Eser Kandogan | IBM Research (original) (raw)

Papers by Eser Kandogan

ABSTRACT Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the information age, working behind the scenes to con... more ABSTRACT Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the information age, working behind the scenes to configure, maintain, and troubleshoot the computer infrastructure that underlies much of modern life. While GUIs are being offered for system administrators, they mostly continue to use ...

Hardware and software advances are making real time D graphics part of all mainstream computers. ... more Hardware and software advances are making real time D graphics part of all mainstream computers. World-Wide Web sites encoded in Virtual Reality Modeling Language or other formats allow users across the Internet to share virtual 3D &amp;amp;quot;worlds&amp;amp;quot;. As the supporting software and hardware become increasingly powerful, the usability of the current D navigation interfaces becomes the limiting factor to the wide-spread application of 3D technologies. In this paper, we analyze the human factors issues in designing a usable navigation interface, such as interface metaphor, integration and separation of multiple degrees of freedom, mode switching, isotonic versus isometric control, seamless merger of the D navigation devices with the GUI pointing and scrolling devices and two-handed input. We propose a dual joystick navigation interface design based on a real world metaphor (bulldozer), and present an experimental evaluation. Results showed that the proposed bulldozer interface outperformed the status quo mouse-mapping interface in maze travelling and free flying tasks by 25% to 50%. Limitations of and possible future improvements to the bulldozer interface are also presented.

GroupSense is a suite of awareness tools for a medium size workgroup informing group members of p... more GroupSense is a suite of awareness tools for a medium size workgroup informing group members of people&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s in/out state and information of interest, such as talk announcements. Contrary to instant messengers and most other awareness tools, GroupSense is intended to show state changes that occur infrequently and tend to span longer time intervals (e.g. whole day, or week). Representing such

ABSTRACT As Information Technology (IT) advances, traditional concerns over performance are being... more ABSTRACT As Information Technology (IT) advances, traditional concerns over performance are being overtaken by concerns over manageability and scalability in system management interfaces [1]. Designing effective interactions and representations of large complex systems with intricate relationships among components is a formidable challenge. In this paper we describe the design of a topology viewer application for enterprise-scale storage systems. A key issue in this design effort was to create a graphical topology viewer that would scale to the complexity of typical storage environments and support administrators effectively in various activities. Our approach to address these issues was to use semantic zooming and progressive information disclosure techniques extensively; thus essentially shifting the scalability challenge from purely visual design to mostly interaction design.

One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating h... more One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating highly complex systems. AC seeks to solve this problem through increased automation, relieving system administrators of many burdensome activities. However, the AC strategy of managing complexity through automation runs the risk of making management harder. We performed field studies of current administrator work practices to inform the design of AC in order to ensure that it simplifies system management. In this paper, we analyze what system administrators do in terms of three important activities: rehearsal and planning, maintaining situation awareness, and managing multitasking, interruptions and diversions. We provide guidelines for constructing AC environments that support these activities.

The administration cost of today's complex IT systems is a major inhibitor of growth for... more The administration cost of today's complex IT systems is a major inhibitor of growth for many companies in the burgeoning services economy. One proposed solution is policy-based system administration---a type of autonomic computing system that can manage itself with ...

System administrators (sysadmins) are the linchpin of civilization, managing the Information Tech... more System administrators (sysadmins) are the linchpin of civilization, managing the Information Technology (IT) infrastructures on which modern life depends. Unfortunately, there has been a lack of research on sysadmin practices and consequently admin tools are often not designed to support their tasks effectively. Over the past five years, we conducted a series of field studies investigating the work practices and environments of admins managing several types of systems and infrastructures. We found that sysadmins are notably different from typical computer users in several dimensions. We also observed considerable variance among sysadmin specialties. Especially interesting are security administrators (secadmins), who act as detectives and intelligence agents to ensure that IT resources are used appropriately, preparing for and responding to attacks by human antagonists. In this paper we profile security administration work by analyzing tasks, tools, and practices in comparison to other system administration specialties. Our data suggests that the human element is a primary factor shaping the problems, environment, and work practices of security administration.

