Senior scientist(s) :
Manuel KOLP
Yves WAUTELET
Sodany KIV
Research Field and Subjects
Software projects have two main activity dimensions: engineering and project and management. The engineering dimension deals with building the system and focuses on issues such as how to design, test, code, and so on. The project and change management dimension deals with properly planning and controlling the engineering activities to meet project goals for cost, schedule, and quality.
Small projects can be executed somewhat informally. The project plan may be an e-mail specifying the delivery date and perhaps a few intermediate milestones. Requirements might be communicated in a note or even verbally, and intermediate work products, such as design documents, might be scribbles on personal note pads.
These informal techniques, however, do not scale up for larger projects in which many people may work for many months—the situation for most commercial software projects. In such projects, each engineering task must be done carefully by following well-tried methodologies, and the work products must be properly documented so that others can review them. The tasks in the project must be carefully planned and allocated to project personnel and then tracked as the project executes. In other words, to successfully execute larger projects, formality and rigor along these two dimensions must increase.
Formality requires that well-defined processes be used for performing the various tasks so that the outcome becomes more dependent on the capability of the processes. Formality is further enhanced if quantitative approaches are employed in the processes through the use of suitable metrics.
Technically, a process for a task comprises a sequence of steps that should be followed to execute the task. For an organization, however, the processes it recommends for use by its engineers and project managers are much more than a sequence of steps; they encapsulate what the engineers and project managers have learned about successfully executing projects. Through the processes, the benefits of experience are conferred to everyone, including newcomers in the organization. These processes help managers and engineers emulate past successes and avoid the pitfalls that lead to failures.
For a project, the engineering processes generally specify how to perform engineering activities such as requirement specification, design, testing, and so on. The project management processes, on the other hand, specify how to set milestones, organize personnel, manage risks, monitor progress, and so on. This research work focuses on the project management and change management process.
Products and Services
Software Development Plans
Development Methodology
Business Process and UML Modeling
Change and Configuration Plans
Iterative and Spiral Models
Cost Models
IT Auditing and Assessment
DesCARTES CASE Tool Project Management and Cost Estimation Console
Eltesprom, e-software project management console
Consultancy and Expertise
Executive education
Representative References
Jaelson Castro, Manuel Kolp, John Mylopoulos: A Requirements-Driven Development Methodology. Seminal Contributions to Information Systems Engineering 2013: 265-280
John Mylopoulos, Jaelson Castro, Manuel Kolp: The Evolution of Tropos. Seminal Contributions to Information Systems Engineering 2013: 281-287
Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp, Stephan Poelmans: Requirements-Driven Iterative Project Planning. ICSOFT (Selected Papers) 2011: 121-135
P. Giorgini, M. Kolp and J. Mylopoulos, “Agent-Oriented Information Systems Analysis and Design: Why and How”. In R Bill Hardgrave, Keng Siau and Roger Chiang (Ed.), Information Systems Analysis and Design: Foundations, Methods, and Practices, M.E. Sharpe Publishing, 2007.
Y. Wautelet, A Goal-Driven Project Management Framework for Multi-Agent Software Development: The Case of I-Tropos, PhD Thesis, Louvain School of Management, Université Catholique de Louvain, 2007
T. Nguyen, M. Kolp, L. Penserini,. “A development framework for component-based agent-oriented business services”. In IJAOSE
International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, Vol. 3, no. 2/3, p. 328-367 (2009).
Y. Wautelet, C. Schinckus and M. Kolp. “Towards Knowledge Evolution in Software Engineering: An Epistemological Approach”. In International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach,2010, 3(1), pp. 21-40.
Y. Wautelet, S. Kiv, V. Tran, M. Kolp. “Round Tripping in Component Based Software Development”. In Proc. of the 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM Int. Conf. on Intelligent Agent Technology, Toronto, Canada, August 31 - September 3, 2010. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 261-264
Y. Wautelet, S. Kiv, M. Kolp. “An Iterative Process for Component-Based Software Development Centered on Agents”. In Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence 5: 41-65 (2011)
Y. Wautelet, M. Kolp. “Goal Driven Iterative Software Project Management”. In ICSOFT 2011 - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, Seville, Spain, July 2011: (2), pp. 44-53
Field of Research
Software Engineering, Information Systems Analysis and Design, Software Life-Cycle, Cost Estimation, Change and Risk Management, Iterative Development
Partnership
University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science (Prof. John Mylopoulos)
University of Trento, Department of Information and Communication Technology (Prof. P. Giorgini)
Valencia University of Technology, Department of Comuter Science (Prof. Oscar Pastor)
University of Utrecht, Department of Comuter Science (Dr. L. Penserini)
Federal University of Pernambuco, Department of Comuter Science (Prof. J. Castro)
Center for Scientific and Technological Research - ITC-IRST (Dr. A. Perini)
CARSID S.A.
SONACA S.A.
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Information Systems Methodologies
CASE Tool
Software Cost Estimation
Change and Configuration Management
Iterative Process
Spiral Development
Agile and Extreme Development
Agent and Object-oriented Paradigms
SENIOR SCIENTIST(S)
Manuel Kolp
Manuel.Kolp@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
Yves Wautelet
Yves.Wautelet@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
Sodany Kiv
Sodany.Kiv@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
WEB SITE(S)
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/descartes
Senior scientist(s) :
Manuel KOLP
Yves WAUTELET
Research Field and Subjects
Business Modeling is concerned with analyzing and understanding the organizational context within which a software system will eventually function. It proposes organizational patterns motivated by organizational theories intended to facilitate the construction of business software models such as use cases models and is concerned with the evaluation of the patterns using desirable qualities or non functional requirements.
