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Description
Internet browsers are today capable of warning internet users of a potential phishing attack. Browsers identify these websites by referring to blacklists of reported phishing websites maintained by trusted organizations like Google, Phishtank etc. On identifying a Unified Resource Locator (URL) requested by a user as a reported phishing URL,

Internet browsers are today capable of warning internet users of a potential phishing attack. Browsers identify these websites by referring to blacklists of reported phishing websites maintained by trusted organizations like Google, Phishtank etc. On identifying a Unified Resource Locator (URL) requested by a user as a reported phishing URL, browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome display an 'active' warning message in an attempt to stop the user from making a potentially dangerous decision of visiting the website and sharing confidential information like username-password, credit card information, social security number etc.

However, these warnings are not always successful at safeguarding the user from a phishing attack. On several occasions, users ignore these warnings and 'click through' them, eventually landing at the potentially dangerous website and giving away confidential information. Failure to understand the warning, failure to differentiate different types of browser warnings, diminishing trust on browser warnings due to repeated encounter are some of the reasons that make users ignore these warnings. It is important to address these factors in order to eventually improve a user’s reaction to these warnings.

In this thesis, I propose a novel design to improve the effectiveness and reliability of phishing warning messages. This design utilizes the name of the target website that a fake website is mimicking, to display a simple, easy to understand and interactive warning message with the primary objective of keeping the user away from a potentially spoof website.
ContributorsSharma, Satyabrata (Author) / Bazzi, Rida (Thesis advisor) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Gaffar, Ashraf (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Despite the various driver assistance systems and electronics, the threat to life of driver, passengers and other people on the road still persists. With the growth in technology, the use of in-vehicle devices with a plethora of buttons and features is increasing resulting in increased distraction. Recently, speech recognition has

Despite the various driver assistance systems and electronics, the threat to life of driver, passengers and other people on the road still persists. With the growth in technology, the use of in-vehicle devices with a plethora of buttons and features is increasing resulting in increased distraction. Recently, speech recognition has emerged as an alternative to distraction and has the potential to be beneficial. However, considering the fact that automotive environment is dynamic and noisy in nature, distraction may not arise from the manual interaction, but due to the cognitive load. Hence, speech recognition certainly cannot be a reliable mode of communication.

The thesis is focused on proposing a simultaneous multimodal approach for designing interface between driver and vehicle with a goal to enable the driver to be more attentive to the driving tasks and spend less time fiddling with distractive tasks. By analyzing the human-human multimodal interaction techniques, new modes have been identified and experimented, especially suitable for the automotive context. The identified modes are touch, speech, graphics, voice-tip and text-tip. The multiple modes are intended to work collectively to make the interaction more intuitive and natural. In order to obtain a minimalist user-centered design for the center stack, various design principles such as 80/20 rule, contour bias, affordance, flexibility-usability trade-off etc. have been implemented on the prototypes. The prototype was developed using the Dragon software development kit on android platform for speech recognition.

In the present study, the driver behavior was investigated in an experiment conducted on the DriveSafety driving simulator DS-600s. Twelve volunteers drove the simulator under two conditions: (1) accessing the center stack applications using touch only and (2) accessing the applications using speech with offered text-tip. The duration for which user looked away from the road (eyes-off-road) was measured manually for each scenario. Comparison of results proved that eyes-off-road time is less for the second scenario. The minimalist design with 8-10 icons per screen proved to be effective as all the readings were within the driver distraction recommendations (eyes-off-road time < 2sec per screen) defined by NHTSA.
ContributorsMittal, Richa (Author) / Gaffar, Ashraf (Thesis advisor) / Femiani, John (Committee member) / Gray, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
Assemblers and compilers provide feedback to a programmer in the form of error messages. These error messages become input to the debugging model of the programmer. For the programmer to fix an error, they should first locate the error in the program, understand what is causing that error, and finally

