<p>I denne rapporten retter vi søkelyset mot bruken av øyesporing som del av brukbarhetstesting. Mange lurer nok på om det er verdt å investere i slikt utstyr, og denne masteroppgaven er et forsøk på å finne ut mer om hvilken nytteverdi øyesporing kan ha når det gjelder brukbarhetstesting i systemutvikling. Jeg vil poengtere at jeg her ikke har prøvd å gjøre noen beregninger når det gjelder økonomiske aspekter, men konsentrert meg om å utforske hvilke områder man kan finne en nytteverdi i bruk av øyesporing. For å få svar på dette har jeg gjennomført en brukbarhetstest med øyesporing og sett på hvilke problemer vi oppdaget uten å ta hensyn til øyesporingsdata, og deretter sammenlignet med hva slags tilleggsinformasjon vi fikk utfra øyesporingen. I forskningen benyttet jeg meg av et case, et systemutviklingsprosjekt iverksatt av Amnesty Norge for å fornye nettsidene deres, og testet brukbarheten på disse nettsidene. Jeg hadde så et møte med utviklingsgruppen der hvor jeg presenterte funnene fra brukbarhetstesten. Samtidig benyttet jeg anledningen til å se om resultatene fra øyesporingen hadde noen nytteverdi i forhold til kommunikasjonen mellom meg som brukbarhetstester og Amnesty som kunde. I tillegg til dette har jeg gjort et intervju med Thor Fredrik Eie fra NetLife Research, som benytter øyesporing i brukbarhetstesting ofte, for å finne ut hvilken nytteverdi de som jobber med dette opplever. Til slutt har jeg også trukket fram noen av de praktiske og metodiske utfordringene vi har kommet over i løpet av denne studien når det gjelder bruken av øyesporing i brukbarhetstesting. Når det gjelder hva øyesporingen bidro med for å bedømme brukbarheten av nettsiden vi testet, så fant vi hovedsaklig tre områder hvor øyesporing var til hjelp. For det første var det med på å avdekke et problem med designet hvor brukeren ikke oppdaget et viktig element, ved at vi fikk se hvor han rettet oppmerksomheten sin. Øyesporingen var også til hjelp for å bekrefte og forsterke teorier om problemer vi hadde gjort oss på forhånd, og vi fikk en bedre forståelse for hvor brukerne forventet at ting skulle være på nettsiden, ved at vi kunne se hvilke menyvalg de vurderte før de klikket. Fra intervjuet mitt med Thor Fredrik Eie kom det fram at øyesporing kan ha nytteverdi som et hjelpevertøy under gjennomføringen av testen også, på den måten at det er enklere for testleder å tilpasse spørsmål til brukeren når man kan se hvor brukeren fester blikket. I tillegg er data fra øyesporing et kraftig verktøy når det gjelder kommunikasjonen mellom kunder og brukbarhetstestere. Jeg opplevde at kunden fikk større forståelse for problemene når de fikk se med egne øyne hvor brukerne så hen. Det er også med på å gi argumentene man kommer med større tyngde og troverdighet når man kan vise bilder og videoer med øyesporing. Men her må man huske på at slike visuelle framstillinger av data kan gi inntrykk av å være viktigere enn de er, da det er lett å lage noe som ser stilig ut, men ikke egentlig forteller deg noe viktig. Man må også være klar over at problemer med utstyr og programvare kan oppstå med jevne mellomrom. Heller ikke alle typer mennesker kan benyttes når man gjør brukbarhetstester med øyesporing, for eksempel kan bruk av briller være problematisk.</p>

<p>The key motivation of this thesis is to find innovative solutions for facilitating the deployment of ubiquitous systems, with the purpose of making technology supported collaboration an easier task. Users, being in a ubiquitous environment, continuously encounter new resources that might provide some value. As the number of these resources increase, the management of them will be a central task in a ubiquitous computing system. The problems and challenges discussed in this thesis are related to continuous and unpredictable changes in the ubiquitous environment, which makes it difficult for users to retrieve appropriate software for utilizing resources. We also discuss the challenge of managing resources, and sharing them between users. The research questions in this thesis are: RQ-1: How can we extend existing service management architectures to support user-centered and community-based service management? RQ-2: What technologies, architectures and platforms are the most suitable for implementing user-centered and community-based service management? RQ-3: How can we evaluate the usability and utility of user-centered and community-based service management? What are the most compelling scenarios? The contributions in this thesis are, correspondingly: C1: We have made a solution proposal and an implementation of an improved service management system, which is based on earlier works of the Ubicollab platform. C2: Four items were found suitable: 1. The deployment model used by distribution platforms for mobile applications (such as AppStore and Android Market), 2. OSGi, 3. R-OSGi, and 4. HTTP-based communication using Java Servlets. C3: The evaluation of such systems can be done using a three-step process that includes: 1. Examining the system's fulfillment its requirement specification. 2. Compare the system's functionality with that of a scenario-described ideal system. 3. Create applications that demonstrate the utility of the system.</p>

