The introduction of mobile devices to the pockets and handbags of people living all over the world has made the practice of mobile computing nearly ubiquitous in modern society. iSeeMe is an Android application that empowers the user through the revelation of the vast amount of private data that mobile devices are capable of silently capturing in the background. iSeeMe strives to provide the user with a means to correlate this passively-collected information with data of personal importance to the user. This report looks into the development and implementation of the iSeeMe solution. It discusses design decisions, describes the iSeeMe architecture, and outlines the process of engineering the application. It also examines the role of personal data in modern society and explores the mobile application market to see where iSeeMe will fit in among similar applications. Finally, it analyzes the results of the development effort and identifies areas for future enhancement. / text

The goal of the thesis is to investigate and propose a new design for a contactor platform, both in terms of hardware and embedded software, which incorporates support to implement new state-of-the-art functions. The platform must support a wide range of contactors from basic ones with only core functions to advanced contactors using modern microcontrollers to provide efficient, quick and reliable operation.   Further, a significant focus of the thesis is on the interaction between electrical engineering and computer engineering. The electronics needs to interact seamlessly with a microcontroller running a versatile software to provide industry-leading performance. To achieve this, the software and hardware is evaluated with focus to develop an optimal platform.   The proposed embedded software uses development techniques rarely used in embedded applications such as UML code generation, compile-time initiation of objects and an object-oriented design, while maintaining the performance of traditional embedded programming. The thesis also provides suggestions to hardware changes to further improve to the contactor’s operation.

No description available.

Social accounts of technological change make the flexibility and openness of interpretations the starting point of an argument against technological determinism. They suggest that technological change unfolds in the semantic domain, but they focus on the social processes around the interpretations of new technologies, and do not address the conceptual processes of change in interpretations. The dissertation presents an empirically grounded case study of the design process of an open-source online software platform based on the framework of distributed cognition to argue that the cognitive perspective is needed for understanding innovation in software, because it allows us to describe the reflexive and expansive contribution of conceptual processes to new software and the significance of professional epistemic practices in framing the direction of innovation. The framework of distributed cognition brings the social and cognitive perspectives together on account of its understanding of conceptual processes as distributed over time, among people, and between humans and artifacts. The dissertation argues that an evolving open-source software landscape became translated into the open-ended local design space of a new software project in a process of infrastructural implosion, and the design space prompted participants to outline and pursue epistemic strategies of sense-making and learning about the contexts of use. The result was a process of conceptual modeling, which resulted in a conceptually novel user interface. Prototyping professional practices of user-centered design lent directionality to this conceptual process in terms of a focus on individual activities with the user interface. Social approaches to software design under the broad umbrella of human-centered computing have been seeking to inform the design on the basis of empirical contributions about a social context. The analysis has shown that empirical engagement with the contexts of use followed from conceptual modeling, and concern about real world contexts was aligned with the user-centered direction that design was taking. I also point out a social-technical gap in the design process in connection with the repeated performance challenges that the platform was facing, and describe the possibility of a social-technical imagination.

A Domain-Specific Modeling Approach This study has presented a component-based domain modeling approach that provides an environment for simplifying and accelerating software development and analysis, and improves software reusability, maintainability, and productivity. With highlevel design abstraction, constraints of application domains, and the guidance of domain rules, the proposed component-based framework offers an effective solution to modeling and automating the development and deployment of software application. Meta-modeling will be used in this study to define the domain notations, rules, and constraints for component composition within a specific domain context. A domain-specific graphical design environment will also be proposed to simplify and accelerate the software development by simply dragging and dropping pre-built components with minimal programming effort. The modeling of components can be further extended with the specification of their dependability and real-time constraints. / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services / Related work -- Component composition -- Domain-specific modeling -- Model-based component composition environment for a specific domain -- Mobile service creation framework (MCSF) -- A model-driven approach to implementing dependable component-based mobile services -- A model-driven approach to implementing component-based real-time mobile services. / Department of Computer Science

This master’s thesis, carried out at MAN Truck & Bus AG, presents a self-observational case study of the software  development  methodology  Test-driven  development  (TDD)  in  the  context  of  developing  a framework  for  human-machine  interface  concepts  in  commercial  vehicles.  Software  developers  are constantly looking for ways to improve productivity and the quality of their code. TDD has been said to do precisely this, but not many experience reports from new practitioners can be found, making it difficult to know what to expect when using it for the first time. This thesis focuses on the experiences of a beginner to the TDD practice and follows the development of the framework and the changes made to the design over time. The framework, consisting of a C++ server application and an Android client, was developed using TDD. Decisions, obstacles and general experiences from the development process are documented in this report with the aim of finding out how TDD works in practice for a beginner and how well the practice is suited for this particular kind of project. It was concluded that TDD seems to have both benefits and drawbacks, as it appears to facilitate lower coupling of the code and a more structured design, but also complicates the changing of public interfaces since the changes often also affect the test code. Subjectively perceived effects of the practice included that developer  focus  improved,  that  testing  actually  occurred  and  that  the  continuous  passing  of  tests  gave confidence and a sense of accomplishment to the developer. Furthermore it was concluded that experienced developers may reap more benefits from TDD whereas developers with little experience might have a harder time  adjusting  to  the  practice  and  may  not  see  any  notable  improvement  on  the  design.  The  observed developer in this study also found that TDD was difficult to get used to and that it would have been helpful to initially pair up with an experienced TDD practitioner to be properly guided through the first steps and to form good habits. Some  parts  of  the  framework  developed  were  left  out  of  the  TDD  because  of  complexity  and  time reasons, leading the suitability of the practice for similar frameworks to be judged as moderate. The areas that  induced  problematic  situations  were  multithreading,  networking  and  graphical  user  interfaces  which were all considered difficult to handle with TDD.

