scholarly journals EMU: reconfigurable graphical user interfaces for Micro-Manager

Author(s):  
Joran Deschamps ◽  
Jonas Ries

Advanced light microscopy methods are becoming increasingly popular in biological research. Their ease of use depends, besides experimental aspects, on intuitive user interfaces. The open-source software Micro-Manager offers a universal interface for microscope control but requires implementing plugins to further tailor it to specific systems. Since even similar devices can have different Micro-Manager properties (such as power percentage versus absolute power), transferring user interfaces to other systems is usually very restricted.We developed Easier Micro-Manager User interface (EMU), a Micro-Manager plugin, to simplify building flexible and reconfigurable user interfaces. EMU offers a choice of interfaces that are rapidly ready to use thanks to an intuitive configuration menu. In particular, the configuration menu allows mapping device properties to the various functions of the interface in a few clicks. Exchanging or adding new devices to the microscope no longer requires rewriting code. The EMU framework also simplifies implementing a new interface by providing the configuration and device interaction mechanisms. The user interface can be built by using a drag-and-drop tool in one’s favorite Java development environment and writing a few lines of code for compatibility with EMU.Micro-Manager users now have a powerful tool to improve the user experience on their instruments. EMU interfaces can be easily transferred to new microscopes and shared with other research groups. In the future, newly developed interfaces will be added to EMU to benefit the whole community.

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joran Deschamps ◽  
Jonas Ries

Abstract Background Advanced light microscopy methods are key to many biological studies. Their ease of use depends, besides experimental aspects, on intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUI). The open-source software Micro-Manager offers a universal GUI for microscope control but requires implementing plugins to further tailor it to specific systems. However, GUIs are often tailored to a single system. Since even similar devices can have different Micro-Manager device properties, such as power percentage versus absolute power, directly transferring a GUI to another instrument usually requires changing the source-code. Results We developed Easier Micro-Manager User interface (EMU), a Micro-Manager plugin, to simplify building flexible and reconfigurable GUIs. EMU can be seamlessly used with the Java Swing library to create device-independent GUIs for Micro-Manager. Such GUIs are easily transferred to another microscope thanks to an intuitive configuration menu that includes mapping of the device properties to the GUI functionalities and customization of the graphical elements. We also provide resources such as user and programming guides, a tutorial and code examples. Conclusions Micro-Manager users now have a powerful tool to improve the user experience on their instruments. EMU GUIs can be easily configured for new microscopes and shared with other research groups. In the future, newly developed GUIs will be added to EMU to benefit the whole community.


Author(s):  
Gottfried Zimmermann ◽  
Jan Alexandersson ◽  
Cristina Buiza ◽  
Elena Urdaneta ◽  
Unai Diaz ◽  
...  

“Pluggable user interfaces” is a software concept that facilitates adaptation and substitution of user interfaces and their components due to separation of the user interface from backend devices and services. Technically, the concept derives from abstract user interfaces, mainly in the context of device and service control. Abstract user interfaces have been claimed to support benefits such as ease of implementation, support for User Centered Design, seamless user interfaces, and ease of use. This paper reports on experiences in employing pluggable user interfaces in the European project i2home, based on the Universal Remote Console framework, and the Universal Control Hub architecture. In summary, our anecdotal evidence supports the claims on the benefits, but also identifies significant costs. The experience reports also include some hints as to how to mitigate the costs.


Author(s):  
Shirley Ann Becker

The study of computing technology and user interfaces was initiated during the 1970s when industrial research laboratories began to focus on human-computer interaction (HCI) (Badre, 2002). In the 1980s, the personal computer was introduced, thus expanding the need for designing effective user interfaces. HCI became a discipline during this time, and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) established the Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction. One of the first textbooks on HCI, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (Schneiderman, 19891), was published. Shortly thereafter, HCI became part of the ACM curriculum promoting the development of effective user interfaces. Software tools were developed in order to assist in designing usable interfaces while employing usability engineering methods. Many of these methods focused on usability from the perspective of ease of use, ease of learning, user satisfaction, and zero defects (Nielsen, 1993).