<p>Mobile applications supporting tourists with travel information can make use of information about the user's location, time and personal preferences to provide personalized recommendations. This could be a solution to the problem of displaying information and navigating on small mobile devices, as it allow tourists to receive information that fit very well with their current situation and needs. However, filtering of information introduce new challenges in terms of facilitating user control and transparency. In this thesis we have developed and evaluated a personalized mobile tourism applications based on collaborative filtering that have tried to meet these challenges. The design of this application is based on experience from similar projects and research on interaction design in recommender systems. The user evaluation of our system suggests that our approach is feasible, but more research must be done to predict the acceptance of this application among tourists.</p>

<p>Technological advances, specifically within the field of mobile and ubiquitous technologies, hold the promise to support collaboration in work and educational environments in new ways. Within collaborative systems, it is possible to use ubiquitous technology to provide users with services to interact - for instance share information - with other users in a given environment. Over the course of this project, the authors have created a set of design principles for co-located information sharing in collaborative systems, using a structured method called patterns. The aim of these patterns is to provide support for designers and developers of collaborative systems to take advantage of mobile and ubiquitous technology when designing and implementing support for co-located sharing. The patterns were based on a set of re-occurring problems identified as important for co-located information sharing between users. These problems were identified by performing a review of relevant literature, research and existing solutions on the subject. An initial set of patterns were created based on this review. The patterns themselves are written on an abstraction level that targets the human-computer interaction part of sharing information between co-located users. The patterns where then evaluated by three experts within system engineering and collaborative systems, in an iterative process. The overall aim of these evaluations were to ensure that the patterns were easy to understand, and that they provided the information that was relevant for the problem and the domain, in order to be useful in the development process of collaborative systems. The result of these evaluations culminated in a final set of patterns for co-located information sharing. These patterns describe guidelines for: (1) How users can specify the information they wish to share and the receiver(s) of that information, (2) how users can be aware of the potential for collaboration, (3) how situated displays can be used to share information, (4) how user privacy should be protected and (5) how information should be available when the user needs it. The final set of patterns is given in chapter 6 of the thesis.</p>

Bruken av åpen kildekode i systemutviklingsprosjekter har blitt mer utbredt og utviklingstiden til slike prosjekter er ofte kortere enn prosjekter som ikke benytter seg av ferdigkomponenter. Det er stor uenighet i hvorvidt åpen kildekode er mer eller mindre sikkert enn lukket kildekode, eller om det er noen særlig forskjell i det hele tatt. I dette prosjektet har jeg sett på hvilke krav som stilles til sikkerhet i systemer som behandler helse- og personopplysninger. Jeg har forsøkt å realisere disse kravene med utstrakt bruk av åpen kildekode-komponenter i utviklingen av et egenomsorgssystem for overvektspasienter. Jeg har sett på hvilke sikkerhetsutfordringer dette fører med seg, og hvilke tiltak som kan brukes for å redusere dem.Gjennom mine erfaringer i forbindelse med utviklingsprosessen i denne studien kan jeg se fordelene ved å bruke fri programvare i motsetning til tradisjonell systemutvikling, og det hadde ikke vært mulig å realisere systemet i samme grad med en tradisjonell systemutviklingsprosess hvor alt blir utviklet fra bunnen av. De største utfordringene jeg møtte på var knyttet til integreringen av komponentene og utviklingen av en sømløs felles autentisering. For å redusere sikkerhetsutfordringene bør det gjøres en tidlig vurdering angående valg av komponenter og integrering av de valgte komponenter for å kartlegge muligheter og begrensninger som komponentene legger på systemet.

<p>QUality, Interoperability and Standards in e-Learning (QUIS) is an EU funded project, and is a part of the e-Learning program . The projects contract number within the e-Learning program is 2004-3538/001-001 ELE-ELEB14. The project has partners from Norway, Sweden, Italy and Hungary. This thesis is written to be a part of the projects’ Work Package 5 – “Standards for e-Learning”. A topic map is an information structure for describing and identifying resources. It consists of the major elements topics, occurrences and associations. A topic is the representation of a real world subject. An occurrence is a source of information about the topic. Internal occurrences are information sources within the topic map file. External occurrences are links to resources located elsewhere. An association is a relationship between topics. It describes how the topics are related to each other, by giving the different members of the association “roles”. All topic map elements can be scoped to give them extra semantic value. Two or more topic maps can be merged to form one large topic map. Topic maps usually follow the XML for Topic Maps (XTM) standard. In addition to being an information structure, the topic map standard also tries to overcome the so called “Web Identity Crisis”. The Web Identity Crisis is based on the statement that “there is no way of knowing what references on the World Wide Web identify today”. The Semantic Web is a similar technology to topic maps. It is based on the Resource Description Framework. QUIS topic map is a topic map made to represent subjects in the area of e-Learning standardization. It is made in a “topic map constructor system” based on the Topic Map 4 Java API. A “topic map application system” can be used to display the content of the topic map. It is shown that this approach offers easy and structural access to subjects within this area of interest. In comparison with regular web portals, the topic map application has several advantages: • The connection between related information is more intuitive. • The topic map is easier to maintain extend. • The topic map has better support for multiple languages. • The topic map can be merged with other topic maps. In order to exploit the full strengths of the topic map standard, more e-Learning communities have to take it into use. The creation of Published Subject Identifiers (PSI) will advance this process.</p>

