System Design Perspective Research Articles

Research and design of a data desensitization system

With the extensive implementation of SG186 Project and SG-ERP Project, State Grid has accumulated abundant data resources, and the hidden information in these data resources can create great value. But at the same time, the security of massive data has become more important. From the perspective of system design, workflow and key technology of power information desensitization system, this paper analyzes and studies the sensitive level and data type of sensitive information, matches the corresponding desensitization strategy and completes a series of operations of desensitization task, so as to realize the protection of sensitive data in power information under big data environment.

Behavioral Theory-Based Framework for Prediabetes Self-Care System-Design Perspectives and Validation Results.

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a chronic condition that can lead to many life-threatening diseases. Prediabetes is defined as a state in which blood glucose levels are elevated but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. This stage can be reversible with appropriate lifestyle and dietary modifications. Existing solutions are mostly developed to deal with T2D instead of preventing it in the first place. In this study, we propose a framework to aid in the development of self-care systems to prevent T2D, which integrates behavioral change theories and techniques and offers features, such as goal setting, activity planning, and health monitoring. We then assessed the feasibility of a prediabetes self-care system designed based on the proposed framework. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted in evaluating i-PreventDiabetes, a prototype. Numerous aspects of the prototype were evaluated, including (1) its effectiveness in assisting individuals with prediabetes in improving their health management behaviors, (2) its effect on users’ attitudes toward diabetes prevention, (3) users’ motivation levels, (4) user acceptability of the system, and (5) user experience. Users viewed i-PreventDiabetes positively and experienced a positive change in their attitude toward their health. Diabetes prevention systems, such as i-PreventDiabetes, have the potential to increase self-care behaviors among individuals with prediabetes, enabling them to manage their lifestyle and nutrition more effectively to avert a variety of potentially fatal conditions.

Enhancing a quality culture in higher education from a socio-technical systems design perspective

ABSTRACT Despite increasing scholarly interest in the phenomenon of quality culture, the existing literature is largely silent on or ambiguous concerning how to realise such a quality culture. In this paper, insights from the field of socio-technical systems design (STSD) are used to explore how to enhance a quality culture. STSD seems to be able to add to the realisation of a shared value of collective ownership and continuous improvement by using a systematic approach; by paying attention to cultural and psychological aspects, structural and managerial aspects, as well as by participation of lecturers, support staff and leadership. Research using the STSD approach in higher education is still scarce and, therefore, additional empirical studies are needed to explore the potential of STSD to enhance a quality culture.

Coverage Analysis and Scaling Laws in Ultra-Dense Networks

In this paper, we develop an innovative approach to quantitatively characterize the performance of ultra-dense wireless networks in a plethora of propagation environments. The proposed framework has the potential of simplifying the cumbersome procedure of analyzing the coverage probability and allowing the unification of single- and multi-antenna networks through compact analytical representations. By harnessing this key feature, we develop a novel statistical machinery to study the scaling laws of wireless networks densification considering general channel power distributions including small-scale fading and shadowing as well as associated beamforming and array gains due to the use of multiple antenna. We further formulate the relationship between network density, antenna height, antenna array seize and carrier frequency showing how the coverage probability can be maintained with ultra-densification. From a system design perspective, we show that, if multiple antenna base stations are deployed at higher frequencies, monotonically increasing the coverage probability by means of ultra-densification is possible, and this without lowering the antenna height. Simulation results substantiate performance trends leveraging network densification and antenna deployment and configuration against path loss models and signal-to-noise plus interference thresholds.

Design of Standoff Cooperative Target-Tracking Guidance Laws for Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper investigates two guidance laws of standoff cooperative tracking static and moving of multiple autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles for targets from the perspective of the control system design. In the scheme of the proposed guidance laws, one vehicle is chosen as leader and others as followers. The leader only needs the measurement of the target, and the followers only measure the leader and its neighbors in the communication topology network. By using the proposed guidance laws, it is guaranteed that all vehicles can track a static or moving target with an evenly spaced formation of circle. Considering the coupling of tracking and cooperation, the stability analysis is performed by constructing two relatively independent subsystems based on Lyapunov theory, and the corresponding rigorous proofs of stability are given. By comparing with the Lyapunov vector field guidance law, the simulation results verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed guidance laws.