Assemblers and compilers provide feedback to a programmer in the form of error messages. These error messages become input to the debugging model of the programmer. For the programmer to fix an error, they should first locate the error in the program, understand what is causing that error, and finally resolve that error. Error messages play an important role in all three stages of fixing of errors. This thesis studies the effects of error messages in the context of teaching programming. Given an error message, this work investigates how it effects student’s way of 1) understanding the error, and 2) fixing the error. As part of the study, three error message types were developed – Default, Link and Example, to better understand the effects of error messages. The Default type provides an assembler-centric single line error message, the Link type provides a program-centric detailed error description with a hyperlink for more information, and the Example type provides a program centric detailed error description with a relevant example. All these error message types were developed for assembly language programming. A think aloud programming exercise was conducted as part of the study to capture the student programmer’s knowledge model. Different codes were developed to analyze the data collected as part of think aloud exercise. After transcribing, coding, and analyzing the data, it was found that the Link type of error message helped to fix the error in less time and with fewer steps. Among the three types, the Link type of error message also resulted in a significantly higher ratio of correct to incorrect steps taken by the programmer to fix the error.
ContributorsBeejady Murthy Kadekar, Harsha Kadekar (Author) / Sohoni, Sohum (Thesis advisor) / Craig, Scotty D. (Committee member) / Jordan, Shawn S (Committee member) / Gary, Kevin A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Description
Each programming language has a compiler associated with it which helps to identify logical or syntactical errors in the program. These compiler error messages play important part in the form of formative feedback for the programmer. Thus, the error messages should be constructed carefully, considering the affective and cognitive needs

Each programming language has a compiler associated with it which helps to identify logical or syntactical errors in the program. These compiler error messages play important part in the form of formative feedback for the programmer. Thus, the error messages should be constructed carefully, considering the affective and cognitive needs of programmers. This is especially true for systems that are used in educational settings, as the messages are typically seen by students who are novice programmers. If the error messages are hard to understand then they might discourage students from understanding or learning the programming language. The primary goal of this research is to identify methods to make the error messages more effective so that students can understand them better and simultaneously learn from their mistakes. This study is focused on understanding how the error message affects the understanding of the error and the approach students take to solve the error. In this study, three types of error messages were provided to the students. The first type is Default type error message which is an assembler centric error message. The second type is Link type error message which is a descriptive error message along with a link to the appropriate section of the PLP manual. The third type is Example type error message which is again a descriptive error message with an example of the similar type of error along with correction step. All these error types were developed for the PLP assembly language. A think-aloud experiment was designed and conducted on the students. The experiment was later transcribed and coded to understand different approach students take to solve different type of error message. After analyzing the result of the think-aloud experiment it was found that student read the Link type error message completely and they understood and learned from the error message to solve the error. The results also indicated that Link type was more helpful compare to other types of error message. The Link type made error solving process more effective compared to other error types.
ContributorsTanpure, Siddhant Bapusaheb (Author) / Sohoni, Sohum (Thesis advisor) / Gary, Kevin A (Committee member) / Craig, Scotty D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Machine learning models convert raw data in the form of video, images, audio,

text, etc. into feature representations that are convenient for computational process-

ing. Deep neural networks have proven to be very efficient feature extractors for a

variety of machine learning tasks. Generative models based on deep neural networks

introduce constraints on the

Machine learning models convert raw data in the form of video, images, audio,

text, etc. into feature representations that are convenient for computational process-

ing. Deep neural networks have proven to be very efficient feature extractors for a

variety of machine learning tasks. Generative models based on deep neural networks

introduce constraints on the feature space to learn transferable and disentangled rep-

resentations. Transferable feature representations help in training machine learning

models that are robust across different distributions of data. For example, with the

application of transferable features in domain adaptation, models trained on a source

distribution can be applied to a data from a target distribution even though the dis-

tributions may be different. In style transfer and image-to-image translation, disen-

tangled representations allow for the separation of style and content when translating

images.

This thesis examines learning transferable data representations in novel deep gen-

erative models. The Semi-Supervised Adversarial Translator (SAT) utilizes adversar-

ial methods and cross-domain weight sharing in a neural network to extract trans-

ferable representations. These transferable interpretations can then be decoded into

the original image or a similar image in another domain. The Explicit Disentangling