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 52-62
Author(s):  
Igor Košťál ◽  
Martin Mišút

Almost every Android user application has some kind of user interface. Android programmers who create Xamarin.Forms applications and who uses the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment to do so can create user interfaces in the XAML (the Extensible Application Markup Language) or in the C# programming language. This paper deals with a comparison of creating this user interface by the first and the second way. We demonstrate the differences in the creation of Android application user interfaces in XAML and in C# by way of using two of our Android applications which were created by the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 Enterprise, which work as text editors with the ability to store text to disc, and have user interfaces that are visually identical. However, the user interface of the first Android application was created in XAML with a C# support code, whereas the user interface of the second Android application was created entirely in C#. While comparing the source codes of the user interfaces of both these Android applications, we identify the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches to creating a user interface and we try to find out which of these approaches is better for maintaining and modifying user interfaces. In this study, we also contrast the processes of handling events of controls of a user interface created in the XAML code for the first Android application as well as that of the same user interface created in the C# code for the second Android application. Furthermore, we were interested in determining whether the different ways of creating user interfaces affected the execution time of basic operations that included disc files that were performed on the same data by both the applications. We assume that it does not fundamentally affect the execution time, and so, we performed an experiment to confirm or refute our assumption.


Author(s):  
R. R. Sta. Ana ◽  
J. E. Escoto ◽  
D. Fargas Jr. ◽  
K. Panlilio ◽  
M. Jerez ◽  
...  

Abstract. Cities are consistently motivated to come up with technology-driven solutions that aim to reduce the negative impacts of rapid urbanization. This paper explores open-source software as a platform in visualizing and developing a digital twin, which aids in mitigating the problem by running simulations and generating potential improvements through generated insights. The four essential components examined to develop the methodology are: (1) Visualization of Digital Model; (2) Identification of User Interface and Data Management Requirements; (3) User Interface Set-up and Configuration; and (4) Analysis and Simulations. Different tools for visualizing the city such as Unity3D, QGIS2threejs, and TerriaMap were explored and compared. Though Unity3D and QGIS2threejs can visualize 3D city models, TerriaMap was favored for its capability to visualize large areas in 3D and to create customizable user interfaces. User interface components were identified as well as handling and processing geospatial datasets. For the analysis and simulations, the Land Surface Temperature hotspot detection was performed and integrated into the system to demonstrate its potential to include other simulations in the future.


Author(s):  
Lei-da Chen ◽  
Gordon W. Skelton

In the previous chapter, we created an m-business application using ColdFusion. Besides ColdFusion, many other development tools can be used to develop m-business applications. Visual Studio .NET, an integrated development environment by Microsoft, has become an increasingly popular corporate applicationdevelopment tool due to its ease of use and support for a wide range of programming languages. Besides traditional Windows and Web applications, Visual Studio .NET also allows developers to build mobile and wireless applications with relative ease. The focus of this chapter is to discuss the tools and techniques for developing wireless applications using Visual Studio .NET. Wireless applications are developed using the ASP .NET Mobile Web Application template. The template provides developers with WYSIWYG tools for creating user interfaces for various mobile devices. These tools work seamlessly with ASP.NET, which uses a form-based approach to build server-side applications for processing user requests and interacting with databases. In this chapter, we will develop a business-to-consumter wireless application using Visual Studio .NET.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyoseok Yoon ◽  
Se-Ho Park

Current consumer wearable devices such as smartwatches mostly rely on touchscreen-based user interfaces. Even though touch-based user interfaces help smartphone users quickly adapt to wearable devices with touchscreens, there exist several limitations. In this paper, we propose a non-touchscreen tactile wearable interface as an alternative to touchscreens on wearable devices. We designed and implemented a joystick-integrated smartwatch prototype to demonstrate our non-touchscreen tactile wearable interface. We iteratively improved and updated our prototype to improve and polish interaction ideas and prototype integration. To show feasibility of our approach, we compared and contrasted form factors of our prototype against the latest nine commercial smartwatches in terms of their dimensions. We also show response time and accuracy of our wearable interface to discuss our rationale for an alternative and usable wearable UI. With the proposed tactile wearable user interface, we believe our approach may serve as a cohesive single interaction device to enable various cross-device interaction scenarios and applications.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason P. Kurs ◽  
Manuele Simi ◽  
Fabien Campagne

