Hashim Iqbal Chunpir

Using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in Understanding Current User-Support Scenario in the Climate Science Domain of Cyber-Infrastructures

Cyber-infrastructures have transformed the practice of research. Researchers can now access distributed data worldwide with the help of cyber-infrastructures. User support services play an important role to facilitate researchers to accomplish their research goals with the help of cyber-infrastructures. However, the current user-support practices in cyber-infrastructures are not properly organized (at least in climate cyber-infrastructures) thus over-burdening human support agents. The paper describes the study conducted to evaluate the geographically distributed user-support system currently in practice in the leading cyber-infrastructure namely Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). The members of the investigation team found out that the user-support in ESGF, a global climate cyber-infrastructure need more attention to make it resourceful as well as standardized. The findings about end-user support system were modelled using soft systems methodology (SSM). This approach helped to present the findings of this study to stakeholders in order to capture their feedback about the current system to further improve the system.

User Support System in the Complex Environment

e-Science infrastructures have changed the process of research. Researchers can now access distributed data around the globe with the help of e-infrastructures. This is particularly a very important development for the developing countries. User support services play an important role to provide researchers with the required information needs to accomplish their research goals with the help of e-infrastructures. However, the current user-support practices in e-infrastructures in the climate domain are being followed on intuitive basis, hence over-burdening infrastructure development staffs who partly act as human support agents. The main contribution of this paper is to present the environmental complexity with-in the contemporary user support practices of climate science e-infrastructure known as Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). ESGF is a leading distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) data-grid system in Earth System Modelling (ESM) having around 25000 users distributed all over the world.

Evolution of e-Research: From Infrastructure Development to Service Orientation

E-Research has reframed the process of research. Researchers can now access distributed data around the globe with the help of e-Research infrastructure. This paper presents an overview of the developmental process and evolution of an e-Research platform: Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) that evolved from a research infrastructure test-bed to a services oriented platform, in subsequent phases. ESGF is a leading distributed peer to peer data grid system in Earth System Modelling having around 27000 users distributed all over the world. Currently, it is a challenge faced by most of the e-Research facilities to provide user oriented services. Moreover, there is a strong need to conduct user experience and usability studies of e-Research facilities like ESGF, which is in demand. However, very few steps have been taken in practice to create a better user experience (UX), so that users’ interest can be generated to interact with e-infrastructures, on an intuitive basis. Hence, thriving the practice of e-Research and making it more interesting overtime. Finally, this paper indicates at the service oriented and usability aspects of e-Science infrastructures.

Improving User Interfaces for a Request Tracking System: Best Practical RT

User Interface (UI) design guidelines have not been adequately applied towards the design of UI of request tracking systems. Moreover, UI of request tracking systems in particular have not been researched in federated e-Science organisations. These systems, however, play a central role for the collaboration in e-Science. The users of e-Science infrastructures that constitute data and High Performance Computer (HPC) facilities interact with the cyber-infrastructures to use their features mainly for research purposes. The incoming problems and information queries i.e. user requests are shown using a Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Request Tracking System (RTS) – like other software systems. In this paper, a field study has been conducted and it has been found out that in the process of using a cyber-infrastructure the users face problems on one hand as well as the people who process incoming user requests also need better UI of RTS on the other hand. From this field study observations were made and amendments in the current UI of RTS were proposed. Moreover, the UI of RTS has been evaluated and recommendations have been made to improve it in a federated e-Science environment using a field study.

Prioritizing Tasks Using User-Support-Worker’s Activity Model (USWAM)

Service desk has been widely deployed to cater user-support in an organisation. However, in the field of e-Research there are only few studies conducted to enhance the user-support services or user-services. Little has been done to improve the motivation of the employees of e-Science infrastructures to service incoming user requests known as incidents. In this paper, User-Support-Worker’s Activity Model (USWAM) is presented that enhances the interactivity of the employees of cyber-infrastructures with the incidents. Furthermore, the model enhances not only the handling of the incoming user requests but also the management of the core activities assigned to the employees via visualization queues and matrices in the UI. Subsequently, USWAM aids the employees to remain interested in supporting users, similar to playing a game. Accomplished tasks can be rewarded in the form of money/gifts or recognitions. Finally, USWAM can be transferred to other service-oriented domains where prioritization or management of tasks is required.

