SIGDOC is the Association
for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on the
Design of Communication (DOC).
Until 2003, SIGDOC focused on documentation for hardware and software. With the
shift in focus from documentation to the "design of communication,"
SIGDOC better
positioned
itself to emphasize
the
potentials,
the
practices, and the problems of multiple kinds of communication technologies,
such as web applications, user
interfaces, and on-line and print documentation.
“The ethical conduct of research is a cornerstone of modern scientific research. Computer science and the discipline's technological artifacts touch nearly every aspect of modern life, and computer scientists must conduct and report their research in an ethical manner. This workshop will identify four theories that offer guidance for ethical decision making, ad use these theories as a basis for evaluating and discussing a set of ethical dilemmas that researchers in computer science might face.”
“The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the de facto standard for modeling the architecture and behavior of an object-oriented software system. However, many legacy systems have been documented using non-object structured analysis and structured design. This paper proposes a framework to convert a data flow diagram and an entity relationship diagram into UML artifact, including a use case diagram, sequence diagrams, and a class diagram. The new UML model can be used by analysts or computer aided software engineering tools to implement new object-oriented system. The set of rules for transformation is tested on a structured analysis and design example.”
“Few users of computer applications seek help from the documentation. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of why this is so and examines how, in real work, users solve their usability problems. Based on in-depth interviews with 25 subjects representing a varied cross-section of users, we find that users do avoid using both paper and online help systems. Few users have paper manuals for the most heavily used applications, but none complained about their lack. Online help is more likely to be consulted than paper manuals, but users are equally likely to report that they solve their problem by asking a colleague or experimenting on their own. Users cite difficulties in navigating the help systems, particularly difficulties in finding useful search terms, and disappointment in the level of explanation found.”
“This paper proposes a reverse engineering approach for abstracting conceptual user-centered models from existing Web applications to re-document them at a high level of abstraction and from a user perspective. The recovered models are specified by referring to the Ubiquitous Web Application (UWA) design methodology. UWA models are able to describe the structure of the application contents, the semantic relations among contents, the different views on contents the application offers to users, and the navigation paths and the navigation nodes used to present contents to users. The approach exploits existing reverse engineering methods and tools to extract fine grained structural information from the analyzed applications and abstracts UWA models from them. The architecture of a tool to support the reverse engineering approach is described and the results from some preliminary experiments are discussed.”
“We describe ICODE an intermediate language for a static checking system, which we claim is capable of representing documents and code from many different source languages. We describe a method for supporting our claims and sketch a proof that an exemplar block-structured language has a semantics-preserving translations to ICODE.”
“This work will present elements of Genrich Altshuller's Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, also known as TRIZ, and use them to describe the structural patterns found in the Gang of Four's Design Patterns.”
“Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is a new technology that was proposed to improve separation of concerns in software development. AOP's main focus is to use aspect modules to implement concerns that would be generally scattered across the system and tangled with other modules (crosscutting concerns). Although much research has focused on AOP's application to traditional software development, little has been done towards its application to Web development. Aspect-oriented PHP (aoPHP) is an addition to PHP that allows the use of AOP in the Web development context. In this paper we describe an application of aoPHP to show that AOP can also be effectively used in the Web development context. In particular, we have implemented two crosscutting concerns in a collaborative Web system named CoTeia: the access control and the version control functionalities. Furthermore, we discuss how AOP can enhance the design of Web applications by reasoning on the refactored system.”
“Formal accounts of how proposals are prepared in the contemporary workplace are scarce. In particular, researchers have published very few reports based on structured studies of proposal writing. This paper offers an overview of the current state of our knowledge about proposal writing in the contemporary workplace. Drawing upon data from a case study, the paper then advances an argument for the field to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of proposal development as a complex information gathering and design activity.”
“We consider a publish/subscribe system for digital libraries which continuously evaluates queries over a large repository containing document descriptions. The subscriptions, the query expressions and the document descriptions, all rely on a taxonomy that is a hierarchically organized set of keywords, or terms. The digital library supports insertion, update and removal of a document. Each of these operations is seen as an event that must be notified only to those users whose subscriptions match the document's description. The paper addresses the problem of efficiently supporting the notification process, and makes contributions in two directions: (a) definition of a formal model for the publish/subscribe process; (b) proposal of a semi-lattice structure for subscriptions allowing the filtering out of non matching subscriptions. Experimental results that show the cost benefits obtained by our approach are presented in the full paper [6].”
“This paper presents an approach for interaction design based on the specificity of the information involved in the interaction. The contribution is intended for application designers who wish to widen the traditional principles of design with a renovated view allowing the interactions of the future system to be imagined. The broad lines of this approach are described thanks to a prototype. The experimentation area considers a localized corpus where space criteria are used as guidelines in order to design interactions of the associated document management system.”
