Manfred Bortenschlager

WORKPAD: Process Management and Geo-Collaboration Help Disaster Response

In complex emergency/disaster scenarios, persons from teams from various emergency-response organizations collaborate to achieve a common goal. In these scenarios, the use of smart mobile devices and applications can improve the collaboration dynamically. The lack of basic interaction principles can be dangerous, as it could increase the level of disaster or can make the efforts ineffective. This paper examines the main results of the project WORKPAD finished in December 2009. WORKPAD worked on a two-level architecture to support rescue operators during emergency management. The use of a usercentered design methodology during the entire development cycle has guaranteed that the architecture and resulting system meet end-user requirements. The feasibility of its use in real emergencies is also proven by a demonstration showcased with real operators. The paper includes qualitative and quantitative results and presents guidelines that can be useful in developing emergency-management systems.

AppEcho: a user-driven, in situ feedback approach for mobile platforms and applications

Mobile platforms and applications are an exciting and important phenomenon in todays software and business world. They are being woven into the fabric of daily life faster than expected. Continuous collection of user feedback enabling the improvement of platforms and applications becomes critical to support the continuous evolution of mobile systems. Particularly user feedback is needed to provide systems that best fit user needs. We have designed a mobile feedback approach, which enables users to document individual feedback on mobile systems in situ. This information can then be evaluated and used as new requirements by developers. Based on this solution we have developed a feedback app for two different mobile platforms. Furthermore, we have conducted a study with smartphone users applying this approach and communicating feedback on a mobile platform and pre-installed apps. The study revealed that users were able to give individual feedback and that a large amount of this feedback was considered to be useful for mobile system improvement by a platform developer.

iRequire: Gathering end-user requirements for new apps

Mobile devices such as Smartphones and Internet Tablets have become an integral part of our life. We can install applications providing various functionalities. Our research focuses on an application which enables end-users to blog requirements in situ. The gathered end-user needs can be seen as a starting point for the development of applications and the evolution of mobile platforms.

Evaluation of the Concept of Early Acceptance Tests for Touristic Mobile Applications

Mobile applications are finding increased acceptance in tourism, particularly tourist services like city, sport or museum guides. The potential of mobile services is difficult to estimate a priori because hardly any user acceptance tests can be carried out before having a concrete implementation of that service. In this work we present a methodology and a through evaluation that allows a rapid development of high-fidelity prototypes of mobile applications. Goal of the empiric part of the investigations was the development of a mobile prototype with the “NetBeans Mobility Pack” software in the shortest possible time and to subsequently test it as to suitability for practical use in the real context.

A Generic Coordination Architecture as an Enabler for Mobile Collaborative Applications

Recent technological advances in hardware manufacturing and wireless communication systems result in a tremendous increase of heterogeneous computing elements involved in mobile and pervasive environments. Therefore, the complexity of systems supporting mobile collaboration is steadily increasing. To guarantee a certain level of service quality, coordination of this manifold of entities is required. Current approaches in pervasive computing usually address this demand inappropriately and consequently, in here significant drawbacks when it comes to modularity, reusability, exchangeability, and extensibility of the implicit coordination mechanisms. This work proposes an explicit, generic two-layered coordination architecture which particularly aims at the specific characteristics of mobile and pervasive computing environments necessary for collaborative applications. This architecture comprises (i) the coordination media layer adhering to the decentralised space-based computing paradigm, and (ii) the coordination patterns layer proposing several problem-specific patterns. The idea is to provide a catalogue of reusable coordination patterns similar to the concept of software design patterns

Location-oriented coordination in pervasive environments for collaborative work scenarios

Mobile or pervasive environments are inherently characterised by a high degree of dynamics and frequent changes in the environmental properties. This makes collaborative work of mobile users eminently difficult as the coordination of their work processes needs to adapt steadily to these changing circumstances. As location is one of the most critical changing context dimensions, this adaptive coordination and subsequent re-orientation are mostly based on distinctive temporal and spatial objects (the so-called Schelling points). The contribution of this article is to show the benefit of exploiting the human behaviour of using spatial objects for coordination (which we refer to as location-oriented coordination). We present an approach for which we implemented the location-oriented coordination considerations as a coordination pattern embedded in a coordination architecture, which serves as a runtime environment. By adopting this approach in a representative collaborative work scenario (in the domain of emergency management) and by presenting results from user tests we show its applicability and benefit.

Towards a Service-Oriented Architecture

Although hardware and networking infrastructures have evolved over the years and people are able to connect their devices to mobile networks and exchange information, we argue that the missing glue to enable the true potential of mobile information systems lies in the seamless integration of wireless infrastructures with existing wired infrastructures. In our paper, we present the service-oriented middleware Asomnia, which adapts traditional service-oriented concepts in order to cope with requirements arising from mobile computing challenges.

Mobile Kollaboration unterstützt durch geografische Information

ZusammenfassungenMobile Kollaboration beschreibt die Zusammenarbeit mehrerer mobiler Benutzer, um gemeinsam ein Ziel effektiver zu erreichen. Speziell bei der Zusammenarbeit von Einsatzkräften im Notfallmanagement erfolgt die dafür nötige Kommunikation und Koordination lediglich auf Basis von Sprachkommunikation. Datenkommunikation in Form von Verteilung geografischer Information an die mobilen Einsatzkräfte kann neue Möglichkeiten schaffen und somit die relevanten Abläufe optimieren. Wir stellen eine Anwendung für portable Endgeräte vor, die geografische Inhalte visualisieren und vor allem neue oder modifizierte Inhalte in Echtzeit an alle Beteiligten verteilen kann. Die Anwendung wurde gemeinsam mit Einsatzkräften entwickelt und evaluiert. Die Benutzertests bestätigen, dass das Konzept der ortsbasierten Koordination eine wesentliche Verbesserung im Bereich der Koordination von Einsatzkräften sein kann.

An Architectural Approach to Apply the Supervisor/Worker Collaboration Pattern to Nomadic Workspaces

Although information technology is advancing, computer-based systems do not yet ideally support collaborative activities of mobile users in nomadic workspaces. Mobile information systems do not appropriately address the specific characteristics inherent to such environments. The contribution of this work to distributed and mobile collaboration is a proposal for a three-layered architecture addressing the three cornerstones of collaboration: communication, conventions (i.e. collaboration laws and strategies), and entities. In particular, we present the supervisor/worker pattern representing a reference implementation of this architecture. This type of pattern is an omnipresent mode of collaboration and hence this implementation shall support mobile users collectively operating in nomadic workspaces.

Ökosysteme für mobile Anwendungen

ZusammenfassungDie Etablierung zentralisierter Vertriebskanäle (sogenannte App Stores) für mobile Anwendungen (Apps) bringt neue Herausforderungen für Lösungsanbieter von Apps mit sich. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert folgende Aspekte, die den Erfolg von Herstellern von mobilen Plattformen und Ökosystemen beeinflussen: Verbesserung der Erhebung von Benutzeranforderungen, zielgerichteten Feedback-Kanäle, plattformübergreifende Programmiermodelle, Berücksichtigung des mobilen Nutzungskontexts, Integration von Social Networking Apps in mobile Betriebssysteme und Optimierung des Energieverbrauchs.