| <2011 | 2013> |
| CS-2012-01 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | "Looks cool, I'll try this later!": Understanding the Faces and Uses of Online Tutorials | |||
| Authors | Ben Lafreniere, Andrea Bunt, Matthew Lount and Michael Terry | |||
| Abstract | Despite their prevalence, little is known about how users make use of web tutorials or feature-rich applications, and why authors take the time to create them. In this paper, we analyze comments posted to web tutorials to understand the purposes that tutorials serve for users, and examine the tutorials themselves to understand their structure and authors' motivations to create them. Our results indicate that users come to tutorials for help performing techniques with applications, and to achieve complex end results beyond their current expertise. As for tutorial authors, we found that most tutorials had clear extrinsic reasons for existing, including earning ad or referral revenue, promoting premium products or services, or acting as portfolios for their authors. Based on these results, we suggest a number of improvements to current tutorial interfaces. | |||
| Date | January 5, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-02 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | A Web-based Framework for Collaborative Innovation | |||
| Authors | Donald Cowan, Paulo Alencar, Fred McGarry and Carlos Lucena |
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| Abstract | Twenty-first century global change in most sectors is challenging us and our communities in the management and use of resources. TheWorld Economic Forum has recognized the need for new approaches to enable collective action among both the leadership and concerned members of communities. We call this approach of working together to produce societal solutions collaborative innovation (CI). CI is part of Web Science as it brings together information networks of people and communities who use and augment the digital records related to common problems mediated by the Web. This paper outlines an approach to CI based on dynamic asset-mapping and how it has been supported through a web-based framework that requires both communication and operations on a knowledge base or asset map. Based on the experience using the framework in designing and deploying over 70 systems that incorporate dynamic asset-mapping as a foundation for CI, it is clear that CI takes many forms. We illustrate some of these forms through specific examples in environment, socio-economic development and planning. We conclude that it is not possible to build a single set of tools to support CI and that the users need access to meta-tools and frameworks to implement tailored systems supporting CI directly rather than relying on people with in-depth knowledge of the technologies. We then outline some of the properties of a set of software meta-tools that have been be used to implement these systems. | |||
| Date | January 7, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-03 | ||||
| Title | A Study on Justifications for Choices: Explanation Patterns and Guidelines | |||
| Authors | Ingrid Oliveira de Nunes, Simon Miles, Michael Luck and
Carlos José Pereira de Lucena |
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| Abstract | Many different forms of explanation have been proposed for justifying decisions made by automated systems. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes a good explanation, or what information these explanations should include. In this paper, we present the results of a study into how people justify their decisions. Analysis of our results allowed us to extract the forms of explanation adopted by users to justify choices, and the situations in which these forms are used. The analysis led to the development of guidelines and patterns for explanations to be generated by automated decision systems. This paper presents the study, its results, and the guidelines and patterns we derived. | |||
| Date | February 16, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-05 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | A Feature-Oriented Requirements Modelling Language | |||
| Authors | Pourya Shaker and Joanne M. Atlee | |||
| Abstract | In this report, we present FORML, a language for modelling the requirements of features in a software product line. FORML aims to support feature modularity and precise requirements modelling, and to ease the task of adding new features to a set of existing requirements. In particular, FORML decomposes a product line’s requirements into feature modules, and provides language support for specifying tightly-coupled features as model fragments that extend and override existing feature modules. We discuss how decisions in the design of FORML affect the succinctness of feature modules, the evolvability of requirements models, and the specification of intended interactions among related features. We applied FORML to the specification of a set of telephony features, the models of which are included in the report. | |||
| Date | March 9, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-06 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | A Framework for Adaptive Workflow (Model Human Behavior - Don’t Constrain It!) | |||
| Authors | H. Dominic Covvey, Donald D. Cowan, Paulo Alencar, William Malyk, Joel So, D. Henriques and Shirley L. Fenton | |||
| Abstract | Healthcare processes are complex and highly variable from day to day. Healthcare process execution can be affected by any participant in a process, including clinicians, the patient, and the patient’s family, as well as by environmental factors such as clinician, staff, facility and equipment availability, and patient clinical status. However, there are no solutions that enable computer support for a process to address the full complexity and variability of healthcare processes. We have re-conceptualized workflow and developed an innovative process representation and execution framework based on concepts from software engineering, machine learning, complexity, and database management. This new framework frees processes to track human behavior, thereby releasing us from the constraints of past methods. | |||
| Date | March 28, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-07 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Pathwidth and small-height drawings of 2-connected outer-planar graphs | |||
| Authors | Therese Biedl | |||
| Abstract | In this paper, we study planar drawings of 2-connected outer-planar graphs. In an earlier paper we showed that every such graph has a visibility representation with height O(log n). In this paper, we show that with a different construction, the height is 4pw(G)-3, where pw(G) denotes the pathwidth of graph G. Since for any planar graph G, any planar drawing has height >= pw(G), this is a 4-approximation algorithm for the height. We also show that our visibility representations can be converted into straight-line drawings of the same height. | |||
| Date | April 17, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
| CS-2012-08 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | On the Impact of Storage in Residential Power Distribution Systems | |||
| Authors | Omid Ardakanian, Catherine Rosenberg, and S. Keshav | |||
| Abstract | It is anticipated that energy storage will be incorporated into the distribution network component of the future smart grid to allow desirable features such as distributed generation integration and reduction in the peak demand. There is, therefore, an urgent need to understand the impact of storage on distribution system planning. In this paper, we focus on the effect of storage on the loading of neighbourhood pole-top transformers. We apply a probabilistic sizing technique originally developed for sizing buffers and communication links in telecommunications networks to jointly size storage and transformers in the distribution network. This allows us to compute the potential gains from transformer upgrade deferral due to the addition of storage. We validate our results through numerical simulation using measurements of home load in a testbed of 20 homes and demonstrate that our guidelines allow local distribution companies to defer transformer upgrades without reducing reliability. | |||
| Date | May 2, 2012 |
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| Comments | ||||
| Report | Adobe PDF | |||
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519-888-4567 x33293
Fax: 519-885-1208
Contact | Feedback: hjardine@cs.uwaterloo.ca | David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science | Faculty of Mathematics
Last modified: Wednesday, 02-May-2012 16:28:12 EDT