Since the origins of civilization, people have been designing, participating in, and sharing the burdens and rewards of organizations. The early organizations were primarily military or governmental in nature. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu describes the need for hierarchical structure, communications, and strategy. In the Politics, Aristotle wrote of governmental administration and its association with culture. To the would-be-leader, Machiavelli advocated in the Prince power over morality. The roots of organizational theories, then, can be traced to antiquity, including thinkers from around the world who studied alternative organizational structures. Such structures consist of stakeholders -- individuals, groups, physical or social systems -- that coordinate and interact with each other to achieve common goals. Today, organizational structures are primarily studied by two disciplines: Organization Theory, that describes the structure and design of an organization and Strategic Alliances that model the strategic collaborations of independent organizational stakeholders who have agreed to pursue a set of agreed upon business goals.
Both disciplines aim to identify and study organizational patterns. These are not just modeling abstractions or structures, rather they can be seen, felt, handled, and operated upon. They have a manifest form and lie in the objective domain of reality as part of the concrete world. A pattern is however not solely a set of execution behaviors. Rather, it exists in various forms at every stage of crystallization (e.g., specification), and at every level of granularity in the organization. The more manifest is its representation, the more the pattern emerges and becomes recognizable -- whether at a high or low level of granularity.
At the lowest level of granularity, Business modeling proposed information patterns and service patterns that represent the "nitty-gritty" of business that an organization must deal with on a day-to-day basis. When we move to an upper level, we find business patterns -- the mix of products and markets that flows from organizational styles. The highest level of granularity is the organizational styles that address the mix of socio-technical context and organizational constructs: they are manifestation of organization invariants, layers of organizational constructs, organization molecules, and complex arrangements of molecules, the collection of which constitutes organizational structures.
Many organizational styles are fully formed patterns with definite characteristics. In contrast, many other organizational styles are not very explicit, that is, not easily specified, operationalized, and measured.
Representative References
Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp, Business and model-driven development of BDI multi-agent systems. Neurocomputing 182: 304-321, 2016
Yves Wautelet, Samedi Heng, Manuel Kolp, Isabelle Mirbel: Unifying and Extending User Story Models, 26th International Conference, CAiSE 2014, Thessaloniki, Greece, June 16-20, 2014. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8484, 211-225
Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp: Mapping i* within UML for Business Modeling. 19th International Conference, REFSQ 2013, Essen, Germany, April 8-11, 2013. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7830, Springer 2013 237-252
T.T.H Hoang, M. Kolp: “Goal, Soft-goal and Quality Requirement”. In J. Filipe, J. Cordeiro (Eds.): ICEIS 2010 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Volume 3, Funchal, Portugal, pp. 13-22 June 2010.
T.T.H. Hoang “Quality-aware agent-oriented information-system development” PhD thesis, Louvain School of Management, Université catholique de Louvain, December, 2010.
J. Castro, M. Kolp, L. Liu, A. Perini, “Dealing with Complexity Using Conceptual Models Based on Tropos”. In A. Borgida, V. K. Chaudhri, P. Giorgini, E. S. K. Yu (Eds.): Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications. LNCS 5600 Springer, pp. 335-362, 2009,
M. Kolp, S. Faulkner and Y. Wautelet “Multi-Agent Patterns for Organizational Analysis”, In A. Gunasekaran (Ed.), Global Implications of Modern Enterprise Information Systems: Technologies and Applications, IGI Publishing, Chap. VI, 2008.
M. Kolp, T. Tung Do and S. Faulkner, “Social-Centric Development of Multi-Agent Architectures”. In Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce (JOCEC), 18(2):150-175, Taylor and Francis, 2008.
M. Kolp and S. Faulkner, “Patterns for Organizational Modeling”. In International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems (IJEIS), 3(3):1-22, Idea Group, 2007.
Partnership
University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science (Prof. John Mylopoulos)
University of Trento, Department of Information and Communication Technology (Prof. P. Giorgini)
Valencia University of Technology, Department of Comuter Science (Prof. Oscar Pastor)
University of Utrecht, Department of Comuter Science (Dr. L. Penserini),
Federal University of Pernambuco, Department of Comuter Science (Prof. J. Castro)
Products and Services
DesCARTES Organizational Modeling CASE Tool (Tropos project)
SkwyRL framework for Organizational Modeling
Consultancy
Expertise
Executive education
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Organizational Patterns
Requirements Engineering
Business Modeling
Use Case Models
Non Functional Requirements
Information Modeling
Conceptual Modeling
SENIOR SCIENTIST(S)
Manuel Kolp
Manuel.Kolp@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
Yves Wautelet
Yves.Wautelet@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
WEB SITE(S)
http://www.uclouvain.be/en-cemis
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/skwyrl
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/descartes
Senior scientists:
Manuel KOLP
Yves WAUTELET
Research Field and Subjects
Agent-Orientation is emerging as a powerful new paradigm in computing. Concepts and techniques from the agent paradigm could well be the foundations for the next generation of mainstream information systems, which we might term "active computing".
Information systems architectures have become the backbone of all kinds of organizations today. In almost every sector - manufacturing, education, health care, government, and businesses large and small - information systems are relied upon for everyday work, communication, information gathering, and decision-making. Yet, the inflexibilities in current technologies and methods have also resulted in poor performance, incompatibilities, and obstacles to change. As many organizations are reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of global competition and e-commerce, there is increasing pressure to develop and deploy new technologies that are flexible, robust, and responsive to rapid and unexpected change.
