Software Engineering Commons^™

The Staging Transformation Approach To Mixing Initiative, Robert Capra, Michael Narayan, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones

Saverio Perugini

Mixed-initiative interaction is an important facet of many conversational interfaces, flexible planning architectures, intelligent tutoring systems, and interactive information retrieval systems. Software systems for mixed-initiative interaction must enable us to both operationalize the mixing of initiative (i.e., support the creation of practical dialogs) and to reason in real-time about how a flexible mode of interaction can be supported (e.g., from a meta-dialog standpoint). In this paper, we present the staging transformation approach to mixing initiative, where a dialog script captures the structure of the dialog and dialog control processes are realized through generous use of program transformation techniques (e.g., partial …

Personalizing Interactions With Information Systems, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialog-based applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles …

Mining Web-Functional Dependencies For Flexible Information Access, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

We present an approach to enhancing information access through Web structure mining in contrast to traditional approaches involving usage mining. Specifically, we mine the hardwired hierarchical hyperlink structure of Web sites to identify patterns of term-term co-occurrences we call Web functional dependencies (FDs). Intuitively, a Web FD ‘x y’ declares that all paths through a site involving a hyperlink labeled x also contain a hyperlink labeled y. The complete set of FDs satisfied by a site help characterize (flexible and expressive) interaction paradigms supported by a site, where a paradigm is the set of explorable sequences therein. …

Personalization By Program Slicing, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Personalization involves customizing information access to the end-user. As any new area of computer science research it lacks formal models to guide the design of systems. In this paper, we present a modeling methodology, based on generative programming, for personalizing interactions with hierarchical websites. The methodology entails modeling a user’s interaction with a site in a program and applying program slicing to personalize the interaction. While preserving interactivity, this approach does not require the designer to anticipate all possible user interactions a priori and provide interfaces for each. Moreover, it provides a theoretical, systematic, and implementation-neutral way to design systems …

The Good, Bad And The Indifferent: Explorations In Recommender System Health, Benjamin J. Keller, Sun-Mi Kim, N. Srinivas Vemuri, Naren Ramakrishnan, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

Our work is based on the premise that analysis of the connections exploited by a recommender algorithm can provide insight into the algorithm that could be useful to predict its performance in a fielded system. We use the jumping connections model defined by Mirza et al. [6], which describes the recommendation process in terms of graphs. Here we discuss our work that has come out of trying to understand algorithm behavior in terms of these graphs. We start by describing a natural extension of the jumping connections model of Mirza et al., and then discuss observations that have come from …

Personalization By Website Transformation: Theory And Practice, Saverio Perugini

Saverio Perugini

We present an analysis of a progressive series of out-of-turn transformations on a hierarchical website to personalize a user’s interaction with the site. We formalize the transformation in graph-theoretic terms and describe a toolkit we built that enumerates all of the traversals enabled by every possible complete series of these transformations in any site and computes a variety of metrics while simulating each traversal therein to qualify the relationship between a site’s structure and the cumulative effect of support for the transformation in a site. We employed this toolkit in two websites. The results indicate that the transformation enables users …

Staging Transformations For Multimodal Web Interaction Management, Michael Narayan, Christopher Williams, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Saverio Perugini

Multimodal interfaces are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with the advent of mobile devices, accessibility considerations, and novel software technologies that combine diverse interaction media. In addition to improving access and delivery capabilities, such interfaces enable flexible and personalized dialogs with websites, much like a conversation between humans. In this paper, we present a software framework for multimodal web interaction management that supports mixed-initiative dialogs between users and websites. A mixed-initiative dialog is one where the user and the website take turns changing the flow of interaction. The framework supports the functional specification and realization of such dialogs using staging transformations – …

A Content-Sensitive Wiki Help System, Eswara Satya Pavan Rajesh Pinapala

Master's Projects

Context-sensitive help is a software application component that enables users to open help pertaining to their state, location, or the action they are performing within the software. Context-sensitive “wiki” help, on the other hand, is help powered by a wiki system with all the features of context-sensitive help. A context-sensitive wiki help system aims to make the context-sensitive help collaborative; in addition to seeking help, users can directly contribute to the help system. I have implemented a context-sensitive wiki help system into Yioop, an open source search engine and software portal created by Dr. Chris Pollett, in order to measure …

Designing An Immersive And Entertaining Pervasive Gameplay Experience With Spheros As Game And Interface Elements, Brennan Jones, Kody Dillman, Setareh Aghel Manesh, Ehud Sharlin, Anthony Tang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Sphero is a robotic remote-controlled ball capable of rolling around on its own in any direction at multiple speeds. Numerous games have been designed for the Sphero for smartphones and tablets. However, most of these games provide an interface for controlling the Sphero that is far from natural. These games also do not put a strong focus on the physical environment around the Sphero. This work discusses a control scheme used to control a Sphero with another Sphero, and a pervasive game leveraging this scheme that emphasizes physical properties of the environment to create an immersive experience.

