<p>N/A</p>

<p>The use of indoor positioning systems (IPS) is seen as a promising way to support coordination of activities in hospitals. Despite this, little work has been done when it comes to how the data from indoor positioning systems should be visualized to the users. By conducting a case study of a specific work practice at Aker University Hospital in Oslo we have designed visualizations with the aim of investigating the amount of information richness these should have in order to support coordination work. We have also been interested in investigating whether the approach that we have used in this thesis made it possible for the users to use the visualizations in their everyday work, and if it is possible for the users to give informative assessments of them. As little relevant theory exists on how visualizations should be designed we have used methods from the field of usability engineering, and have designed the visualizations as paper prototypes. These have been user tested by test persons with both direct and indirect knowledge about the coordination of activities at the specific work practice. Our work shows that visualizations that had a high degree of information richness were favored. In addition, the possibility to move between different types of visualizations based on the need for information were seen as especially attractive. The test persons that we recruited were able to give informative assessments of the prototypes, but as these were both tailor-made for a specific work practice and tested using simulated scenarios they had a high learning curve. Based on the results from our work we see usability engineering methods as suitable when designing visualizations, although some of them should be left out or modified to fit in with the project in question.</p>

Denne hovedoppgaven dreier seg omkring et konsept jeg har valgt å kalle for mikronavigering. Dette innebærer at jeg har sett nærmere på hvordan mobile applikasjoner, ved å utnytte informasjon som karakteriserer brukerens situasjon, kan være med på å orientere brukeren om hans omgivelser i en bygning eller et mindre område. Hensikten med dette studiet har vært å betrakte både muligheter og utfordringer tilknyttet det å nyttiggjøre forskjellige typer situasjonsbetinget informasjon (f.eks. lokasjon og kurs), eller kontekst for at mobile applikasjoner skal bli mer brukervennlige, fleksible og adaptive. Denne typen mobile tjenester har på mange måter et potensiale i seg til å skape en enklere og rikere menneskemaskin interaksjon. Særlig gjelder dette for de interaksjonsmiljøene som har vært i fokus i forbindelse med dette studiet, hvor omgivelser og brukerkrav skifter raskt. Samtidig har koplingen mellom mobil IT og kontekst også vært med på å skape nye utfordringer tilknyttet brukerinteraksjonen med slike verktøy.

Global digital libraries depend on the cooperation between many independent/autonomous organizations. The configuration of the local sub-systems in a global distributed digital library depends both on the requirements from the global system as well as from the local environments. The local administrators in the different organizations play a crucial and often neglected role in spreading global distributed digital libraries. The main goal of this thesis has been to add an operational local node, with local collections, to a global georeferenced distributed digital library network. The pilot installation was done with Alexandria Digital Library as the global georeferenced distributed digital library network, and Galleri Nor from the National Library of Norway was used as a local collection for the NTNU ADL node. The conclusions of this thesis have been reached through an investigation of theory concerning distributed georeferenced digital libraries and an investigation of problems and solutions associated with the pilot installation of the NTNU ADL node with Galleri Nor as the local collection. The main findings and recommendations from this work can be summarized as follows: 1. Digital libraries are characterized by the use of many different standards, formats, and technologies. This has an impact on the configuration of these systems. The complexity of digital libraries must be dealt with so that local administrators can install and configure digital library nodes without needing to be experts in all the different standards, formats, and technologies used in the digital libraries. A configuration tool can be used to add a layer of abstraction between the local administrator and the complexity of a digital library. Lowering the requirements of skills needed in order to install and configure a digital library with local collections can increase the expansion of the digital library technology. An increase in the number of nodes in a distributed digital library will most likely increase the number of available collections, and the increase of available collections will increase the value of the distributed digital library network for information seekers. As more information seekers realize the value of the distributed digital library network more organizations will seek to become part of such a global network. Addressing the problems the local administrators face in the configuration and installation process in order to make a more user-friendly system is the first step in the right direction on the path towards a global distributed digital library system. 2. Documentation must be written with a complexity and a terminology that can be easily understood by the user groups of the system. It is important to know for whom the documentation is written. The documentation is an important part of the puzzle for solving the problems related to the configuration of a digital library with local collections. In digital libraries, as in all other software systems, the user groups have to be identified. The documentation must meet the needs and use the right terminology at the right knowledge-level for each user group. Three user groups are identified in this thesis: software developers, local administrators, and information seekers. 3. It is possible to add existing Norwegian collections to a global georeferenced distributed digital library, and to make the local collections available for a global audience. One main difference between georeferenced digital libraries and digital libraries in general, is that georeferenced digital libraries provide new access points to collections where spatial literacy can be used to solve problems and satisfy information needs. The problems described in this thesis are not specific for global georeferenced digital libraries, but will affect all global digital libraries with distributed nodes in the same way. Existing Norwegian collections can be added to a global georeferenced distributed digital library network regardless of the content of the collection, or which metadata formats and standards used. The prerequisite of this thesis was to use the Alexandria Digital Library and add a collection from the National Library of Norway to the local NTNU ADL node. Galleri Nor was chosen as the collection from the National Library. The theory part of this thesis investigates digital libraries and what the georeferenced information paradigm offers in the context of digital libraries. The theory gives an overview of georeferencing in digital libraries and which technologies and problems associated with this relatively new paradigm. Special attention is given to the Alexandria Digital Library system. The possibilities this system offers are discussed in the ADL chapter. The State of the Art part of the thesis compares different georeferenced systems and investigates the concept of a fully fledged georeferenced digital library and how different systems compare to this concept. The Installation of the NTNU pilot system, Discussion, and Possible improvements and recommendations chapters give an overview of the installation and issues related to the installation and configuration of a local node (from a local administrator’s point of view), and how these issues may be addressed through possible solutions and further work.

