Thesis analyses the problematics of determining both qualitative and quantitative parameters for testing on projects involving development of mobile applications. First, content and scope of testing is fixed, followed by the specification of influence model. Methodology is proposed to ascertain the financial and temporal extent of the testing based on obtained influence model.

Text in English / The role that locally relevant services and content can play in the development of societies cannot be underestimated. The proliferation of mobile phones in Africa’s developing countries is a significant enabler, which provides access to such locally relevant services and content. Mobile applications have the potential to support the development of the African continent through bolstering the main mechanisms of innovation, inclusion and efficiency. This has been demonstrated by instances of increased literacy, improved access to health care, banking, crowd sourcing and provision of farming and/or agricultural assistance. Successful cases of such mobile-based services include Kenya’s M-Pesa, which has allowed millions of rural people, who do not have access to traditional banking facilities, to send and receive money as well as pay utility bills and school fees. The development of similar innovative and locally relevant mobile-based solutions, which is currently considered to be in its infancy, is key to improving the lives of people in developing countries. This study identifies the essential components of an innovation ecosystem, for the development and presentation of a Mobile Applications Innovation Ecosystem Framework for Botswana. An innovation ecosystem enables effective interaction amongst entrepreneurs, companies, universities, research organisations, investors and government agencies towards maximising economic impact and potential. To gain a practical understanding of the context in which locally relevant mobile-based services can be developed, the study adopted a pragmatic research approach. Through combining the 4Cs Framework for ICT and the systems theory’s Triple Helix Model of Innovation, the study proceeded to develop the framework using a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. DSR guided the identification of the components, which make up the mobile applications innovation ecosystem within government, industry and higher education sectors, as extracted from the literature review. This process facilitated initial framework designs, which were demonstrated to and evaluated by conveniently sampled stakeholders from relevant helices. Thereafter a synthesised framework was presented for evaluation by knowledgeable professionals from the mobile applications innovation ecosystem. The study contributes to the theoretical knowledgebase by presenting a theoretical framework for understanding ICT4D innovation frameworks and mobile applications / School of Computing / Ph. D. (Information Systems)

Master of Science / Department of Computing and Information Sciences / Daniel A. Andresen / Present times most of the applications allow users to set profiles and activate them manually. Also, there is no such application to alert the calling person automatically whenever we are busy in a meeting. Auto Profile is an application which addresses these issues. Using this application, a custom profile can be created and activated. The user of this application can create any number of custom profiles with their own timings depending on their requirements from the available set of ringer modes such as vibration, silent, normal modes. All these settings will be changed automatically when they define a profile and set it as active. Every profile can be scheduled according to their wish. Also, users can define how often and how long they would like to activate the selected profile. Auto Profile Switcher will recognize their profile based on the current time and it will apply the right profile at the right time according to the given settings. For instance, they can save a home profile and a work profile, and the application will automatically switch from one to other automatically, without any user action. It's also possible for the users to apply manually saved profile wherever they are. Also, the application allows users not to bother about the calls from important persons when they are in some important meeting or busy. Automatically profile is activated as scheduled and sends a respective alert to the caller according to the profile activated. Auto Profile application is user-friendly and easy to use. The proposed application is developed for the android platform, which is used to create custom profiles and make sure that the tasks are executed as scheduled. This relieves users as they do not need to bother about the calls when they are in some important meeting or busy. As this is a mobile application users can easily organize their action wherever they are with ease.

Energy consumption and its management have been clearly identified as a challenge in computing and communication system design, where energy economy is obviously of paramount importance for battery powered devices. This thesis addresses the energy efficiency of mobile communication at the user end in the context of cellular networks. We argue that energy efficiency starts by energy awareness and propose EnergyBox, a parametrised tool that enables accurate and repeatable energy quantification at the user end using real data traffic traces as input. EnergyBox offers an abstraction of the underlying states for operation of the wireless interfaces and allows to estimate the energy consumption for different operator settings and device characteristics. The tool is used throughout the thesis to quantify and reveal inefficient data communication patterns of widely used mobile applications. We consider two different perspectives in the search of energy-efficient solutions. From the application perspective, we show that systematically quantifying the energy consumption of design choices (e.g., communication patterns, protocols, and data formats) contributes to a significantly smaller energy footprint. From the system perspective, we devise a cross-layer solution that schedules packet transmissions based on the knowledge of the network parameters that impact the energy consumption of the handset. These attempts show that application level decisions require a better understanding of possible energy apportionment policies at system level. Finally, we study the generic problem of determining the contribution of an entity (e.g., application) to the total energy consumption of a given system (e.g., mobile device). We compare the state-of-the-art policies in terms of fairness leveraging cooperative game theory and analyse their required information and computational complexity. We show that providing incentives to reduce the total energy consumption of the system (as part of fairness) is tightly coupled to the policy selection. Our study provides guidelines to select an appropriate policy depending on the characteristics of the system.