“The Multimedia Requirements Method for Easy Risk Mitigation (MURMER) is proposed. This method represents requirements for multimedia document types containing audio, video, image or textual data. MURMER aims to increase the overall transparency and reliability of representations as well as provide a straightforward and clear understanding of the whole requirement pane of the final product. It also aims to decrease risk levels associated to the requirements phase and improves overall completeness. The feasibility of the proposed method is shown in a Composting 101 tutorial example created in Macromedia Flash and corresponding MS Powerpoint documents. MURMER investigation is compared to other UML-driven schemes. Its efficiency is based on simplicity and completeness. It is also effective as a risk mitigator.”
“The ethical conduct of research is a cornerstone of modern scientific research. Computer science and the discipline's technological artifacts touch nearly every aspect of modern life, and computer scientists must conduct and report their research in an ethical manner. This paper examines a small selection of potential ethical dilemmas researchers in this discipline face, and discusses how ethical concerns may be addressed in these situations. The paper concludes with an overview of other areas of ethical concern and a look to the future development of a code for ethical computer science research.”
“This paper deals with interactive applications design whose main function is to convey information. We aim at promoting genre notion as well as verbal interaction properties in such applications design. We state that genre is inherent to any communication situation. It carries an intention and defines communication structures that are shared by communication transmitter and recipient. In order to facilitate the specification of these communication structures, we adopt verbal interactions' point of view. Then we propose, by the means of a model, an integrated view of the concepts that derive from the two previous areas. We propose derived interaction-centered design recommendations and present design elements of an experimentation in which our approach has been applied.”
“This paper describes the process for documenting programs using Aspect-Oriented PHP through AOPHPdoc. We discuss some of the problems involved in documenting Aspect-Oriented programs, solutions to these problems, and the creation of documentation with AOPHPdoc. A survey of programmers found no preference for Javadoc-styled documentation over the colored-coded AOPHP documentation.”
“The problem of searching the web by using small devices such as PDA is a subject of research pursued by academics but is also an important concern from industry. Here we suggest that document genre may contribute to the reduction of processing and memory burden when searching information on an Intranet. Document genre may also contribute to ease the access to information. It is in this context that we analyzed in what extent document genres are employed by users to describe digital resources, in order to be displayed in small display device. Based in the results of our research, we also propose a new architecture for an information system.”
“The present study examined the influence of different reading goals on reading in a hypertext environment. The study focused on text based electronic documents. The study was an independent samples design experiment with three different conditions. Ninety participants read the hypertext allocated into three different conditions and then, all answered the same set of questions. The results show that reading goals did not influence reading times, comprehension scores, and amount of visited links. The data also revealed two factors that influence hyperlink selection: coherence, and location.”
“Media to externalize some knowledge as knowledge resources for their sharing among people across time and space are generally defined as "knowledge media". Distribution of knowledge resources sooner or later forms a huge accumulation of knowledge shared by our society, which activates the reediting and redistribution of knowledge resources, and accelerates their memetic evolution. Meme media are knowledge media with reeding and redistribution functions. Each knowledge consists of its code and mode. The code defines the knowledge itself, while the mode defines the presentation details. For each externalized knowledge, we call its code its genotype, and its external representation including its mode its phenotype. Electronic information media have enabled us to edit multimedia documents through direct manipulation on a WYSIWYG editor. We may consider a similar editor to edit not only multimedia documents but also compound documents with embedded tools and services. The editing denotes the recombination of contents on some medium through direct manipulation. Each recombination of contents should be represented as a phenotype manipulation that defines the corresponding recombination of the genotype representation. In this paper, we will propose a new interpretation of knowledge media and meme media. This will clarify the essential mechanism from the view point of the "phenotype-genotype mapping". We will use this interpretation to review the meme media architecture, and to reformulate how the meme-media architecture can be applied to the Web to make it work as a meme pool.”
“The digital games industry has grown to the size of the film industry and is going to leave the box office far behind. Computers with their advanced graphics capabilities have contributed to the immersive interactive experience which attracts many to spend more leisure time playing digital games than watching television. The available CPU power of home computers and notebook PCs is setting the stage for game AI; console development shows a similar trend. Digital games and their potential social impact are subject to a heated debate worldwide which is fueled by tragic events such as the 1999 deadly shooting at the Columbine Highschool, Littleton, CO, USA, or the 2002 amok run at the Gutenberg Highschool in Erfurt, Germany. This debate is getting even more controversial when digital games such as the Super Columbine Massacre RPG enter the stage. Clearly, digital games may be seen as entertainment media. Established approaches of media research apply. Digital games must be also seen as IT application systems. They are, in particular, systems of Artificial Intelligence. The invited talk addresses issues of digital games' impact on social behavior. Emphasis is put on an interdisciplinary approach which is new, to some extent, to digital games studies in media and communication science. As presentation agenda, some list of problems is identified. For every problem, there will be undertaken the endeavor of developing new ideas of game playing and designing novel games such that the identified problem changes or, in the best case, possibly disappears.”