Assessment of Machine Learning-Based Audiovisual Quality Predictors

Quality assessment of audiovisual (AV) signals is important from the perspective of system design, optimization, and management of a modern multimedia communication system. However, automatic prediction of AV quality via the use of computational models remains challenging. In this context, machine learning (ML) appears to be an attractive alternative to the traditional approaches. This is especially when such assessment needs to be made in no-reference (i.e., the original signal is unavailable) fashion. While development of ML-based quality predictors is desirable, we argue that proper assessment and validation of such predictors is also crucial before they can be deployed in practice. To this end, we raise some fundamental questions about the current approach of ML-based model development for AV quality assessment and signal processing for multimedia communication in general. We also identify specific limitations associated with the current validation strategy which have implications on analysis and comparison of ML-based quality predictors. These include a lack of consideration of: (a) data uncertainty, (b) domain knowledge, (c) explicit learning ability of the trained model, and (d) interpretability of the resultant model. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to shed some light into mentioned factors. Our analysis and proposed recommendations are of particular importance in the light of significant interests in ML methods for multimedia signal processing (specifically in cases where human-labeled data is used), and a lack of discussion of mentioned issues in existing literature.

A Comprehensive Review of the Evolution of Networked Control System Technology and Its Future Potentials

Networked control systems (NCSs) are attracting the attention of control system engineers. The NCS has created a paradigm shift in control system technology. An NCS consists of control loops joined through communication networks in which both the control signal and the feedback signal are exchanged between the system and the controller. However, its materialization faces several challenges as it requires the integration of advanced control and communication techniques. This paper presents an extensive review of NCSs from the perspective of control system design. The evolution of NCSs is broadly divided in three phases, namely NCSs prior to 2000, NCSs during 2001–2010, and NCSs from 2011 onwards. This division corresponds to the initial status, intermediate status, and the recent status of the developments in the design of NCSs. The advancement of different control techniques during these phases has been discussed comprehensively. This paper also describes the transition of control systems form continuous domain to networked domain, which makes it better than the traditional control systems. Some important practical applications, which have been implemented using NCSs, have also been discussed. The thrust areas for future research on NCS have also been identified.

Walking in the jungle with a machete: ICT leaders’ perspectives on user-Centred systems design

ABSTRACT Previous research has established that leaders in information and communication technology (ICT) are crucial for establishing a user-centred systems design perspective in ICT for work-related tasks. This paper therefore describes the perspectives of 18 ICT leaders in three kinds of leadership roles (managers, project leaders and specialists) in order to understand their views of user-centred systems design concerning ICT. It uses the concept of technological frames of reference to analyse three domains: technology-in-use, technology strategy and nature of technology. The results show that many specialists see user involvement as a critical factor in successfully establishing new information and communication technologies, but that these systems are currently built around the needs of management rather than end users. Looking forward, all three relevant social groups are optimistic about how ICT will become more user-centred and more strategically aligned in the future. However, changes in ICT are described as extremely energy-consuming and difficult – akin to ‘walking in the jungle with a machete’. Finally, we discuss the relevance of technological frames and present some implications for the successful establishment of user-centred system design as a perspective in organisations.