Wayfinding is the process of determining and following a route. Survivors of acquired brain injury (ABI) may evince impaired wayfinding skills. Mobile technology offers a promising avenue for wayfinding support, but software is seldom designed for users with cognitive impairments. This research was intended to inform the design of mobile wayfinding software for survivors of ABI. Two qualitative studies were conducted to investigate wayfinding by survivors of ABI, and solicit views on a prospective mobile wayfinding aide. Data were used to generate a substantive theory of wayfinding in ABI. Participants were generally enthused by the prospect of a mobile wayfinding aide. They felt that it would be useful and bolster confidence, leading to improved community access. In conjunction with the theory and its implications, their remarks on usage and design indicate that mobile wayfinding software should: provide a simple interface; be context aware; afford an interactive user experience; integrate with calendar software; deliver [audio] notifications; and emphasize landmarks while affording map access. / Graduate

Software products are tools that find more uses in the society every day, both professionally and in daily lives of members of the society. This thesis focuses on the problems and possibilities related to current software products. By analysis of the problems and current issues in the software field, possible contribution of a design-oriented approach to software products is explored. The thesis is supported by a study in the form of a semi-structured observation.

Diss. Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2004.

Submitted by Kleber Silva (kleberbs@ufba.br) on 2017-06-01T20:18:43Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese final - Amâncio.pdf: 4405750 bytes, checksum: ceb4c269d4cf1fa74d0861c679a6f10d (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Vanessa Reis (vanessa.jamile@ufba.br) on 2017-06-07T11:28:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese final - Amâncio.pdf: 4405750 bytes, checksum: ceb4c269d4cf1fa74d0861c679a6f10d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-07T11:28:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese final - Amâncio.pdf: 4405750 bytes, checksum: ceb4c269d4cf1fa74d0861c679a6f10d (MD5) / Context: Code smell is a term commonly used to describe potential problems in the design of object-oriented systems. The theory about code smells, initially presented in nineties, is focused on characterization of different types of smells and heuristics for their detection and removal. Since then, empirical studies have evaluated the impact of the practical adoption of the code smell concept on software development. We call this issue the code smell effect. The findings of empirical studies on the code smell effect have presented inconsistencies with respect to what is expected by the theory. This phenomenon is not well understood. Objective: Enhancing the understanding of the code smell effect, characterizing problems hindering the practical adoption of the smell concept and investigating their origin. More specifically, we focus on the major confounding factor affecting observations on the code smell effect, which is the human role on smell detection. The human role is mostly disregarded by the theory and it strongly affects the experiments on the subject. Method: We explore the problem empirically, from two perspectives. First, we synthesize the current knowledge on the code smell effect from a set of primary studies published in the literature. To do this, we performed a systematic review based on thematic synthesis. Second, we propose the investigation of factors affecting the human evaluation of smells. To do this, we performed a family of controlled experiments. In it, we investigate an extensive number of factors affecting the human perception of smells. The factors are the use of design comprehension tool support; developer's experience, knowledge and training; and software size. From the thematic synthesis and the family of controlled experiments, we identify challenges for the area and present them as a research agenda. Results: We find out that human evaluation of smell should not be trusted. The studies indicate that the agreement on smell detection is low. They also show that demographic attributes, such as developers' experience, impact the agreement on smell detection. We also concluded that, nowadays, there are not evidences supporting the use of code smells for practical evaluation of design quality. Our evidences are divergent findings correlating code smells and software attributes, such as changes on source code. In some cases, the studies converge showing that code smells do not impact some attributes. This happens, for example, with studies correlating smells and effort on maintenance. Conclusion: This thesis points out to the gap between the theory and the experimental findings about the code smell effect. Our evidences indicate that the main source for this gap is the low number of studies focusing on the