Network (EDN) utilizes generative methods to disentangle images into their core at-

tributes and then segments sets of related attributes. The EDN can separate these

attributes by controlling the ow of information using a novel combination of losses

and network architecture. This separation of attributes allows precise modi_cations

to speci_c components of the data representation, boosting the performance of ma-

chine learning tasks. The effectiveness of these models is evaluated across domain

adaptation, style transfer, and image-to-image translation tasks.
ContributorsEusebio, Jose Miguel Ang (Author) / Panchanathan, Sethuraman (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Venkateswara, Hemanth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Driver distraction research has a long history spanning nearly 50 years, intensifying in the last decade. The focus has always been on identifying the distractive tasks and measuring the respective harm level. As in-vehicle technology advances, the list of distractive activities grows along with crash risk. Additionally, the distractive activities

Driver distraction research has a long history spanning nearly 50 years, intensifying in the last decade. The focus has always been on identifying the distractive tasks and measuring the respective harm level. As in-vehicle technology advances, the list of distractive activities grows along with crash risk. Additionally, the distractive activities become more common and complicated, especially with regard to In-Car Interactive System. This work's main focus is on driver distraction caused by the in-car interactive System. There have been many User Interaction Designs (Buttons, Speech, Visual) for Human-Car communication, in the past and currently present. And, all related studies suggest that driver distraction level is still high and there is a need for a better design. Multimodal Interaction is a design approach, which relies on using multiple modes for humans to interact with the car & hence reducing driver distraction by allowing the driver to choose the most suitable mode with minimum distraction. Additionally, combining multiple modes simultaneously provides more natural interaction, which could lead to less distraction. The main goal of MMI is to enable the driver to be more attentive to driving tasks and spend less time fiddling with distractive tasks. Engineering based method is used to measure driver distraction. This method uses metrics like Reaction time, Acceleration, Lane Departure obtained from test cases.
ContributorsJahagirdar, Tanvi (Author) / Gaffar, Ashraf (Thesis advisor) / Ghazarian, Arbi (Committee member) / Gray, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Driving is already a complex task that demands a varying level of cognitive and physical load. With the advancement in technology, the car has become a place for media consumption, a communications center and an interconnected workplace. The number of features in a car has also increased. As a result,

Driving is already a complex task that demands a varying level of cognitive and physical load. With the advancement in technology, the car has become a place for media consumption, a communications center and an interconnected workplace. The number of features in a car has also increased. As a result, the user interaction inside the car has become overcrowded and more complex. This has increased the amount of distraction while driving and has also increased the number of accidents due to distracted driving. This thesis focuses on the critical analysis of today’s in-car environment covering two main aspects, Multi Modal Interaction (MMI), and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), to minimize the distraction. It also provides deep market research on future trends in the smart car technology. After careful analysis, it was observed that an infotainment screen cluttered with lots of small icons, a center stack with a plethora of small buttons and a poor Voice Recognition (VR) results in high cognitive load, and these are the reasons for the increased driver distraction. Though the VR has become a standard technology, the current state of technology is focused on features oriented design and a sales driven approach. Most of the automotive manufacturers are focusing on making the VR better but attaining perfection in VR is not the answer as there are inherent challenges and limitations in respect to the in-car environment and cognitive load. Accordingly, the research proposed a novel in-car interaction design solution: Multi-Modal Interaction (MMI). The MMI is a new term when used in the context of vehicles, but it is widely used in human-human interaction. The approach offers a non-intrusive alternative to the driver to interact with the features in the car. With the focus on user-centered design, the MMI and ADAS can potentially help to reduce the distraction. To support the discussion, an experiment was conducted to benchmark a minimalist UI design. An engineering based method was used to test and measure distraction of four different UIs with varying numbers of icons and screen sizes. Lastly, in order to compete with the market, the basic features that are provided by all the other competitors cannot be eliminated, but the hard work can be done to improve the HCaI and to make driving safer.
ContributorsNakrani, Paresh Keshubhai (Author) / Gaffar, Ashraf (Thesis advisor) / Sohoni, Sohum (Committee member) / Ghazarian, Arabi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
As persistent non-volatile memory solutions become integrated in the computing ecosystem and landscape, traditional commodity file systems architected and developed for traditional block I/O based memory solutions must be reevaluated. A majority of commodity file systems have been architected and designed with the goal of managing data on non-volatile

