes the quality, rationalization and buildability approaches which results in changes to the traditional design team arrangement, the design development and coordination and help for the quality assurance of the building process as a whole. The difficulties for the implementation of the proposal in private building companies are examined.

Tornar a verificação funcional mais eficiente, em termos de gasto de recursos de computação e tempo, é necessário para a contínua evolução dos sistemas digitais. A verificação funcional com geração de casos de teste aleatória ajustada por cobertura é uma das alternativas identificadas nos últimos anos para acelerar a execução de testbenches. Várias abordagens têm sido testadas com sucesso na verificação funcional de núcleos de hardware, no domínio de aplicação dos processadores de propósito geral, porém, influenciada por características específicas do domínio, dos modelos de cobertura e do espaço possível de casos de teste. Por outro lado, pouca atenção tem sido dispensada à verificação ajustada por cobertura em outros domínios de aplicação como nos de sistemas de comunicação e de sistemas multimídia. Estes casos são tratados no presente estudo, com os fatores específicos que influenciam os resultados dos testbenches com geração ajustada. Entre os fatores relevantes para isto, foram identificados o tamanho do espaço de casos de teste e a distribuição da ocorrência dos eventos de cobertura, sendo necessária para o desenvolvimento do presente trabalho, a realização de várias alterações na construção de testbenches com ajuste. A geração de casos de teste ajustada por cobertura é realizada a partir da realimentação da informação do estado da cobertura, para se determinar os casos de teste necessários para tornar o progresso da cobertura mais rápido. Esta realimentação depende da criação, por aprendizado automático, de modelos que relacionem os casos de teste com as ocorrências dos eventos de cobertura. Com núcleos de hardware realistas e de grande porte, neste trabalho, foram aplicadas as técnicas de aprendizado de redes Bayesianas e data mining com árvores de classificação, já utilizados em outras pesquisas mais específicas. Estas técnicas se caracterizam por requerer processos de maximização local para seu funcionamento. Neste trabalho, foi avaliada também a adoção da técnica de Support Vector Machine (SVM), por se basear em um processo de maximização global. Os resultados demonstram que as técnicas de geração de casos de teste ajustadas por cobertura precisam ser adaptadas às características do domínio de aplicação, para conseguir acelerar a execução dos testbenches. / Making functional verification more efficient in terms of computational and time resources is mandatory in order to maintain the evolution of digital systems. Coverage driven verification is one of the recently used alternatives for speeding up the execution of testbenches. Many approaches have been successfully applied to the functional verification of cores in the application domain of general purpose processors, however, being influenced by the specific coverage and testcase dimensionality characteristics of this domain. Furthermore, little attention has been given to the use of coverage driven verification in other domains, such as communication systems and multimedia systems. These domains have been considered in the present study, together with the specific factors that have influenced the coverage driven testbench results. Among these factors, one has identified the size of the testcase space and the distribution of the coverage events; making it necessary to the development of this work, several changes regarding the construction of the coverage driven testbenches. Coverage driven testecase generation is performed by feedbacking the coverage status information and selecting those testcases that lead to the improvement of the coverage progression rate. This feedback depends on the construction of a model, by automatic learning, which relates testcases and the observations of coverage events. During this work, realistic large IP cores were verified with the following coverage driven techniques: Bayesian networks and classification tree data mining. These techniques, previously used in specific research works, adopt local optimization in their processing. In the present work, coverage driven verification with support vector machine learning, is tested due to the fact that this technique is based in a global optimization process. Results of this work have shown the need of adaptation of the coverage driven verification to the application domain characteristics, in order to obtain meaningful acceleration in testbench execution.