human role on the smell effect. The researches on the subject should focus on better understanding this issue. This not seems the path followed by the area, which has directed its effort on researches focused on tool assessments, such as automatic detection or smell removal. In order to face the problem, we propose a research agenda, indicating that the area needs to: i) investigate the nature of smells, grouping them according to their characteristics; ii) explore human factors affecting smell detection, and their relationships; iii) explore cognitive aspects affecting human perception of smells; and iv) outline attributes of the experiments in order to classify the context where findings can be grouped. These challenges indicate some paths to be followed by the area in order to systematize the use of code smell in the practice of the software development. Despite difficulties, we believe that this is possible and our thesis contributes for this journey. / Contexto: Code smell ´e um termo comumente utilizado para descrever potenciais problemas em projetos de software orientados a objetos. A teoria relacionada a code smells, inicialmente apresentada nos anos noventa, tem foco na caracteriza¸c˜ao de diferentes tipos de smells e nas estrat´egias para sua detec¸c˜ao e remo¸c˜ao. Desde ent˜ao, estudos emp´ıricos tˆem avaliado o impacto da ado¸c˜ao do conceito de code smell no desenvolvimento de software, ou seja, o “efeito code smell”. Os resultados destes estudos tˆem apresentado inconsistˆencias com rela¸c˜ao aos efeitos propostos pela teoria. As causas deste fenˆomeno n˜ao s˜ao bem compreendidas. Objetivo: Melhorar a compreens˜ao sobre o efeito code smell, identificando problemas que tˆem dificultado uso do conceito no desenvolvimento de software. Mais especificamente, nos concentramos no papel humano na detec¸c˜ao de smells. O fator humano ´e uma vari´avel pouco considerada pela teoria, mas afeta significativamente os resultados dos estudos emp´ıricos sobre o tema. M´etodo: N´os exploramos o problema de forma emp´ırica, a partir de duas perspectivas. Primeiro, n´os sintetizamos o conhecimento relacionado ao efeito code smell a partir de um conjunto de estudos prim´arios existente na literatura. Para isso, n´os realizamos uma revis˜ao sistem´atica, com base no m´etodo de s´ıntese tem´atica. Segundo, n´os propusemos a investiga¸c˜ao de fatores que afetam a percep¸c˜ao humana sobre smells. Neste caso, n´os realizamos uma fam´ılia de experimentos controlados, investigando um extensivo n´umero de fatores que afetam a percep¸c˜ao humana sobre smells. Os fatores s˜ao: o uso de ferramentas de suporte `a compreens˜ao do projeto de software; a experiˆencia; o conhecimento te´orico sobre code smells e o treinamento dos desenvolvedores; e o tamanho do software. A partir da s´ıntese tem´atica e da fam´ılia de experimentos, n´os identificamos alguns desafios para a ´area, apresentandoos como uma agenda de pesquisa. Resultados: N´os percebemos que a avalia¸c˜ao humana de smells n˜ao ´e confi´avel. Os estudos indicam que o grau de concordˆancia relacionado `a avalia¸c˜ao humana ´e baixo. Al´em disso, os estudos mostram que atributos demogr´aficos, como experiˆencia do desenvolvedor, afetam o grau de concordˆancia na detec¸c˜ao de smells. Tamb´em conclu´ımos que n˜ao h´a evidˆencias que indiquem o uso do conceito de code smells como ferramenta para a avalia¸c˜ao da qualidade dos projetos de software. Estas evidˆencias s˜ao as inconsistˆencias nos resultados correlacionando os smells e atributos de software, como mudan¸cas no c´odigo. Em alguns casos, os estudos concordam que os smells n˜ao tem correla¸c˜ao com certos atributos. Isso ocorre, por exemplo, com estudos correlacionando smells e esfor¸co na manuten¸c˜ao de software. Conclus˜ao: Esta tese evidencia uma lacuna existente entre a teoria e os estudos emp´ıricos relacionados ao efeito code smell. Nossas evidˆencias apontam o baixo n´umero de estudos abordando o papel humano na detec¸c˜ao de smells como principal causa desta lacuna. Pesquisas na ´area devem se concentrar em entender este aspecto. Este n˜ao parece ser o caminho seguido pela ´area, que tem se concentrado principalmente no desenvolvimento de ferramentas de suporte, como ferramentas para detec¸c˜ao autom´atica e remo¸c˜ao de smells. Para auxiliar neste sentido, n´os propomos uma agenda de pesquisa indicando pontos importantes a serem considerados: i) investiga¸c˜ao da natureza dos smells, agrupando-os de acordo com suas caracter´ısticas; ii) explora¸c˜ao de fatores humanos afetando a detec¸c˜ao de smells e seus inter-relacionamentos; iii) explora¸c˜ao de aspectos cognitivos afetando a percep¸c˜ao humana de smells; e iv) identifica¸c˜ao de atributos relacionados aos estudos emp´ıricos de forma a delinear o contexto onde resultados podem ser agrupados. Estes desafios indicam alguns caminhos que a ´area pode seguir para sistematizar o uso do conceito de code smell no desenvolvimento de software. Apesar das dificuldades, n´os acreditamos que isso ´e poss´ıvel e nossa tese visa a contribuir neste sentido.