Agent concepts hold great promise for responding to the new realities of active information systems. They offer higher level abstractions and mechanisms which address issues such as knowledge representation and reasoning, communication, coordination, cooperation among heterogeneous and autonomous parties, perception, commitments, goals, beliefs, intentions, etc. On the one hand, the concrete implementation of these concepts can lead to advanced functionalities, e.g., in inference-based query answering, transaction control, adaptive workflows, brokering and integration of disparate information sources, and automated communication processes. On the other hand, their rich representational capabilities allow for more faithful and flexible treatments of complex organizational processes, leading to more effective requirements analysis and architectural and detailed design.
The research work focuses on how agent concepts and techniques will contribute to meeting information systems architectures needs today and tomorrow, especially in the context of service-oriented architectures and web services development.
Representative References
Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp: Business and model-driven development of BDI multi-agent systems. Neurocomputing 182: 304-321, 2016
Sodany Kiv, Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp:
Agent-Driven Integration Architecture for Component-Based Software Development. Trans. Computational Collective Intelligence 8: 121-147, 2012
Yves Wautelet, Sodany Kiv, Manuel Kolp:
An Iterative Process for Component-Based Software Development Centered on Agents. Trans. Computational Collective Intelligence 5: 41-65, 2011
S. Kiv, Y. Wautelet, M. Kolp. “A Multi-Agent Architectural Pattern for Wrapping Off-the-Shelf Components”. In KES-AMSTA 2011, 5th KES Int. Conf. on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Applications, Manchester, UK, LNCS 6682, pp. 321-331 June 29 - July 1, 2011
H. Mouratidis, S. Faulkner, M. Kolp and P. Giorgini, “A Secure Architectural Description Language for BDI Multi-Agent Systems”. In International Journal of Web Intelligence and Agent Systems (WIAS), 8(1) pp. 99-122, 2010.
T. Nguyen, M. Kolp and L. Penserini, “A Development Framework for Component-Based Agent-Oriented Business Services”. In International Journal of Agent Software Engineering (IJAOSE), 3 (2/3), pp. 328-367 Inderscience, 2009.
M. Kolp, B. Hendersen-Sellers, H. Mouratidis, A. Garcia, and A. Ghoze (Eds.), Agent Oriented Information Systems IX, Springer, 231 pages, ISBN: 978-3-540-77989-6, Germany, 2008
Partnerships
University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science
University of Trento, Department of Information and Communication Technology Valencia University of Technology, Department of Comuter Science
University of Utrecht, Department of Comuter Science
Federal University of Pernambuco, Department of Comuter Science
Center for Scientific and Technological Research - ITC-IRST
Products and Services
Agent-oriented modeling and design methods
Models and architectures for agent-oriented/active information systems
Novel information system technologies based on software agents
Agent-based requirements engineering
Agent-oriented approaches to data integration
Agent orientation and e-services
Agent orientation in web information systems
Agent-oriented enterprise and business process modeling
Agent communication languages for business communication
Ontologies and agents
Agent orientation and human computer interaction
DesCARTES Agent Oriented CASE Tool
SkwyRL framework for Agent Architectural Design
Consultancy
Expertise
Executive education
Keywords
Architectural Patterns
Software Design
Design Patterns
Multi-agent systems
Intelligent Systems
Contacts
Manuel Kolp
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
Yves Wautelet
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
WEB SITES
Senior scientists :
François FOUSS
Marco SAERENS
Alain PIROTTE
Research Field and Subjects
This research aims to develop state-of-the-art collaborative filtering methods, based mainly on new notions of distances on a graph. Most of these distance measures rely on models of random walk on a graph (Markov models) that account for all the possible paths between two nodes (and not only the shortest one as for the geodesic distance). They are then used in order to compute the proximity between elements of different tables of a relational database.
Representative Publications
F. FOUSS, L.YEN, A. PIROTTE, and M. SAERENS. An experimental investigation of graph kernels on a collaborative recommendation task. Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2006), pp. 863-868, 2006.
F. FOUSS, A. PIROTTE, J.-M. RENDERS, and M. SAERENS. Random-walk computation of similarities between nodes of a graph, with application to collaborative recommendation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol 19., no. 3, pp 355-369, Mar., 2007.
F. FOUSS and M. SAERENS. Evaluating performance of recommender systems: An experimental comparison. Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE / WIC / ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, 2008.
F. FOUSS, L. YEN, A. PIROTTE, and M. SAERENS. An Experimental Investigation of Graph Kernels on Collaborative Recommendation and Semisupervised Classification. Neural Networks, 31, pp. 53-72, 2012.
VAN PARIJS C. & FOUSS F., Improving accuracy by reducing the importance of hubs in nearest-neighbor recommendations. Proceedings of the 2014 European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (ESANN 2014), 2014.
VANDENBULCKE V., LECRON F., DUCARROZ C. & FOUSS F., Evaluating the impact of personalized recommendations: Application in the mass-retailing sector. Proceedings of the 2015 conference of European Marketing Academy (EMAC 2015), 2015.
F. LECRON and F. FOUSS, A Convex Optimization Model for Collaborative Recommendation. Submitted, 2016.
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Data mining
Graph mining
Collaborative recommendation
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
François FOUSS
Mail: françois.fouss@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 65 32 32 16
Marco SAERENS
Mail: marco.saerens@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 92 46
WEB SITES
Senior scientists:
Marco SAERENS
François FOUSS
Research Field and Subjects
This research area aims to develop new algorithms for analyzing existing data, as well as extracting knowledge from large repositories and from the environment. Today, data sources are more and more abundant and being able to exploit these data is a major challenge in computer science.
