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O design de interação é uma disciplina de design relativamente nova que pode ser compreendida como o design dos aspectos subjetivos e qualitativos de tudo o que é digital e também interativo. Já o esboço é uma prática muito comum nas disciplinas de design e consiste em um tipo de desenho feito à mão no papel para testar alternativas e comunicá-las para outros profissionais. O design de interação traz novos desafios para a prática de esboços, pois além das telas é necessário representar as ações do usuário e as modificações do sistema ao longo do tempo. Um levantamento da situação atual mostra que as técnicas que existem apresentam limitações importantes e que o assunto ainda é pouco explorado. Portanto o objetivo deste trabalho foi procurar aprimorar os esboços no design de interação, com quatro linhas de ação: analisar as especificidades da prática de esboços no design de interação para compreender as oportunidades de melhoria; desenvolver uma técnica, a ActionSketch, para buscar aproveitar estas oportunidades; verificar se a ActionSketch auxilia no processo de fazer esboços no design de interação; analisar o uso da técnica para procurar compreender como auxilia ou não o processo. Para atingir estes objetivos, adotamos o plano de ação descrito a seguir. Realizamos uma extensa revisão da literatura. Desenvolvemos propostas de técnicas e as refinamos através de iterações de exercícios e de entrevistas com profissionais. Apresentamos a ActionSketch em oficinas para grupos de profissionais da área, onde coletamos resultados do uso da técnica para em seguida analisá-los. A versão da técnica utilizada neste trabalho (v0.8) é composta por quatro partes: quadros, cores, símbolos e regras. Os quadros são uma forma para lidar com a questão temporal, as cores buscam separar as ações do usuário e do sistema, os símbolos são notações para deixar o desenho mais ágil e as regras são boas práticas para orientar o uso da técnica. Esta versão foi apresentada para 24 profissionais em quatro oficinas, seguidas de um período de uso continuado de 18 dias em média e fechado com entrevistas individuais para coletar comentários. Para atingir nosso objetivos a análise dos dados foi feita em dois níveis: um nível mais pragmático, para avaliar a adequação da técnica na sua aplicação prática, e um outro nível mais conceitual, onde pudemos investigar os aspectos mais gerais da prática de esboços, com foco no design de interação. De maneira sucinta os resultados obtidos indicam que a ActionSketch: auxilia o processo cognitivo; facilita a comunicação quando ao menos um designer conhece a técnica; pode ser modificada ou aplicada parcialmente; tem um aprendizado inicial rápido, que pode evoluir de maneira modular; é particularmente adequada para detalhes da interação. Em termos práticos a técnica se mostrou suficientemente adequada para uso e apontou possíveis melhorias. Já no aspecto teórico pudemos verificar a importância da representação da interação nos esboços, que trouxe diversos benefícios para o processo. O trabalho também aponta algumas direções futuras, como uma nova versão da ActionSketch e sua divulgação online de maneira modular e colaborativa. / Interaction design is a relatively new discipline which can be understood as the design of the subjective and qualitative aspects of everything that is both digital and interactive. Sketching is a common practice in design and consists of freehand drawings made on paper to test alternatives and communicate them to other professionals. Interaction design brings new challenges to the practice of sketches, because of the need to represent the interaction as well as the visual layout of the interface. A survey of current practices shows significant limitations and that the subject is still little explored. Therefore the aim of this work was to improve sketching in interaction design, with four lines of action: to analyze the specifics of practice in interaction design sketches to understand the opportunities for improvement; to develop a technique, called ActionSketch, to try to take advantage of these opportunities; to verify if ActionSketch improves the process of sketching in interaction design; to analyze the use of the technique to try to identify how it helps or hinders the process. To achieve these objectives, we adopted the following plan of action. We conducted an extensive literature review. We developed proposals of the technique and refined them through iterations of exercises and interviews with professionals. We then presented ActionSketch in workshops for groups of professionals, from where we collected the results. The version of the technique used in this work (v0.8) consists of four parts: frames, colors, symbols and rules. Frames are a way to deal with the question of representing time, the colors try to evidence the user and system actions, symbols are notations to improve the speed of drawing and rules are good practices that guide the use of the technique. This version was presented to 24 professionals in four workshops, followed by a period of continuous use of 18 days on average and closed with individual interviews to gather feedback. To achieve our objective data analysis was done on two levels: a more pragmatic level, to assess the adequacy of the technique in practical application, and another more conceptual level, where we investigate the more general aspects of the practice of sketches, with focus on interaction design. Briefly the results obtained indicate that ActionSketch: assists the cognitive process; facilitates communication when at least one designer knows the technique; may be modified or partially applied; has a smooth learning curve, which can evolve in a modular way; is particularly adequate for details of the interaction. In practical terms the technique seemed adequate enough for use and indicated some points for improvement. In the theoretical aspect we could verify the importance of representing the interaction in sketches, which brought many benefits to the process. The study also points to some interesting future directions, such as a new version of ActionSketch and the creation of a collaborative site for it\'s publication.