A Software Design Pattern Based Approach To Auto Dynamic Difficulty In Video Games, Muhammad Iftekher Chowdhury

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

From the point of view of skill levels, reflex speeds, hand-eye coordination, tolerance for frustration, and motivations, video game players may vary drastically. Auto dynamic difficulty (ADD) in video games refers to the technique of automatically adjusting different aspects of a video game in real time, based on the player’s ability and emergence factors in order to provide the optimal experience to users from such a large demography and increase replay value. In this thesis, we describe a collection of software design patterns for enabling auto dynamic difficulty in video games. We also discuss the benefits of a design pattern …

Personality Profiles Of Software Engineers And Their Software Quality Preferences, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Zaka Ul-Mustafa

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Studies related to human aspects in software engineering (SE) have been performed from different perspectives. These perspectives include the study of human factors in different phases of software life cycle, effect of team performance in software development, how can a personality trait suit a particular task, and about some other miscellaneous issues. This research work aims to establish personality profiles of Pakistani software engineers using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument. In this survey, we have collected personality profiles of 110 software engineers. Moreover, their preferences of software quality attributes have also been collected. Analysis of the study shows that …

Structure Preserving Large Imagery Reconstruction, Ju Shen, Jianjun Yang, Sami Taha Abu Sneineh, Bryson Payne, Markus Hitz

Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as image clustering, 3D scene reconstruction, and other big data applications. However, such tasks are not easy due to the fact the retrieved photos can have large variations in their view perspectives, resolutions, lighting, noises, and distortions. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image …

Model-Based Testing Of Gui-Driven Applications, Vivien Chinnapongse, Insup Lee, Oleg Sokolsky, Shaohui Wang, Paul L. Jones

Oleg Sokolsky

While thorough testing of reactive systems is essential to ensure device safety, few testing methods center on GUI-driven applications. In this paper we present one approach for the model-based testing of such systems. Using the AHLTA-Mobile case study to demonstrate our approach, we first introduce a high-level method of modeling the expected behavior of GUI-driven applications. We show how to use the NModel tool to generate test cases from this model and present a way to execute these tests within the application, highlighting the challenges of using an API-geared tool in a GUI-based setting. Finally we present the results of …

Games People Play: Exploring Depaul's Top-Rated Computer Game Development Program

DePaul Magazine

In March 2014, the Princeton Review, in conjunction with PC Gamer magazine, named the top 25 schools to study game design in the United States and Canada. DePaul's undergraduate program ranked 20th, a considerable leap from 2013’s honorable mention. The graduate program came in at 12th. DePaul's strong ranking reflects the game development program's extension of its basic game development, software engineering and programming to include art, design and storytelling, as well as computer graphics technology, networking, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Examples of the award-winning games developed by students and now marketed by such going concerns as Sony PlayStation …

A Proof Of Concept For Crowdsourcing Color Perception Experiments, Ryan Nathaniel Mcleod

Master's Theses

Accurately quantifying the human perception of color is an unsolved prob- lem. There are dozens of numerical systems for quantifying colors and how we as humans perceive them, but as a whole, they are far from perfect. The ability to accurately measure color for reproduction and verification is critical to indus- tries that work with textiles, paints, food and beverages, displays, and media compression algorithms. Because the science of color deals with the body, mind, and the subjective study of perception, building models of color requires largely empirical data over pure analytical science. Much of this data is extremely dated, …

Web Portal For Elderly Patients To Research Prescription Medication, Krista Miller, Robert File, Wil Murphy Jr

Mathematics and Computer Science Capstones

People 55 and older constitute 25.2% of the U.S. population. These senior citizens use a vast amount of prescription drugs to treat and control health related issues. An analysis of the drug industry reveals several challenges facing this demographic group: costs, coverage by insurance companies and drug interactions. The need for a centrally located drug information source for senior citizens and their caregivers is immense. We propose researching and viewing what is available from various areas and developing a user-friendly information source prototype to assist this demographic group with their medication under takings. We expect to deliver a summary of …

Evolution Of User Interfaces For The Visually Impaired, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Physically or mentally challenged people cannot use a computer in the same way a normal people can. For example, persons with disability in hands cannot use a standard keyboard or mouse efficiently. Persons having visual disability cannot benefit from a standard display screen. People having locomotor challenge, visual disability or hearing problem etc. cannot interact with a computer like a normal person. So it is necessary to design the computers, interfacing devices and software interfaces with special features, which can be used by the people with physical challenges.

There are many input/output devices like mouse, keyboard, pointers, and touch screens …

A Framework For Constructing Serious Games, Taylor Glen Yust

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Communicating ideas and knowledge through serious games is a trend that is currently gaining in popularity. However, at present, there is a distinct lack of a game development methodology that takes a critical approach to transforming information into gameplay. This thesis presents a framework that can be followed to construct compelling serious games that are effective at transferring knowledge to the player. This is accomplished through an analysis of atomic knowledge items and their relationships to one another, followed by a meaningful and synergetic implementation of these ideas at a foundational mechanics level.

This thesis also describes the development of …

Automatic Objects Removal For Scene Completion, Jianjun Yang, Yin Wang, Honggang Wang, Kun Hua, Wei Wang, Ju Shen

Computer Science Faculty Publications

With the explosive growth of Web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions of photographs are uploaded to the Internet. We can trivially collect a huge number of photo streams for various goals, such as 3D scene reconstruction and other big data applications. However, this is not an easy task due to the fact the retrieved photos are neither aligned nor calibrated. Furthermore, with the occlusion of unexpected foreground objects like people, vehicles, it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image completion algorithm for object removal that produces visually …

Midiflapper: A Leap Motion Midi Controller, Mark M. Henry

Computer Science and Software Engineering

An application called MIDIFlapper was developed that translates data from the Leap Motion, an NUI device, into MIDI data suitable for use by a contemporary digital audio workstation. This allows electronic musicians to use the Leap Motion for musical creation and live performance.

Colormoo: An Algorithmic Approach To Generating Color Palettes, Joshua Rael

CMC Senior Theses

Selecting one color can be done with relative ease, but this task becomes more difficult with each subsequent color. Colormoo is an online tool aimed at solving this problem. We implement three algorithms for generating color palettes based off of a starting color. Data is collected for each palette that is generated. Our analysis reveals two of the algorithms are preferred, but under different circumstances. Furthermore, we find that users prefer palettes containing colors that are compatible, but not too similar. With refined heuristics, we believe these techniques can be extended and applied beyond the field of graphic design alone.