An efficient system development needs reuse, traceability and understanding. Today, specifications are usually written in text documents. Reuse means a copy and paste of suitable specifications. Traceability is the textual note that references to affected requirements. Achieving a full context understanding requires reading hundreds of pages in a variety of documents. Changing one textual requirement in complex systems can be very time-consuming. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) addresses these issues. There, an integrated system model is used for the design, analysis, communication and system specification and shall contribute to handling the system complexity. This paper shows aspects of this approach in the development of a wheel loader\'s attachment system. Customer requirements will be used to derive a specification model. Based on this, the author introduces the system and software architecture. The connection between requirement and architecture leads to a traceable system design and produces the huge advantage of MBSE.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood cell disorder that affects about 100,000 people in the US and results in high cost of medical care exceeding $1.1 billion annually. Sickle cell patients suffer from unpredictable, painful vaso-occlusive crises. Portable, costeffective approaches for diagnosis and monitoring sickle blood activities are important for a better management of the disease and reducing the medical cost. In this research, a mobile application controlled, impedance-based flow cytometer is developed for the diagnosis of sickle cell disease. Calibration of the portable device is performed using a component of known impedance value. The preliminary test results are then compared to those obtained by a commercial benchtop impedance analyzer for further validation. With the developed portable flow cytometer, experiments are performed on two sickle cell samples and a healthy cell sample. The acquired results are subsequently analyzed with MATLAB scripts to extract single-cell level impedance information as well as statistics of different cell conditions. Significant differences in cell impedance signals are observed between sickle cells and normal cells, as well as between sickle cells under hypoxia and normoxia conditions. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

A fibromialgia é uma condição de alta prevalência, que causa desconforto físico, sofrimento mental e comprometimento das relações sociais. Com o aumento da popularidade de Mobile Health, considerou-se o uso de aplicativo móvel como recurso de suporte no tratamento de indivíduos com fibromialgia. Há uma carência de aplicativos para brasileiros portadores de fibromialgia, desenvolvidos por profissionais de saúde, a partir de fontes de informação confiáveis, em linguagem adequada, com alto grau de funcionalidade, testados quanto à sua eficácia em ensaios clínicos. O presente projeto constitui-se de dois estudos. O Estudo I teve como objetivo desenvolver um aplicativo móvel para promover o autocuidado em indivíduos com fibromialgia, e o Estudo II teve como objetivo avaliar sua eficácia na melhora da qualidade de vida e dos sintomas e na promoção do autocuidado, e verificar a adesão dos pacientes ao uso do aplicativo. Desenvolveu-se o aplicativo denominado ProFibro segundo o paradigma da prototipação, em cinco etapas: (1) análise de requisitos e conteúdo e estabelecimento de objetivos do software; (2) desenvolvimento da interface pela designer; (3) desenvolvimento do protótipo pela programadora para o sistema operacional Android (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA); (4) teste-piloto para avaliação da qualidade de uso do protótipo com pacientes; (5) refinamento do protótipo e construção do produto final. Suas principais funções são: animação educativa; automonitoramento com o Questionário de Impacto da Fibromialgia Revisado; estratégias do sono com a técnica de relaxamento por imaginação guiada, terapia de controle de estímulo e higiene do sono; agenda para facilitar o planejamento da rotina diária; programa gradual de exercícios aeróbicos, alongamento e fortalecimento; diário para a prática da gratidão; livro eletrônico com atividades para a família; dicas por meio de notificações. O Estudo II foi um ensaio clínico controlado e aleatorizado com 40 indivíduos com fibromialgia, alocados em grupos experimental e controle. Os participantes foram avaliados na linha de base e após seis semanas por um avaliador cego, quanto às seguintes variáveis: qualidade de vida (Questionário de Impacto da Fibromialgia Revisado); dor (Índice de Dor Generalizada e Escala Visual Analógica); sintomas (Escala de Severidade de Sintomas); agenciamento do autocuidado (Escala de Avaliação de Agenciamento de Autocuidados Revisada). O grupo experimental recebeu smartphones com o aplicativo ProFibro para uso durante seis semanas, enquanto o grupo controle recebeu uma apostila em papel de conteúdo similar. A adesão dos pacientes ao aplicativo foi avaliada contabilizando o número de acessos às suas funcionalidades. O uso do aplicativo ProFibro durante seis semanas, sem o acompanhamento de um profissional de saúde, foi eficaz para a redução da severidade de sintomas e do