There exists a broad inclination among those who theorize about mental representation to assume that the meanings of linguistic units, like words, are going to be identical to, and work exactly like, mental representations, such as concepts. This has the effect of many theorists applying facts that seem to have been discovered about the meanings of linguistic units to mental representations. This is especially so for causal theories of content, which will be the primary exemplars here. It is the contention of this essay that this approach is mistaken. The influence of thinking about language and mental representation in this way has resulted in the adoption of certain positions by a broad swathe of theorists to the effect that the content of a concept is identical to the property in the world that the concept represents, and that because of this a concept only applies to an object in the world or it does not. The consequences of such commitments are what appear to be insoluble problems that arise when trying to account for, or explain, misrepresentation in cognitive systems. This essay presents the position that in order to actually account for misrepresentation, conceptual content must be understood as being very much like measurements, in that the application of a content to an object in the world is akin to measuring said object, and that conceptual content ought be understood as being graded in the same way that measurements are. On this view, then, concepts are the kinds of things that can be applied more, or less, accurately to particular objects in the world, and so are not identical to whatever it is that they represent.

There exists a broad inclination among those who theorize about mental representation to assume that the meanings of linguistic units, like words, are going to be identical to, and work exactly like, mental representations, such as concepts. This has the effect of many theorists applying facts that seem to have been discovered about the meanings of linguistic units to mental representations. This is especially so for causal theories of content, which will be the primary exemplars here. It is the contention of this essay that this approach is mistaken. The influence of thinking about language and mental representation in this way has resulted in the adoption of certain positions by a broad swathe of theorists to the effect that the content of a concept is identical to the property in the world that the concept represents, and that because of this a concept only applies to an object in the world or it does not. The consequences of such commitments are what appear to be insoluble problems that arise when trying to account for, or explain, misrepresentation in cognitive systems. This essay presents the position that in order to actually account for misrepresentation, conceptual content must be understood as being very much like measurements, in that the application of a content to an object in the world is akin to measuring said object, and that conceptual content ought be understood as being graded in the same way that measurements are. On this view, then, concepts are the kinds of things that can be applied more, or less, accurately to particular objects in the world, and so are not identical to whatever it is that they represent.

La thèse porte sur le statut sémantico-pragmatique des propositions relatives appositives (PRA), étudié à travers l’examen du fonctionnement discursif des phrases complexes de la forme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’ du français. Dans beaucoup de langues, les PRA n’interagissent pas sémantiquement avec les opérateurs présents dans leurs propositions enchâssantes et tendent à s’interpréter pragmatiquement comme porteuses d’informations non-centrales ou secondaires pour la question en discussion (QUD) du discours en cours. Plusieurs analyses (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissocient ces deux propriétés en dérivant la projection des PRA de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes et en expliquant leur lecture pragmatique à l’aide de principes généraux de gestion du flot discursif. En effet, lorsque les PRA apparaissent en fin de phrase, elles sont susceptibles d’interagir avec la QUD tout en ayant une portée large vis-à-vis du reste de la phrase. Certains phénomènes discursifs semblent néanmoins contredire l’idée que les PRA constituent des assertions indépendantes. D’abord, les PRA peuvent interagir avec la QUD seulement si leurs matrices véhiculent également des informations pertinentes pour le sujet en discussion. Ensuite, contrairement à ce que l’on peut observer dans une séquence de deux propositions indépendantes, dans une séquence formée d’une proposition matrice et d’une PRA, quel que soit l’ordre de leur linéarisation, la matrice s’interprète toujours comme centrale pour le discours, alors que le statut pragmatique de la PRA dépend fortement du degré d’informativité du reste de la phrase vis-à-vis de la QUD. Enfin, les résultats de deux études comportementales conduites pour la thèse montrent que, suite au traitement de phrases complexes comme ‘Matrice, qui PRA’, les référents du type ‘individu’ mentionnés par la matrice restent hautement saillants pour le discours subséquent contrairement à ceux dont il est question dans la PRA, qui jouissent d’un degré d’accessibilité assez faible. Partant de ces données, nous concluons que la lecture pragmatique centrale des PRA n’est pas une conséquence de leur statut d’assertions indépendantes mais résulte de l’intégration de leur contenu dans le domaine focal de leurs matrices. Plus généralement, en nous appuyant sur les travaux d’Ander Bois & al. (2010) et Schlenker (2013, ms), nous défendons l’idée que le manque d’interaction entre les PRA et le reste de leurs phrases d’accueil ainsi que leur prédisposition