ABSTRACTComputational workflows and pipelines are often created to automate series of processing steps. For instance, workflows enable one to standardize analysis for large projects or core facilities, but are also useful for individual biologists who need to perform repetitive data processing. Some workflow systems, designed for beginners, offer a graphical user interface and have been very popular with biologists. In practice, these tools are infrequently used by more experienced bioinformaticians, who may require more flexibility or performance than afforded by the user interfaces, and seem to prefer developing workflows with scripting or command line tools. Here, we present a workflow system, the NextflowWorkbench (NW), which was designed for both beginners and experts, and blends the distinction between user interface and scripting language. This system extends and reuses the popular Nextflow workflow description language and shares its advantages. In contrast to Nextflow, NextflowWorkbench offers an integrated development environment that helps complete beginners get started with workflow development. Auto-completion helps beginners who do not know the syntax of the Nextflow language. Reusable processes provide modular workflows. Programmers will benefit from unique interactive features that help users work more productively with docker containers. We illustrate this tool with a workflow to estimate RNA-Seq counts using Kallisto. We found that beginners can be taught how to assemble this workflow in a two hours training session. NW workflows are portable and can execute on laptop/desktop computers with docker, on a lab cluster, or in the cloud to facilitate training. NextflowWorkbench is open-source and available at http://workflow.campagnelab.org.


2020 ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
ANNA SERGEEVNA GERMAN ◽  
◽  
ELENA MIKHAILOVNA VESELOVA ◽  

The article is devoted to the problem of creating graphical user interfaces in the VBA development environment. The main requirements for the development of user interfaces are formulated, taking into account the specifics of using interfaces in VBA programs. The prototype of an application framework for creating user interfaces is made, which should save developers time.


Seminar.net ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yngve Nordkvelle

Most of the world has learned to ”see to Finland” over the last decade, beacuse of its reputation as a leading nation in educational achievement, as well as its many creative and diligent approaches in technology. Since 1990 Finnish researchers in media, technology and education have met annually to discuss research matters and further advances in the area. For the conference of 2016, held 13-15th April in Hämeenlinna, Finland, we were asked to have the best papers published in Seminar.net. After a rigourous review process we will print six papers, four in this issue and two in the next.Antti Syvänen, Jaana-Piia Mäkiniemi, Sannu Syrjä, Kirsi Heikkilä-Tammi and Jarmo Viteli, all of the University of Tampere, present the paper “When does the educational use of ICT become a source of technostress for Finnish teachers?» This interesting paper is based on the analysis of questionnaires filled in by 2741 Finnish teachers. It provides significant insight into what causes teachers to experience stress and alienation when using information and communication technologies (ICT) in their classrooms.Tuulikki Keskitalo and Heli Ruokamo of Lapland University present a paper dealing with “Students’ Expectations and Experiences of Meaningful Simulation-Based Medical Education». Simulation in nursing education is a very rapidly developing area, and the students – as well as their teachers – have high expectation. This project is about student’s expectations and the very positive result from this study was that their experiences were even higher than their expectations.Hanna Vuojärvi, of the University of Lapland and Miikka Eriksson, of the University of Eastern Finland, have written the article «Using Mobile Tools to Support Meaningful Work-based Learning in Vocational Education» together. Their case study focused on meaningful work-based learning (WBL) and the pedagogical use of mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) in vocational tourism education. It demonstrates how the use of smartphones was applied in the project and its usefulness in the student’s work with the learning material.Antero Lindstedt, Kristian Kiili, Pauliina Tuomi and Arttu Perttula, all from Tampere University of Technology, Pori department provide the paper called “A user experience case study: two embodied cognition user interface solutions for a math learning game». They have used a particular game development environment, Semideus, to test out how different user interfaces influenced. They found interesting differences, mainly in favour of the «tilting user interface».


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