Can an Engagement Platform Persuade Students to Stay? Applying Behavioral Models for Retention

ABSTRACT This paper presents the effects of a technology-based engagement platform, referred to as IMPRES (Interactive Mobile Platform for Retaining and Engaging Students). IMPRES is a mobile application, backed by a set of data analysis services, which seeks to engage and retain its users to enhance their professional development. The primary goal of the application is to enhance students’ engagement in their college and improve student retention. The method is influenced by and evaluated from the standpoints of four theoretical models previously used in research on the effect of a computer interface on user behavior. First, the self-determination theory perspective on digital games explains users’ motivation. Second, social identity theory explains users’ psychological connections to their college. Third, continuance theory explains continuity of users’ engagement. Finally, the persuasive system design perspective associates IMPRES’s features with users’ motivation. By integrating these theories, we develop and find much support for a model of IMPRES’s effects on students’ intent to continue their studies. This research makes a unique contribution to continuance theory by demonstrating how an application’s persuasive design features not only foster continued use of the application but also continued engagement with an organization.

Effects of imperfect IoT-enabled diagnostics on maintenance services: A system design perspective

Although many firms have deployed Internet of Things (IoT)-based diagnostics to predict equipment failures and maintenance requirements, they receive imperfect demand signals due to inadequate data quality and the use of ineffective predictive tools. A strategic queuing model was developed in this study to investigate a maintenance service provider’s optimal capacity allocation and pricing decisions in the presence of imperfect IoT-based diagnostics. In addition, we considered the heterogeneous service rates resulting from the accelerating effect of IoT-based diagnostics. The results of the study revealed that, on the one hand, the optimal service rate always increases with the diagnostic quality; on the other hand, if customer error cost is higher than that of the service provider, the optimal price increases with the diagnostic quality; otherwise, it decreases with the diagnostic quality. Furthermore, we found that the error costs for the two major stakeholders—the service provider and the customer—may affect the equilibrium in different ways. Finally, in the presence of the accelerating effect, we found that although the accelerating effect can improve the average service rate, system congestion actually increases if the effect becomes increasingly obvious; however, the service provider’s profit improves in this case.

Mejorando la sostenibilidad de los respiradores de emergencia para el Covid-19: un caso de estudio sobre OxyGEN-IP

Sustainable medical device design in the context of a health emergency is an unexplored area of research. The urgency to save lives implies that eco-design strategies may not be considered. However, some of these strategies could lead to cost and manufacturing time reduction, implying that more units could be produced, and more patients reached. This paper aims to provide feasible eco-design strategies that could be shared with the stakeholders involved in the product design and manufacturing of emergency ventilators for Covid-19. The objective is to help tackle the Covid-19 crisis in a more sustainable way, and increase the access to healthcare of people requiring assisted ventilation during the health emergency. Adopting a Whole Systems Design perspective (Blizzard and Klotz, 2012), this research has applied the Holistic Design Framework (Aranda-Jan et al., 2016) and the Eco-design Strategy Wheel (Brezet and Hemel, 1997) to elaborate preliminary strategies aligned with the emergency design objectives. Different design for sustainability tools, approaches and principles have been used to discuss, analyse and provide a final set of recommended strategies. These can be grouped in four categories: design for assembly, extension of product lifetime, usage of materials, and lean manufacturing. Despite further efforts are needed to overcome implementation challenges identified during the definition of strategies, it is expected that the above recommendations can be put in practice in a short-term to bring benefits in terms of better environmental impact, lower costs and total manufacturing time.

Can an Engagement Platform Persuade Students to Stay? Applying Behavioral Models for Retention

This paper presents the effects of a technology-based engagement platform, referred to as IMPRES (Interactive Mobile Platform for Retaining and Engaging Students). IMPRES is a mobile application, backed by a set of data analysis services, which seeks to engage and retain its users to enhance their professional development. Specifically, the application intends to enhance students’ engagement in their college and improve student retention. The method is influenced by and evaluated from the standpoints of four theoretical models previously used in research on computing and behaviour. First, the self-determination theory perspective on digital games explains users' motivation. Second, social identity theory explains users' psychological connections to their college. Third, continuance theory explains continuity of users’ engagement. Finally, the persuasive system design perspective associates IMPRES’s features with users’ motivation. By integrating these theories, we develop and find much support for a model of IMPRES’s effects on students’ intent to continue their studies.