Representative Publications
F. FousS and M. Saerens. Yet another method for combining experts opinions: A maximum entropy model. Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Multiple Classifier Systems (MCS 2004); Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. LNAI3077, Springer-Verlag, pp 82-91, 2004.
M. SAERENS, F. FOUSS, L. YEN, and P. DUPONT. The principal components analysis of a graph, and its relationships to spectral clustering. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Proc. of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML 2004), Vol. 3201, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 371–383, 2004.
F. FOUSS, A. PIROTTE, J.-M. RENDERS, and M. SAERENS. Random-walk computation of similarities between nodes of a graph, with application to collaborative recommendation. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol 19., no. 3, pp 355-369, Mar., 2007.
Y. Achbany, F. FousS, L. Yen, A. Pirotte, and M. Saerens. Tuning continual exploration in reinforcement learning: An optimality property of the Boltzmann strategy. Neurocomputing, 71, pp. 2507–2520, 2008.
L. Yen, F. Fouss, C. Decaestecker, P. Francq, and M. Saerens. Graph nodes clustering with the sigmoid commute-time kernel: a comprehensive study. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 68, pp. 338-361, 2009.
M. Saerens, L. Yen, F. Fouss, and Y. Achbany. Randomized shortest-path problems: two related models. Neural Computation, Neural Computation, 21 (8), pp. 2363-2404, 2009.
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Link analysis
Data mining
Graph mining
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Marco SAERENS
Mail: marco.saerens@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 92 46
François FOUSS
Mail: françois.fouss@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 65 32 32 16
WEB SITES
Senior scientists :
Marco SAERENS
François FOUSS
Research Field and Subjects
This research aims to analyze existing, and develop new, link analysis techniques. Exploiting the graph structure of large repositories, such as the web environment or social networks, is one of the main challenges of computer science and data mining today.
Representative Publications
F. FOUSS, J.-M. RENDERS, and M. SAERENS. Links between Kleinberg’s hubs and authorities, correspondence analysis and Markov chains. Proceedings of the 3th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2003), pp 521-524, 2003.
F. FOUSS, J.-M. RENDERS, and M. SAERENS. Some relationships between Kleinberg’s hubs and authorities, correspondence analysis, and the Salsa algorithm. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data (JADT 2004), pp 445-455, 2004.
M. SAERENS, F. FOUSS, L. YEN, and P. DUPONT. The principal components analysis of a graph, and its relationships to spectral clustering. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Proc. of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML 2004), Vol. 3201, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, pp. 371–383, 2004.
M. SAERENS and F. FOUSS. HITS is principal components analysis. Proceedings of the IEEE / WIC / ACM International Joint Conference on Web Intelligence, pp 782-785, 2005.
J. Callut, K. Francoisse, M. Saerens, and P. Dupont. Semi-supervised classification from discriminative random walks. Proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML/PKDD 2008). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. LNAI5211, Springer-Verlag, pp. 162-177, 2008.
L. Yen, F. Fouss, C. Decaestecker, P. Francq, and M. Saerens. Graph nodes clustering with the sigmoid commute-time kernel: a comprehensive study. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 68, pp. 338-361, 2009.
FRANCOISE K., FOUSS F. & SAERENS M., A link-analysis-based discriminant analysis for exploring labeled graphs. Pattern Recognition Letters, Vol. 34, n°2, pp 146-154, 2013.
SENELLE M., GARCIA DIEZ S., MANTRACH A., SHIMBO M., SAERENS M. & FOUSS F., The Sum-over-Forests density index: identifying dense regions in a graph. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 36, n°6, pp.1268-1274, 2014.
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Link analysis
Data mining
Graph mining
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Marco SAERENS
Mail: marco.saerens@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 92 46
François FOUSS
Mail: françois.fouss@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 65 32 32 16
WEB SITES
Senior scientists:
Juan GONZALEZ CALLEROS
Josefina GUERRERO GARCIA
Christophe LEMAIGRE
Jean VANDERDONCKT
Research Field and Subjects
Understanding work is crucial for achieving business goals in organisations, managers constantly search for better ways to achieve these goals. In recent years, organisations have experienced an extensive focus on workflow, business process re-engineering, and total quality management. Workflow Technology is a particular kind of Information Technology (IT) intended to support work by enacting explicitly modelled and represented business processes. Hence, there has been a growing interest in Workflow Management Systems and flexible workflow support.
Our research exploits the workflow and task models and the model-based approach in order to systematically derive User Interfaces (UIs). We propose an organisational model that integrates process and task models to specify a workflow and entities to represent organisational components, such as: users, jobs and organisational units. The generated UIs correspond to the needs of the variety of users that a workflow system handles, within the organisation (production line, marketing, etc) and out of the organisation (Business partners, Ecommerce, etc). The coordination and communication channel among users is assured through the work list and agendas mechanism that allows users to allocate, delegate or offer tasks to the users.
The integration of the concepts above supported by a software tool can lead an organisation towards the digital firm.
Services & Consultancy
Workflow specification
Collaborative aspects in information system
Information System modelling
User Interface specification
Organizational communication support
Organisational modelling
Integrating Information systems to the organisation
Representative Publications
Guerrero GARCIA, J., Vanderdonckt, J., GONZALEZ CALLEROS, J.M. (2008) « FlowiXML: a Step towards Designing Workflow Management Systems », Journal of Web Engineering, vol. 4, n°2, pp. 163-182.