“Studies of knowledge work tend to take one of two research foci: either on communication (the transactional, intersubjective exchange of information, thoughts, writing, or speech among participants, performed in serial chains) or mediation (the nonsequential, implicit aspects of artifacts that serve to guide and constrain workers' activities). In this paper, we propose a methodological framework that coordinates the perspectives.”
“Nowadays websites use, above all, the "visual channel" to communicate content, functionality and navigation/interaction capabilities. Users who, permanently or temporarily, cannot use their eyes to interact with an application (not only visually impaired but also people who cannot look at the screen while interacting) need a new paradigm of interaction, based on an "aural" access to information. Current technological approaches for developing "aural hypertexts" (such as speech markup languages, or code optimization techniques for screen-readers) provide technical solutions to transform a visual interaction into an aural one, failing to support adequately the overall design process. This paper presents an overview of critical design issues to consider when conceiving aural hypertexts, namely when designing "aural" information architecture, navigation and interaction features. Examples of possible "aural" design solutions are also discussed to support specific requirements. The work is based upon real-life project experience in both designing web applications and developing applications for visually-impaired users.”
“Over the past ten years, technical communicators, theorists and practitioners alike, have been acknowledging change and growth in the field. For example, what once was considered merely writing about technical subjects or objects now encompasses writing the technology itself, in that we are designing complex systems to facilitate the work we do. As the technical communication discipline grows, we report on select trends in the SIGDOC proceedings in recent years to examine the widening of boundaries of the discipline. By doing so, we aim to provide context and situation for the ever-changing role of the technical communicator.”
“Visually impaired users are hindered in their efforts to access the largest repository of electronic information in the world, namely the World Wide Web (Web). A visually impaired users information and presentation requirements are different from a sighted user in that they are highly egocentric and non-visual. These requirements can become problems in that the Web is visually centric with regard to presentation and information order/layout, this can (and does) hinder users who need presentation-agnostic access to information. Finding semantic information already encoded directly into documents can help to alleviate these problems and support users who wish to understand the content as opposed to the presentation and order of the information. If this is to happen in the "real world", however, authors must incur no "design overhead" when creating documents. Our solution, Structural-Semantics for Accessibility and Device Independence (SADIe) involves building ontologies of Cascading Sytle-Sheets (CSS) and using those ontologies to transform Web pages. In this way we find that we can indeed "tame" inaccessible Web pages.”
“Digital environments enable distributed work. Though they pose challenges for research, they also provide affordances for addressing these difficulties including opportunities to capture and visualize writing activity in significant detail. This paper surveys sources of visualizations of writing processes and practices, focusing on attempts to deal with writing as a distributed activity. We then ask: what qualities of visualizations seem desirable and help to render writing visible as knowledge work for the purpose of providing mediational support to writers.”
“This paper examines the relationship between Gilles Deleuze's philosophical program and the design attitude. We attempt to extract from the Deleuze program design patterns which we operationalize and apply to web design.”
“While earlier work provided a partial view of users' preferences about manuals, for most users in most work contexts the important question remains open: What do users want in documentation? This paper presents the results of a study in which a diverse cross-section of 25 users was interviewed in depth about their needs and preferences with respect to software help systems, whether printed or on-line, that they use at work. The study's participants indicated that they preferred documentation, whether online or printed, that is easy to navigate, provides explanations at an appropriate level of technical detail, enables finding as well as solving problems through examples and scenarios, and is complete and correct. These preferences give rise to difficult issues, including a possibly inherent tension between coverage and precision, and variation among users with respect to desired level of technical complexity of explanation.”
“We report on the development of a tool which supports software programmers in programming to an interface by providing just in time (JIT) solutions. The development of the tool was grounded in a scenario-based analysis of programming scenarios and a procedural task analysis of these scenarios. The scenarios were analyzed using the theoretical perspectives of mental models and the production paradox of the user. Based on the scenarios and analysis a new refactoring and a tool were developed to support software programmers.”
“The results of usability verbalizations gathered using a talk aloud protocol during a heuristic evaluation with persons knowledgeable about usability are reported. An explicit problem in system design is the application and subsequent utilization of heuristic evaluations in conjunction with talk aloud protocols [1, 4]. Though a common practice, the verbalizations themselves may not conform to Ericsson and Simon's [5] protocol, which is often cited as justification and is perhaps the most heavily cited process-tracing method. The difficulty is that Nielsen's heuristic evaluation [10, 13], with which the protocol is often paired, specifically requires Type 3 verbalizations - data that is deemed unreliable by Ericsson and Simon. A different theory, which considers the attributes of the individual and is also from cognitive science and Simon [5], is suggested to reconcile the theory with the practice of verbal protocols.”
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Computer programs emerge as the outcome of complex human processes of cognition, communication and negotiation, which serve to establish the meaningful embedding of the computer system in its intended use context.
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Mar 20th, 2010