Configuration optimization of the novel cogeneration heating system with multi turbine units

At present, the 300 MW extraction condensing turbine units are still the dominant heat sources of cogeneration heating in China. With a rapid increment of heating scale, combined heating with multi turbine units has applied extensively in cogeneration plants. The novel cogeneration heating system can achieve efficient utilization of the condensed waste heat (CWH) of cogeneration plants with multi turbine units, through organically combining the technical elements, such as improving the backpressure of turbine units, using the absorption heat pumps (AHPs), and lowering the return water temperature of heating network. This article takes the 300 MW water-cooling turbine units as analysis objects, adopts the method of the equivalent electricity of heating for energy consumption evaluation, and aims at minimizing the heating energy consumption of the system. Considering the influence on system economy is dominated by the heating energy consumption, the optimization of system configuration is guided by the heating energy consumption analysis. The elaborate and intensive analysis focuses on the optimum system configuration under different numbers of turbine units and different return water temperature. According to the application environment, the system configuration is discussed on the flexible high-backpressure heating mode (FHBM) and the restricted high-backpressure heating mode (RHBM). Through analyzing the variation regularities of the optimum crucial parameters under different conditions, it reveals the internal causes of energy consumption change of the heating system. On this basis, from the perspective of system design, this article summarizes the applicability of the novel high backpressure heating system (NHBS) and the novel absorption heat pump heating system (NAHPS). Furthermore, it refines the configuration optimization principles for the novel cogeneration heating system with multi turbine units. The conclusions are expected to indicate the optimization directions of system design.

Towards developing a Healthcare Situation Monitoring Method for Smart City Initiatives

Research in Smart City development has been proliferated over the past few years, which focused heavily on various supporting service sectors, such as healthcare. However, little effort has been made to design health surveillance support systems, which is also important for the advancement of public healthcare monitoring as an essential smart city initiatives. From an information system (IS) design perspective, this paper introduces a social media-based health surveillance supporting method, which can automatically extricates relevant online posts for health symptom management and prediction. We describe and demonstrate an IS design approach in this paper for hay-fever prediction solution concept based on Twitter posts. This concept can be applicable to fully functional solution design by relevant practitioners in this field.

Do Users Behave Similarly in VR? Investigation of the User Influence on the System Design

With the overarching goal of developing user-centric Virtual Reality (VR) systems, a new wave of studies focused on understanding how users interact in VR environments has recently emerged. Despite the intense efforts, however, current literature still does not provide the right framework to fully interpret and predict users’ trajectories while navigating in VR scenes. This work advances the state-of-the-art on both the study of users’ behaviour in VR and the user-centric system design. In more detail, we complement current datasets by presenting a publicly available dataset that provides navigation trajectories acquired for heterogeneous omnidirectional videos and different viewing platforms—namely, head-mounted display, tablet, and laptop. We then present an exhaustive analysis on the collected data to better understand navigation in VR across users, content, and, for the first time, across viewing platforms. The novelty lies in the user-affinity metric, proposed in this work to investigate users’ similarities when navigating within the content. The analysis reveals useful insights on the effect of device and content on the navigation, which could be precious considerations from the system design perspective. As a case study of the importance of studying users’ behaviour when designing VR systems, we finally propose a user-centric server optimisation. We formulate an integer linear program that seeks the best stored set of omnidirectional content that minimises encoding and storage cost while maximising the user’s experience. This is posed while taking into account network dynamics, type of video content, and also user population interactivity. Experimental results prove that our solution outperforms common company recommendations in terms of experienced quality but also in terms of encoding and storage, achieving a savings up to 70%. More importantly, we highlight a strong correlation between the storage cost and the user-affinity metric, showing the impact of the latter in the system architecture design.