impacto geral da fibromialgia na qualidade de vida, em comparação com a linha de base. Os efeitos do uso do aplicativo foram similares aos da apostila. Cerca de 40% dos participantes do Grupo Experimental tiveram uma baixa adesão ao uso do aplicativo. As estratégias do sono foram a funcionalidade mais utilizada, seguidas do programa de exercício físico e do diário / Fibromyalgia is a prevalent condition that causes physical problems, mental distress and impaired social functioning. With the increasing popularity of Mobile Health, the use of a mobile application as a support tool in the management of fibromyalgia was considered. There is a shortage of applications for Brazilian patients with fibromyalgia, which are developed by health professionals, based on reliable sources of information, in proper language, with a high degree of functionality, and are tested for effectiveness in clinical trials. This project is formed of two studies. Study I aimed to develop a mobile application to promote self-care in individuals with fibromyalgia, and Study II aimed to evaluate its effectiveness in improving quality of life and symptoms, and promoting self-care, and to verify patient compliance to the use of the application. The application which was named ProFibro was developed according to the prototyping paradigm, in five stages: (1) analysis of requirements and content and establishment of software objectives; (2) interface development by the designer; (3) development of the prototype by the programmer for the Android operating system (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA); (4) pilot test with patients to evaluate the quality of use of the prototype; (5) improvement of the prototype and construction of the final product. Its main functions are: educational animation; self-monitoring with the Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire; sleep strategies with guided imagery relaxation technique, stimulus control therapy and sleep hygiene; scheduling function to facilitate planning the daily routine; graded exercise programme with aerobic, stretching and strengthening exercises; a diary for the practice of gratitude; an eBook about family adjustments; hints through notifications. The Study II was a randomized controlled trial of 40 individuals with fibromyalgia, which were allocated into Experimental and Control groups. A blind evaluator assessed the participants at baseline and after six weeks regarding the following outcomes: quality of life (Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire); Pain (Generalized Pain Index and Visual Analog Scale); symptoms (Severity of Symptoms Scale); self-care agency (Revised Self-Care Agency Assessment Scale). The Experimental Group received smartphones with the ProFibro application and were instructed to use it for six weeks while the control group received a paper book with similar content. Patient adherence to the application was evaluated according to the number of accesses to its functions. The use of ProFibro application for six weeks, without the health professional support, was effective in reducing the severity of symptoms and the overall impact of fibromyalgia on quality of life compared to baseline. The effects of the use of the application were similar to those of the paper book. About 40% of the participants of the Experimental Group had a low adherence to the use of the application. The sleep strategies were the most used function, followed by the exercise programme and the diary

A fibromialgia é uma condição de alta prevalência, que causa desconforto físico, sofrimento mental e comprometimento das relações sociais. Com o aumento da popularidade de Mobile Health, considerou-se o uso de aplicativo móvel como recurso de suporte no tratamento de indivíduos com fibromialgia. Há uma carência de aplicativos para brasileiros portadores de fibromialgia, desenvolvidos por profissionais de saúde, a partir de fontes de informação confiáveis, em linguagem adequada, com alto grau de funcionalidade, testados quanto à sua eficácia em ensaios clínicos. O presente projeto constitui-se de dois estudos. O Estudo I teve como objetivo desenvolver um aplicativo móvel para promover o autocuidado em indivíduos com fibromialgia, e o Estudo II teve como objetivo avaliar sua eficácia na melhora da qualidade de vida e dos sintomas e na promoção do autocuidado, e verificar a adesão dos pacientes ao uso do aplicativo. Desenvolveu-se o aplicativo denominado ProFibro segundo o paradigma da prototipação, em cinco etapas: (1) análise de requisitos e conteúdo e estabelecimento de objetivos do software; (2) desenvolvimento da interface pela designer; (3) desenvolvimento do protótipo pela programadora para o sistema operacional Android (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA); (4) teste-piloto para avaliação da qualidade de uso do protótipo com pacientes; (5) refinamento do protótipo e construção do produto final. Suas principais funções são: animação educativa; automonitoramento com o Questionário de Impacto da Fibromialgia Revisado; estratégias do sono com a técnica de relaxamento por imaginação guiada, terapia de controle de estímulo e higiene do sono; agenda para facilitar o planejamento da rotina diária; programa gradual de exercícios