à une interprétation non-centrale pour le discours proviennent du fait, qu’à la différence de leurs matrices, dont l’énonciation s’accompagne de l’introduction d’un référent propositionnel nouveau, les PRA sont des anaphores propositionnelles, dont la portée sémantique et l’interprétation pragmatique dépendent de la position discursive de l’expression important dans l’univers du discours le référent auquel s’applique le contenu qu’elles expriment. / The thesis focuses on the semantic-pragmatic status of appositive relative clauses (ARC). We address this question by examining discourse functioning of complex sentences of the form ‘Matrix, qui ARC’ in French. Crosslinguistically, ARC fail to interact semantically with scope taking operators contained in their embedding clauses and tend to be interpreted pragmatically as carrying non-central or secondary information for the question under discussion (QUD) in the ongoing discourse. Several analysis (Holler 2005, Arnold 2007, Koev 2012) dissociate these two properties, deriving the ARC projection from their status of independent assertions and explaining their pragmatic reading with independent principles of the discourse flow management. Indeed, when an ARC follows linearly its embedding clause, it can interact with the QUD while still receiving a wide scope relatively to the rest of the host sentence. Some discursive phenomena seem nevertheless contradict the idea that ARC constitute independent assertions. First, an ARC can interact with a QUD only if its matrix clause also conveys information relevant to the subject under discussion. Second, contrary to what we observe examining sequences of two independent clauses, in sequences formed of a matrix clause and an ARC, regardless of the order of their linearization, the matrix clause is always interpreted as being at-issue for the discourse, while the pragmatic status of the ARC depends to a great extent on the degree of informativeness of the rest of the sentence relatively to the QUD. And, third, the results of two psycholinguistic experiments conducted as part of this study show that after processing a sentence such as ‘Matrix, qui ARC’, the entity-type referents realized by the matrix clause are highly salient for the subsequent discourse unlike those realized by the ARC, which have a rather low accessibility degree. Based on these data, we conclude that at-issue pragmatic reading of ARC is not a consequence of their functioning as independent assertions but results from integration of their content into the focal domain of the embedding clause. More generally, building on the works of AnderBois & al. (2010) and Schlenker (2013, ms), we defend the idea that the lack of interaction between ARC and the host sentences as well as their tendency to receive a not at-issue reading in discourse arise from the fact that unlike their matrix clauses, whose utterance has the effect of introducing a new propositional referent, ARC are propositional anaphora, the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of which depends thus on the discourse position of their antecedent expression, importing into the discourse the propositional referent the ARC’s content applies to.

O design de interação é uma disciplina de design relativamente nova que pode ser compreendida como o design dos aspectos subjetivos e qualitativos de tudo o que é digital e também interativo. Já o esboço é uma prática muito comum nas disciplinas de design e consiste em um tipo de desenho feito à mão no papel para testar alternativas e comunicá-las para outros profissionais. O design de interação traz novos desafios para a prática de esboços, pois além das telas é necessário representar as ações do usuário e as modificações do sistema ao longo do tempo. Um levantamento da situação atual mostra que as técnicas que existem apresentam limitações importantes e que o assunto ainda é pouco explorado. Portanto o objetivo deste trabalho foi procurar aprimorar os esboços no design de interação, com quatro linhas de ação: analisar as especificidades da prática de esboços no design de interação para compreender as oportunidades de melhoria; desenvolver uma técnica, a ActionSketch, para buscar aproveitar estas oportunidades; verificar se a ActionSketch auxilia no processo de fazer esboços no design de interação; analisar o uso da técnica para procurar compreender como auxilia ou não o processo. Para atingir estes objetivos, adotamos o plano de ação descrito a seguir. Realizamos uma extensa revisão da literatura. Desenvolvemos propostas de técnicas e as refinamos através de iterações de exercícios e de entrevistas com profissionais. Apresentamos a ActionSketch em oficinas para grupos de profissionais da área, onde coletamos resultados do uso da técnica para em seguida analisá-los. A versão da técnica utilizada neste trabalho (v0.8) é composta por quatro partes: quadros, cores, símbolos e regras. Os quadros são uma forma para lidar com a questão temporal, as cores buscam separar as ações do usuário e do sistema, os símbolos são notações para deixar o desenho mais ágil e as regras são boas práticas para orientar o uso da técnica. Esta versão foi apresentada para 24 profissionais em quatro oficinas, seguidas de um período de uso continuado de 18 dias em média e fechado com entrevistas individuais para coletar comentários. Para atingir nosso objetivos a análise dos dados foi feita em dois níveis: um nível mais pragmático, para avaliar a adequação da técnica na sua aplicação prática, e um outro nível mais conceitual, onde pudemos investigar os aspectos mais gerais da prática de esboços, com foco no design de interação. De maneira sucinta os resultados obtidos indicam que a ActionSketch: auxilia o processo cognitivo; facilita a comunicação quando ao menos um designer conhece a técnica; pode ser modificada ou aplicada