GUERRERO GARCÍA, J., Vanderdonckt, J., LEMAIGRE, CH GONZÁLEZ CALLEROS, J.M. (2008). «How to Describe Workflow Information Systems to Support Business Process», Proc. of 10th IEEE Joint Conf. on E-Commerce Technology and Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services CEC’2008 (Washington D.C., July 21, 2008), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 404-411.
GUERRERO GARCÍA, J., LEMAIGRE, CH., GONZÁLEZ CALLEROS, J.M., VANDERDONCKT, J. (2009), « Towards a Model-Based User Interface Development for Workflow Information Systems», International Journal of Universal Computer Science. Forthcoming.
GUERRERO GARCÍA, J., VANDERDONCKT, J. GONZÁLEZ CALLEROS, J.M. (2009) « Developing user interfaces for community-oriented workflow information systems», Chapter 14, in D. Akoumianakis (ed.), “Virtual Communities of Practice and Social Interactive Technologies: Lifecycle and Workflow Analysis”, IGI Global Inc., Hershey. Forthcoming.
Awards and funding
Josefina GUERRERO GARCIA was awarded with the CONACYT scholarship from the Mexican government from 2007-2009.
Juan GONZALEZ CALLEROS received a three-year PhD scholarship from the European Comission program Alban under code E04D033272MX
Partnerships & Scientific collaborations
Defimedia Information Management
SIMILAR - An European Network of Excellence on Multimodal User Interfaces
CONACYT – the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Workflow
Information systems
Model-driven engineering
User interface development
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Juan GONZALEZ CALLEROS
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 49
Josefina GUERRERO GARCIA
josefina.guerrero@student.uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 49
Christophe LEMAIGRE
christophe.lemaigre@uclouvain.be
Jean VANDERDONCKT
jean.vanderdonckt@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 85 25
WEB SITES
Senior scientists:
Hildeberto MENDONÇA
Kenia SOUSA
Jean VANDERDONCKT
Research Field and Subjects
Our research work concerns the traceability from the business processes of corporate environments to the user interface of information systems to help business analysts in predicting the impact of process changes on the user interaction. It is also aimed at proposing changes in the processes when the user interaction is improved. To support this type of traceability, we apply a model-driven approach that derives user interfaces from business processes. This approach consists of four steps: business process modelling in the context of organisational engineering, task model derivation from the business process model, task refinement, and user interface model derivation from the task model. Each step contributes to specifying and refining mappings between the source and the target models. In this way, each model modification could be adequately propagated in the rest of the supply chain. By applying this model-driven approach, the user interfaces of the information systems are directly meeting the requirements of the business processes and are no longer decoupled from them. In addition, the user experience is considered in alignment with business needs. This work has matured in the context of a very large company sub-divided in the banking and insurance businesses.
Services & Consultancy
In the context of large companies, we conduct interviews with professionals from different departments to understand the organisational context, their difficulties and needs. With the gathered information, we are able to perform a critical analysis and propose different solutions that can be assessed by the top managers to give them enough information to make a decision to bring forth an organization change to improve their current situation in terms of user interface design aligned with business processes.
Representative Publications
SOUSA, K., MENDONCA, H., VANDERDONCKT, J, (2009) « A Model-Driven Approach to Align Business Processes with User Interfaces», International Journal of Universal Computer Science. Forthcoming.
SOUSA, K., MENDONCA, H., VANDERDONCKT, J, (2008) «Addressing the Impact of Business Process Changes on Software User Interfaces», Proc. of 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Business-driven IT Management BDIM'2008 (Salvador, April 7th, 2008), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, pp. 11-20.
SOUSA, K., MENDONCA, H., VANDERDONCKT, J, ROGIER, E., VANDERMEULEN, J. (2008) «User Interface Derivation from Business Processes: A Model-Driven Approach for Organizational Engineering», Proc. of 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing SAC’2008 (Fortaleza, 16-20 March 2008), ACM Press, New York, 2008, pp. 553-560.
SOUSA, K., MENDONCA, H., VANDERDONCKT, J. (2007) « Towards Method Engineering of Model-Driven User Interface Development », proceeding. of 6th Int. Workshop on Task Models and Diagrams TAMODIA’2007 (Toulouse, 7-9 November 2007), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Springer-Verlag, pp. 112-125.
Partnerships & Scientific collaborations
Belgacom
Fortis Insurance Belgium
Namahn
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Business process modelling
Model-driven engineering
Model-driven user interface development
Usability
User interface extensible markup language
User-centered design
Human factors
Standardization.
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Hildeberto MENDONÇA
hildeberto.mendonca@uclouvain.be
Jean VANDERDONCKT
jean.vanderdonckt@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 85 25
WEB SITES
www.uclouvain.be/sites/isys/bchi
Senior scientists:
Adrien Coyette
Didier Dulait (responsible for ErgoFace)
Juan Manuel Gonzalez Calleros
Josefina Guerrero García
Christophe Lemaigre
Francisco Javier Martínez Ruiz
Efrem Mbaki
Hildeberto Mendonca
Jérémie Melchior
Bert Schiettecatte
Kênia Sousa
Jean Vanderdonckt
Research Field and Subjects
Computers are getting more and more important, and it’s why creating tools in order to make interactions between de machine and the user easier represents a pertinent and useful research subject. When a developer builds a new interface, he has to make it ergonomic and easy to use for all. On the other hand, the activity of developing interface is long and expensive, especially for interfaces to be used in many contexts (laptop, PDA, in different languages …). The aim of the project Ergoface is to make the development easier, shorter, giving a quality output.