aeróbicos, alongamento e fortalecimento; diário para a prática da gratidão; livro eletrônico com atividades para a família; dicas por meio de notificações. O Estudo II foi um ensaio clínico controlado e aleatorizado com 40 indivíduos com fibromialgia, alocados em grupos experimental e controle. Os participantes foram avaliados na linha de base e após seis semanas por um avaliador cego, quanto às seguintes variáveis: qualidade de vida (Questionário de Impacto da Fibromialgia Revisado); dor (Índice de Dor Generalizada e Escala Visual Analógica); sintomas (Escala de Severidade de Sintomas); agenciamento do autocuidado (Escala de Avaliação de Agenciamento de Autocuidados Revisada). O grupo experimental recebeu smartphones com o aplicativo ProFibro para uso durante seis semanas, enquanto o grupo controle recebeu uma apostila em papel de conteúdo similar. A adesão dos pacientes ao aplicativo foi avaliada contabilizando o número de acessos às suas funcionalidades. O uso do aplicativo ProFibro durante seis semanas, sem o acompanhamento de um profissional de saúde, foi eficaz para a redução da severidade de sintomas e do impacto geral da fibromialgia na qualidade de vida, em comparação com a linha de base. Os efeitos do uso do aplicativo foram similares aos da apostila. Cerca de 40% dos participantes do Grupo Experimental tiveram uma baixa adesão ao uso do aplicativo. As estratégias do sono foram a funcionalidade mais utilizada, seguidas do programa de exercício físico e do diário / Fibromyalgia is a prevalent condition that causes physical problems, mental distress and impaired social functioning. With the increasing popularity of Mobile Health, the use of a mobile application as a support tool in the management of fibromyalgia was considered. There is a shortage of applications for Brazilian patients with fibromyalgia, which are developed by health professionals, based on reliable sources of information, in proper language, with a high degree of functionality, and are tested for effectiveness in clinical trials. This project is formed of two studies. Study I aimed to develop a mobile application to promote self-care in individuals with fibromyalgia, and Study II aimed to evaluate its effectiveness in improving quality of life and symptoms, and promoting self-care, and to verify patient compliance to the use of the application. The application which was named ProFibro was developed according to the prototyping paradigm, in five stages: (1) analysis of requirements and content and establishment of software objectives; (2) interface development by the designer; (3) development of the prototype by the programmer for the Android operating system (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA); (4) pilot test with patients to evaluate the quality of use of the prototype; (5) improvement of the prototype and construction of the final product. Its main functions are: educational animation; self-monitoring with the Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire; sleep strategies with guided imagery relaxation technique, stimulus control therapy and sleep hygiene; scheduling function to facilitate planning the daily routine; graded exercise programme with aerobic, stretching and strengthening exercises; a diary for the practice of gratitude; an eBook about family adjustments; hints through notifications. The Study II was a randomized controlled trial of 40 individuals with fibromyalgia, which were allocated into Experimental and Control groups. A blind evaluator assessed the participants at baseline and after six weeks regarding the following outcomes: quality of life (Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire); Pain (Generalized Pain Index and Visual Analog Scale); symptoms (Severity of Symptoms Scale); self-care agency (Revised Self-Care Agency Assessment Scale). The Experimental Group received smartphones with the ProFibro application and were instructed to use it for six weeks while the control group received a paper book with similar content. Patient adherence to the application was evaluated according to the number of accesses to its functions. The use of ProFibro application for six weeks, without the health professional support, was effective in reducing the severity of symptoms and the overall impact of fibromyalgia on quality of life compared to baseline. The effects of the use of the application were similar to those of the paper book. About 40% of the participants of the Experimental Group had a low adherence to the use of the application. The sleep strategies were the most used function, followed by the exercise programme and the diary

