Ontological Support of Human-Computer Interactions

In the real-time design, conceptual solving any new task is impossible without analytical reasoning of designers who interact with natural experience and its models among which important place occupies models of precedents. Moreover, the work with new tasks is a source of such useful models. The quality of applied reasoning essentially depends on the constructive use of appropriate language and its effective models. In the version of conceptual activity described in this book, the use of language means is realized as an ontological support of design thinking that is aimed at solving a new task and creating a model of corresponding precedent. The ontological support provides controlled using the lexis, extracting the questions for managing the analysis, revealing the cause-and effects regularities and achieving the sufficient understanding. Designers fulfill all these actions in interactions with the project ontology that can be developed by manual or programmed way in work with the task.

Figuratively Semantic Support of Human-Computer Interactions

This chapter focuses on one more mental phenomenon – mental imagination that provides simulating the activity of human senses in conditions of interactions with a computerized environment. Constructive using of this phenomenon helps to represent possible situations discloses states of a life cycle of any new task that is important for study described in this book. Moreover, such possibility helps to predict the course of events in design process or in reality. For constructive work with mental imagery, we have developed a complex of means that provides figuratively semantic support of design thinking in work with a new task. A kernel of this complex is a set of interactive visual models of pictured, declarative and conceptually algorithmic types with a system of transformations defined on this set. Transformations help to build necessary (program) forms of visualization for any typical steps of design thinking based on conceptual experimenting.

Lack of Naturalness in Human-Computer Interactions

There is a problematic difference between interactions of a human with natural and computer environments. The negatives of this difference are particularly painful in the design of software intensive systems, the success of which is unpredictable and extremely low. The root reason for such state of affairs is a very high complexity with which the designers have deals. What we name as “Complexity” is a characteristic of estimations that is discovered in interactions of a human or humans with perceived essences. Therefore, for example, designers need means that will help them in interactions with environments of their activity during real-time work. This chapter tries to show that one of the possible directions of mastering the complexity is bound with the possibility for designers to create conditions of interactions that are similar to conditions of natural interactions. In this case, both types of interactions will be intertwined in coordination in search of simplifying an arisen complexity.

Question-Answering in Conceptual Designing of Software-Intensive Systems

Potential of Question-Answer approach and means of its realization were evolved during many years of research and its applications, in which we used a number of interpretations of the toolkit WIQA, for example, question-answer processor, Instrumentally, technological environment, and shell for developing the new applications. This Chapter discloses the retrospection of our activity and a number of architectural views on the toolkit that was developed in several versions as for collective so for personal uses. Among results of our works, the especial place occupies a set of reflections of important essences (used in designing the SISs) onto the semantic memory. A set of these essences includes a project, task, workflow, team, a member of a team, and others. Reflections of such artifacts uploaded in the semantic memory helped to program our versions of Kanban and Scrum that take into account an unpredictable appearance of new tasks

Semantic Memory of Question-Answer Type

In this chapter, we represent the grounds of the question-answer approach to conceptual designing the SISs. Basic features of this approach are real-time interacting of designers with natural experience and its models, analytical thinking in the conceptual work with project tasks, generating the constructs of the project theory of the substantially evolutionary type, and the use of conceptual experimenting when it is necessary. In indicated actions, designers process conceptual objects in the conceptual space in the frame of design thinking. For providing such activity, we have developed the toolkit WIQA, the kernel of which is a semantic memory be described in this Chapter. The memory is intended for uploading the conceptual constructs, any of which integrates a corresponding composition of interactive objects of “question” and “answer” types. For interactions with the memory, designers can use a set of commands in manual mode or programs written on the specialized pseudocode language.

Introduction

This first chapter provides an overview of and an introduction to the book.

Precedent-Oriented Approach to Human-Computer Activity

In our research that was aimed at study of reflecting the various essences involved in designing the SISs onto the semantic memory, we have been conscious of the principle role of tasks (and especially new tasks) in the design process. New tasks are a useful source of experience units, models of which can be better prepared for reusing in personal or collective activity. This chapter represents our version of such models (as models of precedents for corresponding tasks). The basic feature of our version is the use of analogies between intellectual processing a solution of a new task and intellectual processing the conditioned reflexes that lead to generating the natural forms of human experience. The kernel of our version is a framework of the precedent model that includes components for expressing verbal, logical, analytical, graphical and programmatic views on reusable models of task that fulfill the role of experience models.

Experimental Actions With Conceptual Objects

In the previous Chapter, we described the direction of decreasing the differences between interactions of a human with natural and computer environments. The basic feature of this direction is to create appropriate conditions for the real-time intertwining of both types of interactions in designer's activity. In this Chapter, we pay our attention to such kind of designer's activity as solving the project tasks at the conceptual stage of designing. We consider these tasks as a dynamic system described as a project theory of a substantially evolutionary type. Such position leads to useful inheritances from the scientific practice. The basic inheritances are the becoming of the theory of the project and applying the thought experiments. The becoming of the theory is coordinated with the use of the stepwise refinement (based on question-answer analysis) and design thinking in their applications to the solving the project tasks. Conceptual experiments are considered as means for verifying the theory constructs.