USIXML
Each context and each type of interface (Internet, pocket-pc, mobile phone) has its own language. It’s why the laboratory has created a language, USIXML, in order to standardize the interfaces development. With USIXML, one single conception of the interface is traduced into different existing languages for multiple purposes.
The UsiXML language was submitted for a standardization action plan in the context of the Similar network of excellence and of the Open Interface European project. For this purpose, the Université catholique de Louvain has been accepted by W3 Consortium for entering its academic initiative.
The software continuation
The laboratory developed a software continuation, using USIXML, which covers all the steps of the interface development. The continuation includes SketchiXML, a low fidelity editor, GraphiXML, which transforms the results of SketchiXML in a higher level of fidelity, and finally MultiModaliXML which translates the UXIXML code into another existing language.
In conclusion, the Ergoface project offers a full answer to the interfaces developers: from conception to maintenance.
Services and Consultancy
The laboratory realizes number of consultancy missions (Tasks such as ergonomic evaluation of website and interfaces conception) for companies and organizations. The laboratory frequently receives bid requests for consultancy missions.
Partnerships and scientific collaborations
Défimédia
Key-Performance
AnySurfer
Key words for R&D
Ergoface
Interface
Ergonomy
USIXML
DESTINE
Usability
Senior scientists
Adrien COYETTE
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 81 62
Didier DULAIT
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 81 62
Juan Manuel GONZALEZ CALLEROS
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 49
Christophe LEMAIGRE
christophe.lemaigre@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 65
Francisco Javier MARTINEZ RUIZ
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 49
Efrem MBAKI
Hildeberto MENDONCA
hildeberto.mendonca@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 80 75
Jérémie MELCHIOR
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 84
Bert SCHIETTECATTE
Jean VANDERDONCK
Jean.vanderdonckt@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 85 25
WEB SITES
Senior scientists:
Adrien Coyette
Laurent Goutière
Sandra Soares Frazao
Benoit Spinewine
Jean Vanderdonckt
Yves Zech
Research Field and Subjects
Our research work concerns the characterization of the quality of a sample of human sperm through analysis of the paths of the spermatozoids observed under the microscope. This analysis is essential for medically assisted fertilisation: the results of this analysis guide the choice of the type of insemination and the selection of the samples, and participate in the diagnosis of conditions linked to male infertility. This type of analysis is practised very frequently in Belgium (43,220 in 2006) in a large number of laboratories (over 120). However, the methods currently used are diverse, manual, subjective, laborious, and hardly standardised. Quality controls performed in the leading laboratories frequently show a dispersal of results greater than 100%.
This project made it possible to develop a prototype version of the sperm analysis software, based on the Voronoi digital imaging techniques developed previously. This tool permits to conduct such analysis very efficiently and objectively. The development of this version involved three research teams from different fields: the Information Systems unit (ISYS) of the Louvain School of Management (A. Coyette, J. Vanderdonckt), the Civil and Environmental Engineering Hydraulics department of the Ecole Polytechnique de
Louvain (L. Goutière, Y. Zech) for the UCL, and the medically assisted procreation centre of the ULg (A. Boland, M. Dubois).
Services & Consultancy
As stated earlier, the major domain of application is the medically assisted procreation for both humans and animals. Indeed, veterinarians are also frequently using this kind of techniques.
Furthermore, we are also exploring other domains of applications of the Voronoi digital imaging techniques. So far, several opportunities were identified in the medical domain, in the biological domain but also in the industrial domain.
Partnerships & Scientific collaborations
CHR Namur
WOW Company
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Vitality
Sperm analysis
Sperm motility
Voronoi
Digital imaging techniques
PTV
Particles tracking
Medically assisted procreation
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Adrien COYETTE
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 81 62
Laurent GOUTIERE
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 21 23
Sandra SOARES FRAZAO
Sandra.Soares-Frazao@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 21 21
Benoit SPINEWINE
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 21 23
Jean VANDERDONCKT
jean.vanderdonckt@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 85 25
Yves ZECH
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 21 21
WEB SITE
Senior scientists:
Jean VANDERDONCKT
Benoît MACQ
Peter VAN ROY
Research Field and Subjects
In this topic, we are interested in all steps of the development life cycle of the user interface (UI) of any interactive system ranging from web applications and Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) to Distributed User Interfaces (DUIs), multimodal interfaces, and augmented reality applications. This includes: definition and elicitation of user requirements, analysis of the user interface in terms of models capturing various aspects (e.g., the task, the domain, the user, the platform, the environment), design of multiple UIs addressing elicited requirements, development of user interfaces by automated code generation, usability evaluation since the beginning, interpretation and execution of UIs, maintenance and re-engineering. For this purpose, knowledge is developed at the intersection of three disciplines: human-computer interaction (HCI), software engineering (SE), and usability engineering. The long term goal of this research/development is to establish a complete methodology for developing multiple UIs for multiple users on multiple computing platforms ranging from mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to Tablet PC, laptops, desktops, and wall screens. For this purpose, a methodology is defined and applied based on models, method, and supporting tools which are compliant with the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm promoted by the Object Management Group. This area is often referred to as Computer-Aided Design of User Interfaces (CADUI). Equally important is the constant involvement of usability guidelines throughout the development life cycle to ensure, measure, and guarantee the quality of the resulting UIs, in particular for accessibility and usability applied to information systems, web applications, and medical applications.
