Timothy Maciag

Creating synergy between usability courses and open source software projects

In this paper, we discuss our experience in offering a usability course with projects taken from an active open source software development project. We describe what was done in the class inside the larger context of the usability of open source software. We conclude with an invitation for others to adopt this model and use it for their own purposes.

A Rough Sets Approach for Personalized Support of Face Recognition

The activity of facial recognition is routine for most people; yet describing the process of recognition, or describing a face to be recognized reveals a great deal of complexity inherent in the activity. Eyewitness identification remains an important element in judicial proceedings. It is very convincing, yet it is not very accurate. We studied how people sorted a collection of facial photographs and found that individuals may have different strategies for similarity recognition. In our analysis of the data, we have identified two possible strategies. We apply rough set based attribute reduction methodology to this data in order to develop a test to identify which of these strategies an individual is likely to prefer. We hypothesize that by providing a personalized search and filter environment, individuals would be more adequately equipped to handle the complexity of the task, thereby increasing the accuracy of identifications. Furthermore, the rough set based analysis may help to more clearly identify the different strategies that individuals use for this task. This paper provides a description of the preliminary study, our computational approach that includes an important pre-processing step, discusses results from our evaluation, and provides a list of opportunities for future work.

Consumer Modelling in Support of Interface Design

There is significant interest in developing new methods to design more effective user interfaces for decision support tools in online shopping environments. Many online companies have already begun to provide their consumers with enhanced user interface options, such as the ability to customize and/or personalize their user interface. However, for these enhanced options to produce meaningful, useful results, consumers are often required to input substantial amounts of information, placing a strain on the consumers¿ cognitive decision-making abilities and disrupting their focus on their immediate decision task(s). In this paper, the authors describe a personalization technique to reduce the amount of consumer information required to develop and deploy systems providing these enhanced options. Over the course of the three experiments, the authors built upon each experiment utilizing a combination of traditional statistical methods and rough set theory. This paper will describe the refined technique and the procedures, algorithms, observations, and analysis of the experiments conducted. As well, a discussion detailing future work will be provided.

Classification of facial photograph sorting performance based on verbal descriptions

Eyewitness identification remains an important element in judicial proceedings. It is very convincing, yet it is not very accurate. To better understand eyewitness identification, we began by examining how people understand similarity. This paper reports on analysis of study that examined how people made similarity judgements amongst a variety of facial photographs: participants were presented with a randomly ordered set of photos, with equal numbers of Caucasian (C) and First Nations (F), which they sorted based on their individual assessment of similarity. The number of piles made by the participants was not restricted. After sorting was complete, each participant was then asked to label each pile with a description of the piles contents. Following the results of an earlier study, we hypothesize that individuals may be using different strategies to assess similarity between photos. In this analysis, we attempt to use the descriptive pile labels (in particular, related to lips and ears) as a means to uncover differences in strategies for which a classifier can be built, using the rough set attribute reduction methodology. In particular, we aim to identify those pairs of photographs that may be the key for verifying an individuals abilities and strategies when recognizing faces. The paper describes the method for data processing that enabled the comparisons based on labels. Continued success with the same technique as previously reported to filter pairs before performing the rough sets analysis, lends credibility to its use as a general method. The rough set techniques enable the identification of the sets of photograph pairs that are key to the divisions based on various strategies. This may lead to a practical test for peoples abilities, as well as to inferring what discriminations people use in face recognition.

Evaluating the Utility of Web-Based Consumer Support Tools Using Rough Sets

On the Web, many popular e-commerce sites provide consumers with decision support tools to assist them in their commerce-related decision-making. Many consumers will rank the utility of these tools quite highly. Data obtained from web usage mining analyses, which may provide knowledge about a user’s online experiences, could help indicate the utility of these tools. This type of analysis could provide insight into whether provided tools are adequately assisting consumers in conducting their online shopping activities or if new or additional enhancements need consideration. Although some research in this regard has been described in previous literature, there is still much that can be done. The authors of this paper hypothesize that a measurement of consumer decision accuracy, i.e. a measurement preferences, could help indicate the utility of these tools. This paper describes a procedure developed towards this goal using elements of rough set theory. The authors evaluated the procedure using two support tools, one based on a tool developed by the US-EPA and the other developed by one of the authors called cogito. Results from the evaluation did provide interesting insights on the utility of both support tools. Although it was shown that the cogito tool obtained slightly higher decision accuracy, both tools could be improved from additional enhancements. Details of the procedure developed and results obtained from the evaluation will be provided. Opportunities for future work are also discussed.

Web-Based Support of Crop Selection for Climate Adaptation

Farmers must now consider climate adaptation amongst other variables when they select crops for the coming year. A changing climate means traditional crop choices may not perform well. Yet, it may be difficult to trust recommendations about new crop choices provided without extensive local knowledge. This paper describes the design and implementation of a prototype tool to support Canadian farmers in their crop selections. However, authoritative data about growing conditions that maximize crop performance has been difficult to assemble. Therefore, we propose an extension to the prototype system that would allow farmers to submit reports of crop performance along with data that describes their growing conditions. With many farmers contributing these experience reports, the data in these reports could be mined to provide localized information about the performance of different crops and the conditions which best support each.

Design Scenarios for Web-Based Management of Online Information

The Internet enables access to more information, from a greater variety of perspectives and with greater immediacy, than ever before. A person may be interested in information to become more informed or to coordinate his or her local activities and place them into a larger, more global context. The challenge, as has been noted by many, is to sift through all the information to find what is relevant without becoming overwhelmed. Furthermore, the selected information must be put into an actionable form. The diversity of the Web has important consequences for the variety of ideas that are now available. While people once relied on newspaper editors to shape their view of the world, today’s technology creates room for a more democratic approach. Today it is easy to pull news feeds from a variety of sources and aggregate them. It is less easy to push that information to a variety of channels. At a higher level, we might have the goal of collecting all the available information about a certain topic, on a daily basis. There are many new technologies available under the umbrella of Web 2.0, but it can be difficult to use them together for the management of online information. Web-based support for online communication management is the most appropriate choice to address the deficiencies apparent with current technologies. We consider the requirements and potential designs for such information management support, by following an example related to local food.