December 2006
Scholar says computers can get users off their duffs, on their feet
Ph.D. student Silvia Lindtner was part of a team within a Siemens Research lab that developed an interactive computer game, Fish 'N' Steps, which links a player's daily footstep count to the growth and activity of animated fish.
In the Fish 'N' Steps game, the more a player walks, the bigger her fish grows. Linked to a community of other players, a player can become the biggest fish in the virtual pond.
Experts recommend walking 10,000 steps a day, or about five miles, to maintain aerobic health.
More information about the Fish 'N' Step game is available.
Sim awarded funds to study traceability in extreme programming
Susan
SimAssistant professwor of informatics Susan Elliot Sim has been awarded $5,000 from the Ted and Janice Smith Faculty Seed Fund for her project entitled Maintaining Traceability Links in Extreme Programming.
Traceability is the problem of establishing relationships between products of the development process, for example, predecessor-successor or master-subordinate relationships between requirements and source code.
Currently, associate links between User Stories and code are created during check-in to a revision control system. However, these links are not properly maintained and synchronized as User Stories, test cases, and source code change over time.
Sim has implemented a prototype Eclipse plug-in, STITCH (STory Integration and Tracking for CompreHension) to support traceability under Extreme Programming (XP), an agile software development model that emphasized the ability to adapt to change, by associating User Stories with test cases and source code.
The proposed research project will address this shortcoming by implementing a mechanism to maintain traceability links as the artifacts on either end of the relation evolve.
The competitive Faculty Seed Fund awards provide seed funding for Bren School faculty projects and was made possible through the generous donation of local philanthropists Ted and Janice Smith.
August 2006
Researcher's "pigeon blog" tracks levels of pollution
The artist-activist Beatriz da Costa calls the resulting Web site a "pigeon blog," as though the birds themselves were keeping a travel diary obsessed with air quality issues.
"A lot of countries have used pigeons for surveillance during war," said Ms. da Costa, who teaches art and engineering at the University of California, Irvine. "We're doing a form of surveillance too, only not for military purposes. Our goal is to track levels of pollution in the environment." more »
April 2006
Businesses find real uses in virtual world
Andre
Van der
HoekAssociate professor of informatics Andre van der Hoek is using a game for training, but so far only in an educational setting.
The SimSE program simulates the work of a software engineering manager, complete with tight deadlines and programmers on coffee breaks.
Van der Hoek has his eye on developing it into a multiplayer, multi-site, role-playing game and a tool for corporate training. The game would introduce new employees to the ins and outs of a company without the risk of violating real-world policies. more »
Professor Cristina Lopes, along with a colleague in Engineering, and under a contract with the Orange County government, are developing a web-based watershed information and management tool, CalSWIM.
CalSWIM is an academic-government initiative to develop an intelligent database for accessing and interacting with environmental monitoring data. An interdisciplinary team of researchers conduct field work and modeling studies collectively aimed at creating and implementing this web-based expert system and integrated information manager.
Cristina
LopesCalSWIM is designed both as a public forum for exploring local watersheds and as a web location to help coastal managers make cost-effective and scientifically justifiable decisions regarding the monitoring, management, and alteration of coastal urban wetlands and their associated watersheds.
CalSWIM is an ongoing project with the visionary goal of developing a protocol and method that can be applied to all watersheds in California, facilitating coordinated, integrated, and informed management decisions for those in the water resources profession.
Prof. Lopes is the IT technical leader of CalSWIM, with which she is conducting advanced research pertaining to software development.
With CalSWIM she is developing a novel wiki-based web development method that enables environmental experts, who are not software experts, to actively edit and program CalSWIM. This method will be crucial in scaling up CalSWIM to its visionary goal.
The development and implementation of CalSWIM is carried out in close consultation with government and private sector personnel directly responsible for the management and restoration of coastal urban wetlands, and is built on monitoring and modeling efforts carried out by the Orange County Health Care Agency, Coast Keepers, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project.
Learn more: http://www.calswim.org/
February 2006
Associate Professor Andre van der Hoek has received a $125,000 award from the National Science Foundation
Associate Professor Andre van der Hoek has received a $125,000 award from the National Science Foundation to pursue the creation of an innovative, educational software design environment.Andre
Van der
HoekSpanning two years, the project aims to create a layered software design environment, EASEL, that operates much like Adobe Photoshop but is specifically engineered to support software design.
EASEL will explore how layers can support students in the creative exercise of design, help them separate concerns when they are designing, and provide them with examples after which they can pattern their designs.
David F. Redmiles, chair of Informatics, and Andre van der Hoek, associate professor of Informatics have received an award from the National Science Foundation
David F. Redmiles, chair of Informatics, and Andre van der Hoek, associate professor of Informatics, have been awarded $680,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation to explore new ways of supporting collaboration in complex, dynamic, and distibuted settings.
David F.
RedmilesTheir approach, termed continuous coordination, blends traditional formal and informal techniques to provide a seamless experience to the various parties involved in a collaborative setting.
The project will focus on: designing a generic infrastructure for continuous coordination (Neon), exploring the use of Neon to construct three new applications that resolve around the continuous coordination paradigm, and evaluating the technology and overall approach through focused studies and trial use by our industrial partners.
January 2006
Associate Professor Andre van der Hoek has been awarded an IBM Technology Fellowship
Andre
Van der
HoekIn recognition for his research activities involving IBM technology, associate professor Andre van der Hoek has been awarded an IBM Technology Fellowship for the year 2006.
The fellowship supports his ongoing research in coordination technology for software development, particularly his work in extending configuration management systems with awareness.
Van der Hoek's research lies in the fields of configuration management and software architecture, focusing on two research questions: (1) how to better coordinate the activities of multiple, geographically distributed developers and (2) how to better leverage higher levels of abstraction in designing and implementing software systems.
Associate Professor Paul Dourish and Informatics graduate student Jennifer Rode were each both recently nominated for CHI's best paper award.
CHI is the leading research conference in Human-Computer Interaction. Professor Paul Dourish’s paper is entitled "Implications for Design".
Paul
DourishThe other nominated paper was written by Informatics graduate student Jennifer Rode, Tracee Vetting Wolf, Jeremy Sussman, and Wendy A. Kellogg.
The title of Jennifer’s paper is Dispelling “Design” as the Dark Art of CHI.