Products and Services
The UsiXML (USer Interface eXtensible Markup language) is a language for specifying any kind of UI for multiple contexts of use. Thanks to this language, the UI specifications could smoothly evolve from early design to final code. A suite of UI prototyping tools with low, medium, and high fidelity allows us to capture the UI requirements as expressed by end users and to validate them, before generating automatically the corresponding code for GUIs, vocal UIs, and multimodal UIs, in particular for the Web. Other software also provides designers and developers with some guidance on ensuring the usability of the UI by continuous feedback and automated evaluation. In this way, user testing is complemented by a formative feedback for developers as a result from usability engineering.
Main Equipment
Material for conducting usability evaluation of any interface, in particular web sites, information systems, multimodal applications.
Multiple computing platforms for designing and testing UIs which are appropriate and adapted: mobile phone, smartphone, PocketPC, Palmtop PC, TabletPC, interactive kiosk, laptop, desktop, wall screen, interactive boards.
Toolkit for multimodal development.
Representative References
Amouh, T., Gemo, M., Macq, B., Vanderdonckt, J., El Gariani, A.W., Reynaert, M., Stamatakis, L., and Thys, F., Versatile clinical information system design for emergency departments, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, vol. 9, no. 2, June 2005, pp. 1-10.
Bouillon, L. and Vanderdonckt, J., Rétro-ingénierie du modèle de présentation pour les pages web, Revue d’interaction homme-machine, vol. 5, no. 2, 2005, pp. 31-58.
Coyette, A., Vanderdonckt, J., A Sketching Tool for Designing Anyuser, Anyplatform, Anywhere User In-terfaces, Proc. of 10th IFIP TC 13 Int. Conf. on Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT’2005 (Rome, 12-16 September 2005), M.-F. Costabile, F. Paternò (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3585, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005, pp. 550-564.
Florins, M., Vanderdonckt, J., Graceful Degradation of User Interfaces as a Design Method for Multiplatform Systems, Proc. of 8th ACM Int. Conf. on Intelligent User Interfaces IUI’2004 (Funchal, 13-16 January 2004), ACM Press, New York, 2004, pp. 140-147.
Grolaux, D., Van Roy, P., Vanderdonckt, J., Migratable User Interfaces: Beyond Migratory User Interfaces, Proc. of 1st IEEE-ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Net-working and Services MOBIQUITOUS’04 (Boston, August 22-25, 2004), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 2004, pp. 422-430.
Grolaux, D., Vanderdonckt, J., Van Roy, P., Attach me, Detach me, Assemble me like You Work, Proc. of 10th IFIP TC 13 Int. Conf. on Human-Computer Interaction INTERACT’2005 (Rome, 12-16 September 2005)., M.-F. Costabile, F. Paternò (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3585, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005, pp. 198-212
Limbourg, Q., Vanderdonckt, J., UsiXML: A User Interface Description Language Supporting Multiple Levels of Independence, in Matera, M., Comai, S. (Eds.), « Engineering Advanced Web Applications », Rinton Press, Paramus, 2004, pp. 325-338.
Mariage, C., Vanderdonckt, J., Pribeanu, C., State of the Art of Web Usability Guidelines, Chapter 41, in Proctor, R.W., Vu, K.-Ph.L. (Eds.), « The Handbook of Human Factors in Web Design », Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, 2005, pp. 688-700.
Stanciulescu, A., Limbourg, Q., Vanderdonckt, J., Michotte, B., and Montero, F., A Transformational Approach for Multimodal Web User Interfaces based on UsiXML, Proc. of 7th Int. ACM Conf. on Multimodal Interfaces ICMI’2005 (Trento, 4-6 October 2005), ACM Press, New York, 2005, pp. 259-266
Trevisan, D., Vanderdonckt, J., Macq, B., Conceptualising Mixed Spaces of Interaction for Designing Continuous Interaction, Virtual Reality, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2005, pp. 83-95.
Vanderdonckt, J., Beirekdar, A., Noirhomme-Fraiture, M., Automated Evaluation of Web Usability and Accessibility by Guideline Review, Proc. of 4th Int. Conf. on Web Engineering ICWE’04 (Munich, 28-30 July 2004), N. Koch, P. Fraternali, M. Wirsing (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3140, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004, pp. 17-30.
Vanderdonckt, J., A MDA-Compliant Environment for Developing User Interfaces of Information Systems, Proc. of 17th Conf. on Advanced Information Systems Engineering CAiSE'05 (Porto, 13-17 June 2005), O. Pastor & J. Falcão e Cunha (eds.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3520, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005, pp. 16-31.
Awards
IBM Belgium 1998 Award in Computer Science
ACM CHI’94 Doctoral Consortium
Winterthur’87 Prize
Partnerships
SIMILAR network of excellence (The European research taskforce creating human-machine inter-faces SIMILAR to human-human communication), Sixth Framework Program, European Commission, FP6-IST1-2003-507609.
Scientific coordination of European COST Action MAUSE « Towards The Maturation of IT Usability Evaluation » (European Commission, COST Action n°294)
Member of the Mozart UCL Board
Member of Prométhée research/development cluster in Information Systems and Alliage network
« Plasticité des Systèmes Interactifs » Research Action, CNRS-France.
Partner of the MERLIN (Methodes pour l'Ergonomie des Logiciels Interactifs) Concerted Research Action, INRIA Rocquencourt.
IBM Belgium Sponsorship for multimodal applications
Consulting services for Defimedia (Belgium), Harmonia, Inc. (USA), CARE Technologies (Spain).