Tornar a verificação funcional mais eficiente, em termos de gasto de recursos de computação e tempo, é necessário para a contínua evolução dos sistemas digitais. A verificação funcional com geração de casos de teste aleatória ajustada por cobertura é uma das alternativas identificadas nos últimos anos para acelerar a execução de testbenches. Várias abordagens têm sido testadas com sucesso na verificação funcional de núcleos de hardware, no domínio de aplicação dos processadores de propósito geral, porém, influenciada por características específicas do domínio, dos modelos de cobertura e do espaço possível de casos de teste. Por outro lado, pouca atenção tem sido dispensada à verificação ajustada por cobertura em outros domínios de aplicação como nos de sistemas de comunicação e de sistemas multimídia. Estes casos são tratados no presente estudo, com os fatores específicos que influenciam os resultados dos testbenches com geração ajustada. Entre os fatores relevantes para isto, foram identificados o tamanho do espaço de casos de teste e a distribuição da ocorrência dos eventos de cobertura, sendo necessária para o desenvolvimento do presente trabalho, a realização de várias alterações na construção de testbenches com ajuste. A geração de casos de teste ajustada por cobertura é realizada a partir da realimentação da informação do estado da cobertura, para se determinar os casos de teste necessários para tornar o progresso da cobertura mais rápido. Esta realimentação depende da criação, por aprendizado automático, de modelos que relacionem os casos de teste com as ocorrências dos eventos de cobertura. Com núcleos de hardware realistas e de grande porte, neste trabalho, foram aplicadas as técnicas de aprendizado de redes Bayesianas e data mining com árvores de classificação, já utilizados em outras pesquisas mais específicas. Estas técnicas se caracterizam por requerer processos de maximização local para seu funcionamento. Neste trabalho, foi avaliada também a adoção da técnica de Support Vector Machine (SVM), por se basear em um processo de maximização global. Os resultados demonstram que as técnicas de geração de casos de teste ajustadas por cobertura precisam ser adaptadas às características do domínio de aplicação, para conseguir acelerar a execução dos testbenches. / Making functional verification more efficient in terms of computational and time resources is mandatory in order to maintain the evolution of digital systems. Coverage driven verification is one of the recently used alternatives for speeding up the execution of testbenches. Many approaches have been successfully applied to the functional verification of cores in the application domain of general purpose processors, however, being influenced by the specific coverage and testcase dimensionality characteristics of this domain. Furthermore, little attention has been given to the use of coverage driven verification in other domains, such as communication systems and multimedia systems. These domains have been considered in the present study, together with the specific factors that have influenced the coverage driven testbench results. Among these factors, one has identified the size of the testcase space and the distribution of the coverage events; making it necessary to the development of this work, several changes regarding the construction of the coverage driven testbenches. Coverage driven testecase generation is performed by feedbacking the coverage status information and selecting those testcases that lead to the improvement of the coverage progression rate. This feedback depends on the construction of a model, by automatic learning, which relates testcases and the observations of coverage events. During this work, realistic large IP cores were verified with the following coverage driven techniques: Bayesian networks and classification tree data mining. These techniques, previously used in specific research works, adopt local optimization in their processing. In the present work, coverage driven verification with support vector machine learning, is tested due to the fact that this technique is based in a global optimization process. Results of this work have shown the need of adaptation of the coverage driven verification to the application domain characteristics, in order to obtain meaningful acceleration in testbench execution.

Values and concerns of project participants have influence on design quality as well as on the design process itself. These determine the functional, social and &aelig / sthetic characteristics of the project that are necessary to achieve client satisfaction. The issues of value and quality are compared within the context of architectural programming, including their theoretical and philosophical ground as well as current management techniques. Value and quality can be misunderstood and confused with each other / therefore, it is vital for project participants to have a common understanding of terminology and meaning. This study includes a comprehensive literature survey on architectural programming and design quality. The current approaches to the construction project process in Turkey were observed through analyzing an hotel project in Turgutreis, Turkey. Supporting tools like Project Definition Rating Index (PDRI) and Design Quality Indicators (DQI) were studied in detail and discussed by the project participants who involved in and affected the design of the project. This study on architectural programming aimed to explore opportunities for identifying and delivering values into the current process of construction projects. It attempted to claim due recognition for designers in that they had an important role to play in developing better quality buildings and that they designed buildings within pertinent social, political and cultural contexts. It was expected that analysis of participants&amp / #8217 / values would provide an understanding of the elaborate decision-making that architects have to perform in order to produce added value in designs, and of how architects resolve design problems.

Parking and parks are both crucial to downtown economic development. Many studies have shown that downtown parks significantly contribute to increasing surrounding property values and attract residents, businesses and investment. Meanwhile, sufficient available parking promotes accessibility to downtown that also contributes to increasing tax revenue for local government. However, both downtown parks and parking raise problems. Many downtown parks have become places for drug dealing, shooting and vandalism since the decline of downtowns in the 1960s. At the same time, residents and visitors alike oftentimes complain about the lack of parking while in fact parking spaces occupy a large amount of land in downtown. Parks and parking also compete for space in downtown where land value is higher than the rest of the city. To address these issues, several cities have begun to address the relationship between parking and parks by placing them in one place: park on the ground level and parking underneath. This typology is defined as a park-above-parking project in this research. However, this phenomenon has received little scholarly attention. To justify the existing situation of park-above-parking and to contemplate future projects, this research provides a spatial-based investigation to discuss the empirical relationships between social cultural and political-economic impacts, design quality, and related policy-making processes based on four cases. A longitudinal study that traces the direct and indirect impacts of park-above-parking projects was conducted for each case through both qualitative and quantitative methods. This research provides a set of methods for the measurement of contributions of park-above-parking downtown, connections between park quality, social use and adjacent economic growth, recommendations for land use planning policy-making and guidelines for the design of park-above-parking projects.