Open Data Evolution in Information Systems Research: Considering Cases of Data-Intensive Transportation and Grid Systems

Open data (OD) use and the opening of data have become major strategic objectives in different communities. Nevertheless, the potential of OD is still not leveraged in many areas. In this work, we focus the OD impact information systems research. We review the respective literature for different domains of OD research and analyze cases of data-intensive decision support systems in transportation as well as open research grid systems. The resulting changes, challenges, and opportunities that OD causes are categorized according to different OD activities in IS research. Hence, they may serve as an agenda to foster OD practices, platforms, and administration in the area.

A Software to Capture Mental Models

Research shows that people construct mental models of concepts, situations and things, thus the theory of mental models is a well-established phenomenon in science. While people are given a particular task, they also construct a mental model to solve that task, for instance; a task to draw spatial objects e.g. two polygons intersecting each other in a two-dimensional environment. Yet, there are merely fewer studies that point at a scientific software that helps to capture preferred and alternative mental models of people during tasks of drawing spatial objects. The major contribution of this work is foundation of an experimental environment as a software application that can recognise mental models of people during drawing spatial objects based on the spatial relations of the drawn objects. The software serves as an experimental environment to find out the preferred mental models based on spatial relations amongst drawn objects i.e. the preferred way of performing tasks to draw spatial objects. Regional Connectivity Calculus is used as an underlying spatial scheme to extract preferred mental models of people who draw drawings using the software. The time to perform each task, including the time to draw and the time to think to understand the drawing tasks is also determined by the software.

User Experience (UX) of a Big Data Infrastructure

Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), a well-known e-infrastructure provides open data to study the future anthropogenic climate change. Data are accessed by the research communities to produce sophisticated simulations of the Earth system. This study is based on the survey questionnaire taken by 357 researchers (end-users) who interact with the interfaces provided by ESGF e-infrastructure. Despite the evolution as well as development in the components, applications and user interfaces provided by the e-Science infrastructure, the barriers exist and they limit and delay the research process of scientists while they interact with the e-infrastructure. Hence, the full benefit of the terabytes of data projects hosted by the e-infrastructure is not realized. This study suggests a dire need to do improvements in the e-infrastructure particularly in the human computer interaction (HCI) components such as user interfaces of applications, webpages, ingestion of/access to large volumes of scientific data, collaborative tools, web documentation and others. If these improvements are made the user’s research process using an e-infrastructure will be quadrupled and due to better researchers’ experience using e-infrastructures e-research can thrive. Thus, bringing in timely research results and scientific discoveries.

Gauging the Reliability of Online Health Information in the Turkish Context

It is hard to gauge the reliability of health information that is provided on the internet as there are plethora of medical firms and other organizations promoting their massive marketing campaigns to sell their products and services. However, an initiative; Health On the Net (HON) foundation claims that it is possible to observe the credibility and trustworthiness of health information on the websites internationally by following HON-code principles. Keeping with the principles set by the HON foundation, we analyzed the credibility of Turkish health websites and portals related to health information seeking behavior from the point of view information seeker’s benefit. We selected and analyzed 56 websites within three categories which are “psychology”, “aesthetics and beauty” and “motherhood, baby and children”. We then evaluated their credibility of health information as according HON principles. We found out that most of the selected websites do conform to the basic principles set by the HON foundation, in Turkey. However, this information of conformance to the standards has not been listed explicitly, as opposed to the health portals in the US. Furthermore, we observed that accessibility of health information for patients and other information seekers is another topic that is needed to be dealt with separately.

How to Include Users in the Design and Development of Cyberinfrastructures

Cyberinfrastructures have reached their production level as far as their capability to serve researchers and connect big data is concerned. However, users face difficulties while they perform complex operations via cyberinfrastructures by using their user interfaces (UIs), for big data analysis and research. Using these infrastructures users perform operations such as data access, data visualization to complete their research activities. Unfortunately, there are not enough studies and projects conducted so far that provides guidelines to developers to design and develop interfaces that meet user requirements in cyberinfrastructures. These infrastructures are also known as e-infrastructures, big data infrastructures, open data infrastructures, virtual research environments. In this work, guidelines are recommended so that user requirements can directly be incorporated into the design and development of cyberinfrastructure applications serving a particular target audience. In this paper, an example of a cyberinfrastructure is given, using which users can be involved in its design and the development. These techniques can then also be transferred to the designers and developers of other cyberinfrastructures to improve the user experience as well as usability of UIs and associated services. Furthermore, these techniques can be enhanced even further and generalized to meet the requirements of users of applications other than cyberinfrastructures.