Computer system administrators are the unsung heroes of the information age, working behind the s... more Computer system administrators are the unsung heroes of the information age, working behind the scenes to configure, maintain, and troubleshoot the computer infrastructure that underlies much of modern life. However, little can be found in the literature about the practices and problems of these highly specialized computer users. We conducted a series of field studies in large corporate data centers, observing organizations, work practices, tools, and problem-solving strategies of system administrators. We found system administrators operate within large-scale, complex environments that present significant technical, social, cognitive, and business challenges. In this paper, we describe system administrator tool use in critical, high-cost, labor-intensive work through observational, survey, and interview data. We discuss our findings concerning administrator needs for coordinating work, maintaining situation awareness, planning and rehearsing complex procedures, building tools, and supporting complicated interleaved workflows.

Advanced Engineering Informatics, 2005

One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating h... more One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating highly complex systems. AC seeks to solve this problem through increased automation, relieving system administrators of many burdensome activities. However, the AC strategy of managing complexity through automation runs the risk of making management harder, if not designed properly. Field studies of current system administrator work practices were performed to inform the design of AC systems from the system administrator's perspective, particularly regarding four important activities: collaboration and coordination, rehearsal and planning, maintaining situation awareness, and managing multitasking, interruptions, and diversions. Based on these studies, guidelines for designing usable AC systems that support these activities effectively are provided. q

System administrators work with many different tools to manage and fix complex hardware and softw... more System administrators work with many different tools to manage and fix complex hardware and software infrastructure in a rapidly paced work environment. Through extensive field studies, we observed that they often build and share custom tools for specific tasks that are not supported by vendor tools. Recent trends toward web-based management consoles offer many advantages but put an extra burden on system administrators, as customization requires web programming, which is beyond the skills of many system administrators. To meet their needs, we developed A1, a spreadsheet-based environment with a task-specific system-administration language for quickly creating small tools or migrating existing scripts to run as web portlets. Using A1, system administrators can build spreadsheets to access remote and heterogeneous systems, gather and integrate status data, and orchestrate control of disparate systems in a uniform way. A preliminary user study showed that in just a few hours, system administrators can learn to use A1 to build relatively complex tools from scratch.

ACM Queue, 2004

has never done a paid day's work in electrical engineering, for which he was trained. Instead, he... more has never done a paid day's work in electrical engineering, for which he was trained. Instead, he has worked 33 years in computer software, two-thirds in industry, the rest in academia. He has been involved mostly with operating systems, compilers, and as a resident programming language lawyer. He is an assistant professor and graduate coordinator in the computer science department at Wichita State University.

Abstract Autonomic Computing lays out a vision of information technology in which systems manage ... more Abstract Autonomic Computing lays out a vision of information technology in which systems manage themselves based on policies. As a result, policies are the new currency of interaction between people and computers, creating a new paradigm for interaction with autonomic systems. In this paradigm, interaction shifts (1) from low-level to high-level monitoring and control and (2) from manually performing actions to delegating tasks to automation. In this paper, we report an experimental study comparing and contrasting ...

We present Koala, a system that enables users to capture, share, automate, and personalize busine... more We present Koala, a system that enables users to capture, share, automate, and personalize business processes on the web. Koala is a collaborative programming-bydemonstration system that records, edits, and plays back user interactions as pseudo-natural language scripts that are both human-and machine-interpretable. Unlike previous programming by demonstration systems, Koala leverages sloppy programming that interprets pseudo-natural language instructions (as opposed to formal syntactic statements) in the context of a given web page's elements and actions. Koala scripts are automatically stored in the Koalescence wiki, where a community of users can share, run, and collaboratively develop their "how-to" knowledge. Koala also takes advantage of corporate and personal data stores to automatically generalize and instantiate userspecific data, so that scripts created by one user are automatically personalized for others. Our initial experiences suggest that Koala is surprisingly effective at interpreting instructions originally written for people.

Growth, adaptability, innovation, and cost control are leading concerns of businesses, especially... more Growth, adaptability, innovation, and cost control are leading concerns of businesses, especially with respect to use of information technology (IT). Though standards such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) offer the potential for cost savings through the use of formal processes and best practices, such top-down approaches tend to be either highlevel -often far removed from the actual work -or low-leveloften inflexible given the rapid pace of technology and market change. We conducted field studies to examine work practices in IT service delivery. Our results suggest that unstructured work activities comprise a significant and vital portion of the overall work done by people in IT service delivery. These activities include negotiating work items and schedules, seeking and providing information and expertise, and using and sharing custom tools and practices. Unstructured activities are conducted in parallel to formal, structured IT service processes, but are not well supported by existing integrated tooling. Thus, they are not easily accounted for and rarely result in reusable assets or feedback to improve the formal IT processes. Based on these findings, we propose an administrator workspace aimed specifically at blending structured and unstructured work activities to support effective, reusable, and quantifiable IT service delivery.