비행제어시스템 설계 관점의 B737MAX JT610편 사고분석과 교훈

비행제어시스템 설계 관점의 B737MAX JT610편 사고분석과 교훈

Understanding the paradigm shift in education in the twenty-first century

Purpose The purpose of this study is to analyse the potential impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on education. IoT is more than just novel educational arrangements with new technology and networked computing devices. Taking a systems design perspective, the author argues that IoT represents a paradigm shift in the key drivers of education systems. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a conceptual analysis based on the systems thinking framework. The paper relies on a literature review as informed by prior studies in the field, social media analysis and research database articles of IoT in education. Findings The paper finds that systems thinking is a useful framework for examining IoT in education. It finds that writers on IoT in education use a number of lenses at looking at how IoT will affect education. All of these can be refined. Findings suggest that IoT technology has the potential to impact how education systems are reimagined and redesigned; that logistics of educational management and the design of learning facilities can become more responsive to student learning needs because of IoT technology; and instructional delivery systems will be reconstituted by IoT technology. This study is of most value to educators, administrators and information systems professionals. Industries of focus include K-12 education, higher education and specialized training fields. Research limitations/implications The research is a conceptual analysis based on social media content and research studies. This is a new line of inquiry; therefore, the sources and data rapidly change. Practical implications The study is practical for educational policymakers and educators to plan for the shift in modes of instructional design, curriculum development and school leadership and organization. Social implications The research will inform the basis for new educational and schooling arrangements; IoT will change the way all of us learn and engage with learning activities. Originality/value The paper is highly original and very valuable for education policymakers as well as educators at all levels.

A Preliminary Study of Intelligent Lifecycle Funds: Perspective of System Design and Empirical Case

A Preliminary Study of Intelligent Lifecycle Funds: Perspective of System Design and Empirical Case

NEC-TT System for Mixed-Bandwidth and Multi-Domain Speaker Recognition

This paper describes the NEC-TT speaker recognition system designed for the 2018 Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE’18) benchmarking. The NEC-TT submission was among the best-performing systems in this latest edition of SRE organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It comprises multiple sub-systems based on a deep speaker embedding front-end followed by a probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) back-end. Speaker embeddings are continuous-valued vector representations that allow easy comparison between speaker voices with simple geometric operations. The effectiveness of deep speaker embeddings relies on the quantity and diversity of the training data. To this end, we hinge on data augmentation and mixed-bandwidth training strategies to increase the number of training examples and speakers. By doing so, we not only increase the quantity of the training data but also expand the output softmax layer with a larger number of speaker classes. From a system design perspective, we adopted a two-stage pipeline consisting of a general multi-domain speaker embedding front-end followed by a domain-specific PLDA back-end. This has a significant benefit in commercial deployment since the same speaker embedding front-end could be used with multiple domain-adapted PLDA back-ends to cater to every specific deployment. This paper provides a detailed description and analysis of the design methodology, data augmentation, bandwidth extension, multi-head attention, PLDA adaptation, and other components that have contributed to good performance in NEC-TT’s SRE’18 results.

Knowledge recommendation for workplace learning: a system design and evaluation perspective

PurposeAlthough digitalization in the workplace is burgeoning, tools are needed to facilitate personalized learning in informal learning settings. Existing knowledge recommendation techniques do not account for dynamic and task-oriented user preferences. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new design of a knowledge recommender system (RS) to fill this research gap and provide guidance for practitioners on how to enhance the effectiveness of workplace learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs the design science research approach. A novel hybrid knowledge recommendation technique is proposed. An experiment was carried out in a case company to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system design. Quantitative data were collected to investigate the influence of personalized knowledge service on users’ learning attitude.FindingsThe proposed personalized knowledge RS obtained satisfactory user feedback. The results also show that providing personalized knowledge service can positively influence users’ perceived usefulness of learning.Practical implicationsThis research highlights the importance of providing digital support for workplace learners. The proposed new knowledge recommendation technique would be useful for practitioners and developers to harness information technology to facilitate workplace learning and effect organization learning strategies.Originality/valueThis study expands the scope of research on RS and workplace learning. This research also draws scholarly attention to the effective utilization of digital techniques, such as a RS, to support user decision making in the workplace.