As persistent non-volatile memory solutions become integrated in the computing ecosystem and landscape, traditional commodity file systems architected and developed for traditional block I/O based memory solutions must be reevaluated. A majority of commodity file systems have been architected and designed with the goal of managing data on non-volatile storage devices such as hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs). HDDs and SSDs are attached to a computing system via a controller or I/O hub, often referred to as the southbridge. The point of HDD and SSD attachment creates multiple levels of translation for any data managed by the CPU that must be stored in non-volatile memory (NVM) on an HDD or SSD. Storage Class Memory (SCM) devices provide the ability to store data at the CPU and DRAM level of a computing system. A novel set of modifications to the ext2 and ext4 commodity file systems to address the needs of SCM will be presented and discussed. An in-depth analysis of many existing file systems, from multiple sources, will be presented along with an analysis to identify key modifications and extensions that would be necessary to execute file system on SCM devices. From this analysis, modifications and extensions have been applied to the FAT commodity file system for key functional tests that will be presented to demonstrate the operation and execution of the file system extensions.
ContributorsRobles, Raymond (Author) / Syrotiuk, Violet (Thesis advisor) / Sohoni, Sohum (Committee member) / Wu, Carole-Jean (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
Text Classification is a rapidly evolving area of Data Mining while Requirements Engineering is a less-explored area of Software Engineering which deals the process of defining, documenting and maintaining a software system's requirements. When researchers decided to blend these two streams in, there was research on automating the process of

Text Classification is a rapidly evolving area of Data Mining while Requirements Engineering is a less-explored area of Software Engineering which deals the process of defining, documenting and maintaining a software system's requirements. When researchers decided to blend these two streams in, there was research on automating the process of classification of software requirements statements into categories easily comprehensible for developers for faster development and delivery, which till now was mostly done manually by software engineers - indeed a tedious job. However, most of the research was focused on classification of Non-functional requirements pertaining to intangible features such as security, reliability, quality and so on. It is indeed a challenging task to automatically classify functional requirements, those pertaining to how the system will function, especially those belonging to different and large enterprise systems. This requires exploitation of text mining capabilities. This thesis aims to investigate results of text classification applied on functional software requirements by creating a framework in R and making use of algorithms and techniques like k-nearest neighbors, support vector machine, and many others like boosting, bagging, maximum entropy, neural networks and random forests in an ensemble approach. The study was conducted by collecting and visualizing relevant enterprise data manually classified previously and subsequently used for training the model. Key components for training included frequency of terms in the documents and the level of cleanliness of data. The model was applied on test data and validated for analysis, by studying and comparing parameters like precision, recall and accuracy.
ContributorsSwadia, Japa (Author) / Ghazarian, Arbi (Thesis advisor) / Bansal, Srividya (Committee member) / Gaffar, Ashraf (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
Software engineering education today is a technologically advanced and rapidly evolving discipline. Being a discipline where students not only design but also build new technology, it is important that they receive a hands on learning experience in the form of project based courses. To maximize the learning benefit, students must

Software engineering education today is a technologically advanced and rapidly evolving discipline. Being a discipline where students not only design but also build new technology, it is important that they receive a hands on learning experience in the form of project based courses. To maximize the learning benefit, students must conduct project-based learning activities in a consistent rhythm, or cadence. Project-based courses that are augmented with a system of frequent, formative feedback helps students constantly evaluate their progress and leads them away from a deadline driven approach to learning.

One aspect of this research is focused on evaluating the use of a tool that tracks student activity as a means of providing frequent, formative feedback. This thesis measures the impact of the tool on student compliance to the learning process. A personalized dashboard with quasi real time visual reports and notifications are provided to undergraduate and graduate software engineering students. The impact of these visual reports on compliance is measured using the log traces of dashboard activity and a survey instrument given multiple times during the course.

A second aspect of this research is the application of learning analytics to understand patterns of student compliance. This research employs unsupervised machine learning algorithms to identify unique patterns of student behavior observed in the context of a project-based course. Analyzing and labeling these unique patterns of behavior can help instructors understand typical student characteristics. Further, understanding these behavioral patterns can assist an instructor in making timely, targeted interventions. In this research, datasets comprising of student’s daily activity and graded scores from an under graduate software engineering course is utilized for the purpose of identifying unique patterns of student behavior.
ContributorsXavier, Suhas (Author) / Gary, Kevin A (Thesis advisor) / Bansal, Srividya K (Committee member) / Sohoni, Sohum (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016