A1 is a Java-based spreadsheet environment that enables system administrators to build small tool... more A1 is a Java-based spreadsheet environment that enables system administrators to build small tools that simplify and automate common tasks, integrating real-time data across heterogeneous systems. A1 spreadsheets can be saved to a central repository, where they are published and shared as interactive web portlets. In this paper, we discuss the need for administrators to create their own tools, how the A1 environment is designed to support this need, and how A1's support for web publishing -without requiring special web programming -can enable teams to share, modify, and improve their tools. We also discuss the design and implementation of A1, and show a number of sample spreadsheets for various administration tasks.

Troubleshooting large computer systems is often highly collaborative. Because these systems consi... more Troubleshooting large computer systems is often highly collaborative. Because these systems consist of complex infrastructures with many interdependent components, expertise is spread across people and organizations. Those who administer such systems are faced with cognitive and social challenges, including the establishment of common ground and coordination of attention, as they troubleshoot in collaboration with peers, technical support, and software application developers. We take a distributed cognition approach to interpreting a specific instance of problem-solving in administering a web-based system, examining the movement of representational state across media in a single system administrator's environment. We also apply the idea of language use as joint activity to understand how discourse attributes affect what is accomplished collaboratively. Our analysis focuses on information flow among participants and other sources, and how these affect what information is attended to, transmitted, and used. Colle. The core issue turned out to be a misunderstanding of the meaning of internal-port, as specified when creating the new player instance. The internal-port is used for communication from maestro to player-that is, the port on which player "listens" for data from maestro. Admin had originally believed that internal-port was used from communication in the opposite direction: from player to maestro. Because Admin had asked the network team to configure the firewall to allow communication in the wrong direction, the problem was an inconsistancy between the firewall rules and the player's port specification. The solution was either to change the firewall rules, or to change the player's ports. Admin eventually chose the latter solution (specifying the player's internal-port as 7236 rather than 7137), as shown in .

Software - Practice and Experience, 1998

Abstract Most windowing systems follow the independent overlapping windows approach, which emerge... more Abstract Most windowing systems follow the independent overlapping windows approach, which emerged as an answer to the needs of early computer users. Due to advances in computers, display technology, and increased information needs, modern users demand more functionality from window management systems. We propose Elastic Windows with improved spatial layout and rapid multi-window operations as an alternative to current window management strategies. In this approach, multi-window operations are achieved ...

Most windowing systems follow the independent overlapping windows approach, which emerged as an a... more Most windowing systems follow the independent overlapping windows approach, which emerged as an answer to the needs of the 1980s' technology. Due to advances in computers and display technology, and increased information needs, modern users demand more functionality from window management systems. We proposed Elastic Windows with improved spatial layout and rapid multi-window operations as an alternative to current window management strategies for efficient personal role management . In this approach, multi-window operations are achieved by issuing operations on window groups hierarchically organized in a space-filling tiled layout. This paper describes the Elastic Windows interface briefly and then presents a study comparing user performance with Elastic Windows and traditional window management techniques for 2, 6, and 12 window situations. Elastic Windows users had statistically significantly faster performance for all 6 and 12 window situations, for task environment setup, task environment switching, and task execution. For some tasks there was a ten-fold speed-up in performance. These results suggest promising possibilities for multiple window operations and hierarchical nesting, which can be applied to the next generation of tiled as well as overlapped window managers.

Advanced Engineering Informatics, 2005

One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating h... more One of the primary motivations behind autonomic computing (AC) is the problem of administrating highly complex systems. AC seeks to solve this problem through increased automation, relieving system administrators of many burdensome activities. However, the AC strategy of managing complexity through automation runs the risk of making management harder, if not designed properly. Field studies of current system administrator work practices were performed to inform the design of AC systems from the system administrator's perspective, particularly regarding four important activities: collaboration and coordination, rehearsal and planning, maintaining situation awareness, and managing multitasking, interruptions, and diversions. Based on these studies, guidelines for designing usable AC systems that support these activities effectively are provided. q

ACM Queue, 2004

Software - Practice and Experience, 1998