Colonies of social insects are capable of solving complex tasks that far exceed the abilities of each individual insect. The colonies do not use any supervisor or blueprint to organize their work, instead the solutions emerge from the interactions between the insects and their environment. Two of the tasks that social insects perform are clustering of corpses and sorting of brood. In this thesis we describe our work with creating swarms of simple agents that perform similar tasks. Previous research within this field has hand-coded the behavior of the individual agents and then seen if a swarm of the agents is capable of solving the desired task. We take a different approach and evolve the individual behavior by evaluating the patterns that are formed by the swarm. We evolve swarms to solve three different types of tasks: Clustering, patch sorting, and annular sorting. The first two tasks involves the grouping of identical objects, and the grouping of different types of objects into separate groups. Annular sorting involves the creation of a targe-like structure that contains circular bands. This task has not been solved successfully in the past, and we are able to create a dense and well separated structure.

We have discussed two related topics in this thesis: the design of location models and spatio-temporal databases for indoor positioning systems. We conclude our work with a short recapitulation of the main issues presented and a justification of the limitations, followed by suggestions for further research and our final thoughts. 8.1 Location Modeling Different aspects of location modeling were discussed, among them symbolic, geometric and hybrid location models. We found that only the hybrid form is suited for our purposes, that is to accurately position objects within a domain and relay this information to users in an understandable way. As a modeling technique, we proposed a solution using basic constructs of UML with added extensions. We created a domain model containing objects and relationships between them which we deem as relevant for indoor location aware systems, including the geometric extent of locations and transitions. 8.2 Spatio-Temporal Databases We defined spatio-temporal databases as databases which manage data on geometrical objects that change (movement is also considered as a form of change). Although research in this area has received much attention in the past decade, no functional spatio-temporal systems are available. Purely spatial database systems however are. We therefore proposed a solution based on timestamping spatial data, thus capturing its temporal aspects and in effect making it spatio-temporal. In order to create a conceptual model of such a database for indoor location aware applications, we used our own domain model for location modeling and proposed extensions to it in order to capture specific spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal aspects. We used the conceptual model to create a prototype database, demonstrating the concepts proposed by us.

The misuse case methodology is an approach for eliciting security requirements in software development projects. Misuse cases are an extension of the well-known use case methodology, and use the same basic types of diagrams and documentation forms. This thesis presents a study of the introduction and application of the misuse case methodology in a development team in the computer software industry. A qualitative research approach, with workshops and interviews has been applied to determine the usability and effectiveness of misuse cases. In addition, the practioners' perception of the method has been investigated, as this is believed to be an important factor for the adoption of the method in the team's engineering process. The results show that the method was easy to learn, easy to use and gave a good result compared to the time and resources used.

Oppgaven presenterer teknikker og implementasjon for sammenlikning av naboskap av proteiner i protein-protein interaksjons-nettverk.

Today, user interfaces normally consist of a screen, and a pointing device and a keyboard for input. However, as more advanced technology and methods appears, there should be good chances to utilize these for more natural and effective human-computer interfaces. The main motivation is to get a more natural and easy to use interface, and the computer should understand the user without too much effort from the user. Intelligent interfaces could be a solution to achieve this goal. The main focus in this thesis, is multimodal input which combines different input modalities to achieve the user's goal. A framework has been designed where the user has the possibility to change between input modalities. The system should integrate the information given in different input modalities to one joint meaning. In this architecture, input could either be location or command input, and different modalities could be used for each input type. The example described later on in this thesis combines either speech or written text as command input, with either map input or physical position for location input. An agent-based blackboard architecture are used for collecting input. Agents collect information directly from the user. Each agent represent their own input modality, and is responsible to analyse input. As this is done, the agent send the information to a common blackboard which hold the latest information from each agent. An own agent which is responsible for fusing this information to one common meaning, collects the information from the blackboard and integrate it to one joint meaning. This joint interpretation decides what should be done to which object. Since the modalities are independent of each other, other modalities could easily be added with just small changes to other parts of the system as long as it is an command or location input which agrees to the currently representation structure.

This thesis is a study of how to design and introduce computer support in co-present collaborative creativity. Creativity is an important skill in today’s knowledge based society. There has been an increased focus on computer support for creativity, but a shift from individual to collaborative creativity demands a new set of frameworks and requirements for designing suitable tools. Evolving technologies in the merge of computer support for cooperateive work (CSCW), ubiquitous computing and mobile technologies have shown promising results and relevance in collaborative and creative work. This thesis is a study of how such technologies can support co-present collaborative creativity. The objective is to identify elements and structures constituting co-present collaborative creativity in order to define a set of requirements and implications for designing computer based tools. The contributions of the thesis is: 1.A conceptual framework describing elements, stuctures and general patterns in co-present collaborative creativity 2.A guideline describing requirements and implications for the design and introduction of computer based tools, including a description of which tasks can be supported and scenarios showing how. The thesis is both theoretically and empirically based. The theoretical base includes theoretical views and research within the creative domain and related work in the field of computer support for creative work. The empirical evaluation includes a case study of Oasen, an idea laboratory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The framework and the guideline presented as the results of the thesis are generalized based on a comparison of empirical results with findings in related work.