Note, any of these topics can be also expanded to a PhD topic, if needed. Also, feel free to propose other topics within my research interests.

Human-centered analysis and optimization of the path options in application to the property visit tasks

Reasearch area: Software Engineering, AI, UI

Prerequisites: good programming skills (preferably python or Java), good problem solving, interest to HCI

In large cites like Melbourne in Australia or Munich in Germany to find a place to rent is a complicated quest. The portals like realestate.com.au and domain.com.au are helpful, but do not provide a real impression of the property - you have to visit many flats before you can find something you like, so you need to plan your travel carefully and decide: what flats to visit, how many minutes you can spend in each place for inspection, what transport (tram, bus, train or car) you should take to catch more inspections, whether shortcut by foot for some cases is quicker, - what other inspections do you miss if you go to a particular inspection, etc. Neither current real estate portals, nor PTV Journey Planner nor Google Maps Directions provide any solution for this type of problem, so this project has not only research potential but might also be of interest for real application. In this project, you will analyse what existing journey planning algorithms and corresponding optimisations can be adopted and adjusted to solve the above problem, as well as what parameters should be taken into account and how to present the results in a readable and usable form.

References:

[1] K.H. Lim, J. Chan, J., C. Leckie, S. Karunasekera. Personalized trip recommendation for tourists based on user interests, points of interest visit durations and visit recency. Knowledge and Information Systems, 54(2), 2018, pp.375-406.

[2] M. Spichkova, H. Schmidt. Requirements Engineering for Global Systems: Cultural, Regulatory and Technical Aspects. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering, SciTePress, pp. 563-569

[3] A. Gunawan, H. C. Lau, P. Vansteenwegen. Orienteering problem: A survey of recent variants, solution approaches and applications, European Journal of Operational Research 255(2), 2016, pp. 315–332.

[4] A. Christianto, P. Chen, O. Walawedura, A. Vuong, J. Feng, M. Spichkova, M.Simic. Enhancing the User Experience With Vertical Transportation Solutions. 21st International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems, Elsevier, Procedia Computer Science, pp. 2075 - 2084.

[5] D. Gavalas, C. Konstantopoulos, A survey on algorithmic approaches for solving tourist trip design problems, Journal of Heuristics 20(3), 2014, pp. 291– 328.

[6] Q. Yuan, G. Cong, Z. Ma, A. Sun, N. Thalmann. Time-aware point-of- interest recommendation, 36th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval (SIGIR’13), 2013, pp. 363–372

Human-Centered Curriculum Visualization

Reasearch area: Software Engineering, HCI, UI

Prerequisites: good programming skills (preferably python or Java), good problem solving, interest to HCI

The need for transparency of curricula is growing, especially in Australia, the 4th largest provider of international education (as per UNESCO statistics). Local and international students require an easy-to-understand visualization of study programs in order to analyze them and make well-informed decisions. Such visualization would be also a great support for Program Coordinators and for Study Advisors to provide corresponding support to the student. This project will focus on a human centered solution to this problem. The core tasks within this project are:

• To analyze the existing approaches on curriculum representation, and specify a human-centered approach for curriculum visualization, that would decrease cognitive load and increase the understandability of the possible leaning paths.
• To implement the specified approach as a Web-application. As input data a number of RMIT study programs will be used, but the solution should be general enough to be later applied to any study program.

References:

[1] H. Siirtola, K.-J. Raiha, and V. Surakka, “Interactive curriculum visu- alization,” in Information Visualisation (IV), 2013 17th International Conference, pp. 108–117, IEEE, 2013.

[2] L. N. Cassel, G. Davies, W. Fone, A. Hacquebard, J. Impagliazzo, R. LeBlanc, J. C. Little, A. McGettrick, and M. Pedrona, “The comput- ing ontology: application in education,” ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 171–183, 2007.

[3] M. Spichkova, J. Harland, A. Alharthi. Online Support System for Transnational Education. International Conference on Engineering Education and Research (ICEER), Western Sydney University

[4] A. Alharthi, M. Spichkova. Individual and Social Requirements Aspects of Sustainable eLearning Systems. International Conference on Engineering Education and Research (ICEER), Western Sydney University

Readability and usability of formal modelling approaches

Reasearch area: Software Engineering

Prerequisites: good problem solving, interest to HCI

Software critical systems (like embedded system in cars, aircrafts, etc.) are nowadays very complex, and exhaustive testing of them is hardly possible. Verification and formal analysis might be a solution, but formal models are often considered as hard to read and to apply, but the latest approaches aim to overcome this issue to make the formal models applicable on a large scale for the development of software critical system (like embedded system in cars, aircrafts, etc.) This project focuses on the analysis of readability and usability aspects of lightweight formal methods for system modelling. One of the ways to deal with this issue is to provide corresponding human-centric tool support. FASTEN is an open source environment for the formal specification and verification of systems. It uses JetBrains' Meta Programming System to build a set of DSLs (Domain Specific Languages) on top of the input language of NuSMV. https://sites.google.com/site/fastenroot/home

Your task within this project will be to conduct a case study on modelling of a safety critical system in the context of FASTEN with the focus on readability and usability analysis, as well as on identification of missing features or application cases. The case study might led you to create a new DSL to reflect specific modelling or verification problems identified within the case study. As FASTEN is an actively developed environment, this project provides a good potential to be further extended into a topic for PhD Thesis.

References:

[1] D. Ratiu, M. Gario, H. Schoenhaar. FASTEN: An Open Extensible Framework to Experiment with Formal Specification Approaches. 7th Conference on Formal Methods in Software Engineering (FormaliSE), 2019

[2] M. Voelter, D. Ratiu, B. Kolb, and B. Schaetz. mbeddr: instantiating a language workbench in the embedded software domain,” Automated Software Engineering, 2013

[3] D. Ratiu and A. Ulrich, Increasing usability of Spin-based C code verification using a harness definition language, in International SPIN Symposium on Model Checking of Software, ser. SPIN 2017, 2017

[4] A. Zamansky, M. Spichkova, G. Rodriguez-Navas, P. Herrmann, J. Blech. Towards Classification of Lightweight Formal Methods. 13th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), SciTePress, pages 305-313

[5] M. Spichkova. Design of formal languages and interfaces: “Formal” does not mean “unreadable”, [PDF]. In Emerging Research and Trends in Interactivity and the Human-Computer Interface, Eds.: K. Blashki, P. Isaías. IGI Global, ISBN13: 9781466646230, ISBN10: 1466646233

[6] A. Zamansky, G. Rodriguez-Navas, M. Adams, M. Spichkova. Formal Methods in Collaborative Projects. 11th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE), ISBN 978-989-758-189-2, pages 396-402