This thesis analysed the challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of mobile government services in Saudi Arabia using a mixed method approach combining surveys and semi-structured interviews with Saudi citizens and employees of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Three studies were conducted for the purpose of achieving the aims and objectives of the thesis. The first study shows that the high level of mobile penetration in the country suggests that there is already a demand of a greater range of m-government services despite the fact that still a large proportion of the Saudi population who do not have access to mobile technologies. Nevertheless, the results suggest that there is still a strong desire among users for the provision of mobile government services and the majority of respondents were willing to use such services and understand the benefits of using m-government. This thesis also shows a strong consensus among both government employees and citizens that m-government implementation would contribute to the technological development of the country. The findings of the second study suggest that the high level of mobile penetration offers an opportunity for the Saudi government to offer mobile government services. However, a number of barriers to mobile government exist, including poor quality and speed of internet, lack of customisation of services and data security and privacy issues as well as infrastructural challenges and bureaucratic attitude of the government departments. The third study focussed on the practicality of a mobile phone application, and for this purpose a mobile application for utility bills was developed and evaluated in terms of its usability, reliability and validity of the service. The thesis revealed that the majority of respondents were satisfied with the service usage, as application was easy to use without complications. However, participants were not comfortable to leave their details pertaining to credit card or any personal information. Misuse of information was major threat to participants, which further added reluctance to usage of the application. Respondents were willing to provide financial details if the service was authorised by government agencies. By exploring the opportunities of, and challenges facing m-government in Saudi Arabia, this thesis contributes to the m-government literature on developing countries in particular. This thesis offers important lessons for the m-government policy makers in Saudi Arabia and around the developing world.

Submitted by William Justo Figueiro (williamjf) on 2015-07-03T12:34:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 27.pdf: 2627353 bytes, checksum: 42054d0aa2471c361a111b84abbfd000 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-03T12:34:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 27.pdf: 2627353 bytes, checksum: 42054d0aa2471c361a111b84abbfd000 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09 / Nenhuma / A presença dos smartphones na sociedade contemporânea vem tendo crescentes reflexos nas mais diversas instâncias, mudando a forma como o público se relaciona com as mídias e seus produtos. O jornalismo, que ao longo de sua história passou por inúmeras transformações, também tem sido afetado pelos dispositivos móveis, no que seria a principal ‘revolução’ no campo jornalístico desde que a internet se tornou acessível a um público considerável, no final da década de 1990. Hoje, os aplicativos móveis, softwares desenvolvidos principalmente para usuários de celulares inteligentes e tablets, surgem como o principal meio de manifestação do jornalismo para dispositivos digitais portáteis. Entender como o jornalismo se apresenta na mobilidade, identificando suas principais características e ferramentas interativas que possibilitam e/ou estimulam a participação do público, é o objetivo do presente estudo. Para tanto, irá se usar como referencial teórico a perspectiva das materialidades da comunicação, a partir da obra de Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Ao longo do percurso deste estudo, apresentam-se alguns conceitos desenvolvidos pelo teórico alemão, além de um conciso histórico do telefone enquanto mídia e uma breve discussão sobre o lugar da mobilidade na sociedade contemporânea. Para identificar características do jornalismo móvel, foi feita uma análise de aplicativos jornalísticos de veículos brasileiros e estrangeiros, com o intuito de identificar e apresentar características interativas presentes nestes produtos. / The presence of smartphones in contemporary society has great consequences on several instances, changing the way the public relates with media and its products. Journalism, which throughout its history has passed through numerous changes, is been affected by mobile devices, in what would be the main ‘revolution’ on journalism since internet has become accessible to a considerable public, in the end of the 90’s. Right now, mobile applications, softwares developed mainly for smartphones and tablets users, become the main expression of journalism on portable digital devices. To understand how journalism presents itself on mobility, identifying its main characteristics and interactive features, which can stimulate or make the public participation possible, is the objective of such dissertation. To do so, we are using the theoretical perspective of materialities of communication, following the works of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. Throughout the study, we present some concepts developed by the german theorist, besides a brief history of the telephone as a media and a short discussion about the place of mobility in contemporary society. To identify mobile journalism characteristics, we analyzed several mobile apps from brazilians and international newspaper, aiming to identify and present interactives features in such products.