Østfold University College

About: Østfold University College is a education organization based out in Halden, Norway. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Health care. The organization has 438 authors who have published 1213 publications receiving 12510 citations. The organization is also known as: HiØ.

What video styles can do for user research

Abstract: Documentary video is regularly used to support user research in user-centred design, and many researchers are familiar with this medium. There is strong research evidence that video can contribute substantially to human-computer interaction and interaction design. But the question what role the video camera actually plays in studying people and establishing design collaboration still exists. In this article we argue that traditional documentary film approaches like Direct Cinema and Cinema Verite show that a purely observational approach may not be most valuable for user research and that video material can be used in a variety of ways to explore, understand and present the everyday. Based on a comparison of several video studies of similar activities, but shot by different researchers, we develop the concept of ‘styles’ in video studies, and define three camera styles that may be a help for researchers in organising user research: Not only in making decisions about camera techniques, but in relating how the researcher interacts with the person(s) in front of the camera to the purpose of the shooting.

Improving the Canny Edge Detector Using Automatic Programming: Improving Non-Max Suppression

Abstract: In this paper, we employ automatic programming, a relatively unknown evolutionary computation strategy, to improve the non-max suppression step in the popular Canny edge detector. The new version of the algorithm has been tested on a dataset widely used to benchmark edge detection algorithms. The performance has increased by 1.9%, and a pairwise student-t comparison with the original algorithm gives a p-value of 6.45 x 10-9. We show that the changes to the algorithm have made it better at detecting weak edges, without increasing the computational complexity or changing the overall design. Previous attempts have been made to improve the filter stage of the Canny algorithm using evolutionary computation, but, to our knowledge, this is the first time it has been used to improve the non-max suppression algorithm. The fact that we have found a heuristic improvement to the algorithm with significantly better performance on a dedicated test set of natural images suggests that our method should be used as a standard part of image analysis platforms, and that our methodology could be used to improve the performance of image analysis algorithms in general.

Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Security in Safety and Reliability Critical Systems

Abstract: This paper addresses the necessity of including security aspects when assessing reliability and safety of critical systems. The integration of security in qualitative analysis is demonstrated and the possibility of probabilistically modelling security is discussed. Methods of particular interest are HAZOPs and Petri-nets.