parcialmente; tem um aprendizado inicial rápido, que pode evoluir de maneira modular; é particularmente adequada para detalhes da interação. Em termos práticos a técnica se mostrou suficientemente adequada para uso e apontou possíveis melhorias. Já no aspecto teórico pudemos verificar a importância da representação da interação nos esboços, que trouxe diversos benefícios para o processo. O trabalho também aponta algumas direções futuras, como uma nova versão da ActionSketch e sua divulgação online de maneira modular e colaborativa. / Interaction design is a relatively new discipline which can be understood as the design of the subjective and qualitative aspects of everything that is both digital and interactive. Sketching is a common practice in design and consists of freehand drawings made on paper to test alternatives and communicate them to other professionals. Interaction design brings new challenges to the practice of sketches, because of the need to represent the interaction as well as the visual layout of the interface. A survey of current practices shows significant limitations and that the subject is still little explored. Therefore the aim of this work was to improve sketching in interaction design, with four lines of action: to analyze the specifics of practice in interaction design sketches to understand the opportunities for improvement; to develop a technique, called ActionSketch, to try to take advantage of these opportunities; to verify if ActionSketch improves the process of sketching in interaction design; to analyze the use of the technique to try to identify how it helps or hinders the process. To achieve these objectives, we adopted the following plan of action. We conducted an extensive literature review. We developed proposals of the technique and refined them through iterations of exercises and interviews with professionals. We then presented ActionSketch in workshops for groups of professionals, from where we collected the results. The version of the technique used in this work (v0.8) consists of four parts: frames, colors, symbols and rules. Frames are a way to deal with the question of representing time, the colors try to evidence the user and system actions, symbols are notations to improve the speed of drawing and rules are good practices that guide the use of the technique. This version was presented to 24 professionals in four workshops, followed by a period of continuous use of 18 days on average and closed with individual interviews to gather feedback. To achieve our objective data analysis was done on two levels: a more pragmatic level, to assess the adequacy of the technique in practical application, and another more conceptual level, where we investigate the more general aspects of the practice of sketches, with focus on interaction design. Briefly the results obtained indicate that ActionSketch: assists the cognitive process; facilitates communication when at least one designer knows the technique; may be modified or partially applied; has a smooth learning curve, which can evolve in a modular way; is particularly adequate for details of the interaction. In practical terms the technique seemed adequate enough for use and indicated some points for improvement. In the theoretical aspect we could verify the importance of representing the interaction in sketches, which brought many benefits to the process. The study also points to some interesting future directions, such as a new version of ActionSketch and the creation of a collaborative site for it\'s publication.

This thesis focuses on improving the SAT solving technology. The improvements focus on two major subjects: sequential SAT solving and parallel SAT solving. To better understand sequential SAT algorithms, the abstract reduction system Generic CDCL is introduced. With Generic CDCL, the soundness of solving techniques can be modeled. Next, the conflict driven clause learning algorithm is extended with the three techniques local look-ahead, local probing and all UIP learning that allow more global reasoning during search. These techniques improve the performance of the sequential SAT solver Riss. Then, the formula simplification techniques bounded variable addition, covered literal elimination and an advanced cardinality constraint extraction are introduced. By using these techniques, the reasoning of the overall SAT solving tool chain becomes stronger than plain resolution. When using these three techniques in the formula simplification tool Coprocessor before using Riss to solve a formula, the performance can be improved further. Due to the increasing number of cores in CPUs, the scalable parallel SAT solving approach iterative partitioning has been implemented in Pcasso for the multi-core architecture. Related work on parallel SAT solving has been studied to extract main ideas that can improve Pcasso. Besides parallel formula simplification with bounded variable elimination, the major extension is the extended clause sharing level based clause tagging, which builds the basis for conflict driven node killing. The latter allows to better identify unsatisfiable search space partitions. Another improvement is to combine scattering and look-ahead as a superior search space partitioning function. In combination with Coprocessor, the introduced extensions increase the performance of the parallel solver Pcasso. The implemented system turns out to be scalable for the multi-core architecture. Hence iterative partitioning is interesting for future parallel SAT solvers. The implemented solvers participated in international SAT competitions. In 2013 and 2014 Pcasso showed a good performance. Riss in combination with Copro- cessor won several first, second and third prices, including two Kurt-Gödel-Medals. Hence, the introduced algorithms improved modern SAT solving technology.