<p>This master thesis presents a new and redesigned version of Peer2Me, a framework for developing mobile collaborative applications on mobile phones. The first version of Peer2Me was designed and created by Carl-Henrik Wolf Lund and Michael Sars Norum in 2005, which was presented in their master thesis, The Peer2Me Framework, [31]. We evaluated their framework in our depthstudy [5], fall of 2005. The evaluation showed that the framework lacked some desired and necessary functionality, had some bugs and was a bit hard to use. This thesis also describes the history of Peer2Me along with cental concepts regarding peer-to-peer networking in an mobile ad hoc environment. There are a lot of on going and finished projects that can be related to Peer2Me. We have chosen to investigate the most interesting and relevant projects, which are presented in Chapter 11, State of the Art. Since a redesign of the Peer2Me framework was necessary, we have performed a research in the most recognized architectural tactics, design patterns and architectural patters. Before embarking on the task of designing the framework, a research in the latest technology was necessary. In our depthstudy [5], we had already performed such a research, so we only had to obtain the latest development in the related areas. Special attention was given to the Bluetooth wireless network technology. All created packages, classes and interfaces are thoroughly described along with their roles in the framework. We felt that a mere description of the modules was not enough, so we wrote Chapter 16, Design Decisions, which discusses the different crossroads we faced with during development, and the path we chose. To give the reader an impression of how the framework can be used, we also developed some applications that utilizes the new framework. Lastly we evaluated our work, compared the old and new framework, discussed the problems we encountered, answered our research questions and summarized the thesis. All source code, javadoc and a functional, new version of Peer2Me are attached along with this report.</p>

<p>Software configuration management deals with control of the evolution of complex computer systems. The ability to handle changes, corrections and extensions is decisive for the outcome of a software project. Automated processes for handling these elements are therefore a crucial part of software development. This thesis focuses on build and release management, in the context of developing a control system for the world’s biggest particle accelerator. Build and release cover topics such as build support, versioning, dependency management and release management. The main part of the work has consisted of extending an in-house solution supporting the development process of accelerator control software at CERN. The main focus of this report is on the practical work done in this context. Based on a literature survey and examining of available tools, this thesis presents the state of the art concerning build and release management before elaborating on the practical work. Based on the experience gained from the work of this thesis, I conclude with a discussion of whether or not it is beneficiary to stick with in-house solution, or if switching to an external tool could prove better for the development process implemented.</p>

<p>Security is an important aspect for all kinds of software development, but it is especially important for web applications since they usually are exposed to the Internet. Web Services offer application to application connectivity using the SOAP protocol. Web Services are quite often built as an extension to already existing applications to provide business to business communication. Since it is often necessary to expose critical business functions through the Web Services, e.g., ordering an item or sending an invoice, security in Web Services are vital for a company’s daily operations. In this project we have created an input validation framework for Web Services, to aid developers in creating more secure Web Services in an easier and more reusable manner. We have focused on creating a lightweight policy configuration based on XML, and a set of highly configurable and extendable validators. The framework is implemented in Java and is not dependent on a specific SOAP framework. To keep the framework general and compatible with multiple SOAP frameworks, we have developed a set of interceptors to support the two most common open source SOAP frameworks, Codehaus XFire and Apache Axis2. This report first presents theory and rationale behind the need for a new way of performing input validation. Further the implementation of the framework is documented together with an example application, which demonstrates an example use of the framework.</p>

<p>Mobile communication markets are known for frequent innovations with potentially high network effects. The conceptual work in economics and innovation studies show how the growth pattern for innovations in such markets could vary depending on the competition and market characteristics. However, the empirical research within this field is limited. This thesis introduces a computer simulation model for analyzing the development, adoption and diffusion of innovations in a mobile market. The model is based on Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE), and makes use of behavioral theory of firms, economics, and sociology, to leverage the theoretical understating of the diffusion of innovations. The results of the simulation runs on the developed simulation software show that the topologies of social networks have strong effects on diffusion. However, it is also found that in situations where several competing companies launch their innovations sequentially, a winner-takes-all outcome is the most likely when the actors are completely rational. Further, when the information in the market is imperfect, the topology of social networks can create equilibria where the market is shared between several providers. Finally, the variance in consumer characteristics affects both the rate and the outcome of innovation diffusion. The thesis reaffirms that computer simulation is an effective way to combine the sociological and economic theories of innovation diffusion. The results show that there is still a need for more research on the field to better understand why some innovations fail, while other succeed and becomes accepted in the market. The outcome of an innovation launch is shown to be affected by several factors, including timing, network structure, market noise, and consumer characteristics. By using the simulation model to study the influence of such factors in a specific market, service providers may improve their competitive power.</p>