Field of Research
Algorithmics and theory of computation / information theory
Antenna
Artificial intelligence and machine learning
Biomedical signal processing
Computer and society
Digital communications
Electronic systems (mixed-signals circuits and systems)
High performance computing
Image and signal processing
Information systems and data bases
Linguistic engineering
Micro and nano information sytems
Microwaves
Networks and distributed systems
Optimization and operations research
Programming Languages and Systems
Security and cryptography
Software engineering
KEY WORDS FOR R&D
Augmented reality
Computer-aided design of user interfaces
Model-driven engineering
Information systems
Multi-user
Multi-platform and multi-environment user interfaces
Multimodal applications
Usability engineering
User interface visual design
User interface extensible markup language
User interface prototyping
Virtual reality
Web engineering and applications
SENIOR SCIENTISTS
Jean Vanderdonckt
Jean.vanderdonckt@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0)10 47 85 25
Benoît Macq
Tel. 32 (0)10 47 22 71
Peter Van Roy
Tel. 32 (0)10 47 83 74
WEB SITES
Senior scientists:
Manuel Kolp
Yves Wautelet
Tran Vi
Research Field and Subjects
Ebusiness is a term used to describe businesses run on the Internet, or utilizing Internet technologies to improve the productivity or profitability of a business. In a more general sense, the term may be used to describe any form of electronic business –- that is to say, any business which utilizes computer. This usage is somewhat archaic, however, and in most contexts ebusiness refers exclusively to Internet businesses.
The most common implementation of ebusiness is as an additional, or in some cases primary, storefront. By selling products and services online, an ebusiness is able to reach a much wider consumer base than any traditional brick-and-mortar store could ever hope for. This function of ebusiness is referred to as ecommerce, and the terms are occasionally used interchangeably.
An ebusiness may also use the Internet to acquire wholesale products or supplies for in-house production. This facet of ebusiness is sometimes referred to as eprocurement, and may offer businesses the opportunity to cut their costs dramatically. Even many ebusinesses which operate without an electronic storefront now use eprocurement as a way to better track and manage their purchasing.
In addition to buying and selling products, ebusiness may also handle other traditional business aspects. The use of electronic chat as a form of technical and customer support is an excellent example of this. An ebusiness which uses chat to supplement its traditional phone support finds a system which saves incredible amounts of time while providing opportunities unavailable through traditional support. By using virtual computer systems, for example, technical support operators can remotely access a customer’s computer and assist them in correcting a problem. And with the download of a small program, all pertinent information about the hardware and software specifications for a user’s computer may be relayed to the support operator directly, without having to walk a customer through personally collecting the data.
Using email and private websites as a method for dispensing internal memos and white sheets is another use of the Internet by ebusiness. Rather than producing time-intensive and costly physical copies for each employee, a central server or email list can serve as an efficient method for distributing necessary information.
In the past few years, virtually all businesses have become, to some degree or another, an ebusiness. The pervasiveness of Internet technology, readily available solutions, and the repeatedly demonstrated benefits of electronic technology have made ebusiness the obvious path. This trend continues with new technologies, such as Internet-enabled cell phones and PDAs, and the trend of ebusiness saturation will most likely continue for some time.
Representative References
Manuel Kolp, Yves Wautelet, Human organizational patterns applied to collaborative learning software systems. Computers in Human Behavior 51: 742-751, 2015
Sodany Kiv, Yves Wautelet, Manuel Kolp, Agent-Driven Integration Architecture for Component-Based Software Development. Trans. Computational Collective Intelligence 8: 121-147, 2012
V. Tran, M. Kolp, J. Vanderdonckt, Y. Wautelet. “ Using Task and Data Models for User Interface Declarative Generation”. In J. Filipe, J. Cordeiro (Eds.): ICEIS 2010 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, Volume 5, Funchal, Portugal, pp. 155-160, June 2010.
S. Kiv, Y. Wautelet, M. Kolp. “A Process for Cots-selection and Mismatches Handling - A Goal-driven Approach”. In ICAART 2010, Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, Valencia, Spain, pp. 98-106, January 2010
Y. Wautelet, Y. Achbany, J.C. Lange, M. Kolp. “A Process for Developing Adaptable and Open Service Systems: Application in Supply Chain Management”. In J. Filipe, J. Cordeiro (Eds.): Enterprise Information Systems. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Springer, pp. 564-576, 2009
T. Nguyen, M. Kolp and L. Penserini, “A Development Framework for Component-Based Agent-Oriented Business Services”. In International Journal of Agent Software Engineering (IJAOSE), 3 (2/3), pp. 328-367 Inderscience, 2009.
S. Dehousse, S. Faulkner, P. Giorgini, M. Kolp and H. Mouratidis, “Reasoning about Willingness in Networks of Agent”. In Software Engineering for Large Multi-Agent Systems (SELMAS), (5):56-70, LNCS 5467, Springer, 2007.
T. Nguyen, A Methodological Framework for Developing and Composing Business Services, PhD Thesis, Louvain School of Management, UCLouvain, 2007.
Partnership
University of Toronto, Department of Computer Science
University of Trento, Department of Information and Communication Technology
Université libre de Bruxelles, Department of Computer Science
University of Ancona, Department of Computer Science
SONACA S.A.
Products and Services
Web recommendation system
E-business solutions
E-business patterns
Web services
Agent-oriented services
KEYWORDS
E-business
Customer relationship Management
E-commerce
Web services
Recommendation Systems
Business to Business
SENIOR SCIENTIST(S)
Manuel Kolp
Manuel.Kolp@uclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
Yves Wautelet
Yves.Wautelet@fuclouvain.be
Tel. 32 (0) 10 47 83 95
WEB SITE(S)
http://www.uclouvain.be/en-cemis/
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be