Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering

Researchers across many fields are increasingly using data from social media sites to address questions about individual and group social behaviors. However, the size and complexity of these data sets challenge traditional research methods; many new tools and techniques have been developed to support research in this area. In this paper, we present our experience designing and evaluating Agave, a collaborative visual analysis system for exploring events and sentiment over time in large tweet data sets. We offer findings from evaluating Agave with researchers experienced with social media data, focusing on how users interpreted sentiment labels shown in the interface and on the value of collaboration for stimulating exploratory analysis.

Monitoring of critical systems such as large server parks require suitable visualization tools that draw the attention to essential aspects of system state to ensure continuous operation. Moreover, administration is increasingly performed using mobile devices giving operators more freedom. Mobile device form factors limit the amount of data that can be displayed. This study explores if visual embellishments in data visualizations improve the perception of system states for mobile administrators. The RRDtool time series data visualizer, which is deployed by the Munin monitoring tool, is used as basis and compared to an experimental monitoring tool that employs visual embellishment enhancements. Talk aloud system monitoring sessions were employed with 24 IT-professionals both with and without Munin experience. The results show that the embellishments results in significantly shorter time to interpret the views while they do not significantly help determine the general characteristics of the views. Previous experience with Munin had limited effect on performance. One implications of this work is that embellishments can help focus attention towards important state changes in mobile visualizations.

The collaborative approach is a natural way to enhance visualization and visual analytics methods. This paper continues our long-term efforts on enhancement of visualization and visual analytics methods. The major challenges in visualization of large n-D data in 2-D are not only in providing lossless visualization by using sophisticated computational methods, but also in supporting the most efficient and fast usage of abilities of users (agents) to analyze visualized information and to extract patterns visually. This paper describes a collaborative approach to support n-D data visualization based on new lossless n-D visualization methods that we propose. The second part of this work presented in a separate paper is focused on experimental results of cooperative n-D data visualization described in this paper.

The major challenges in visualization of large n-D data in 2-D are in supporting the most efficient and fast usage of abilities of users to analyze visualized information and to extract patterns visually. This paper describes experimental results of a collaborative approach to support n-D data visualization based on new lossless n-D visualization methods (collocated paired coordinates and their stars modifications) that we propose. This is a second part of the work. The first part presented in a separate paper is focused on description of the algorithms.

The study described in this paper extends our earlier work on improving the user experience in online support groups via embedding social knowledge visualization interfaces. A real online support group was created for the purpose of testing a web-poll mood tracker for 16 weeks. We describe the design and deployment of both 2005 and current plot-polls, and conclude with the mixed results from our qualitative investigation, which yielded useful recommendations for future research.

Poor facility management has been attributed to lack of coordination and information during the maintenance process. The need for high quality applies not only to construction works and workmanship, but is also for its subsequent coordination and maintenance of a building. The paper aims to improve quality and performance of maintenance by integrating an advanced technology with a managerial approach, namely, building information modelling (BIM) and facility management. A BIM case study was investigated, which was located in Shanghai, China. Five significant areas were identified to improve the quality and performance of facility management, namely, centralized system, visualization, simplification, modifiable system, and smart emergency escape. The results highlight the benefits in applying the integrated system between BIM and facility management. It draws an insightful inference in enhancing quality services in facility management.

Data Visualization has been traditionally one of the main pillars for understanding the information coming from Business Intelligence/Analytics based systems. While building visualizations has never been an easy task, moving data visualization for open data over the Web adds extra complexity. The variety of data sources, devices and users, together with the multidimensional nature of data and the continuous evolution of user requirements makes Data Visualization on the Web for open data more complicated as well as challenging. This paper briefly introduces a DSL for engineering open data visualizations over the Web whose aim is twofold. On the one hand, overcoming technological dependencies such as data source, data set, rendering technologies and so on. On the other hand, bringing the possibility of building useful graphics to users with domain expertise but non-technical skills.

Nowadays, modern visualization and decision support platforms provide advanced and interactive tools for data wrangling, in order to facilitate data analysis. Nonetheless, it is a tedious process that requires a deep experience in data transformation. In this paper, we propose an automated data wrangling method, based on a genetic algorithm, that helps to obtain simpler regression trees.

Understanding how people communicate during disasters is important for creating systems to support this communication. Twitter is commonly used to broadcast information and to organize support during times of need. During the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill, Twitter was utilized for spreading information, sharing firsthand observations, and to voice concern about the situation. Through building a series of classifiers to detect emotion and sentiment, the distribution of emotion during the Gulf Oil Spill can be analyzed and its propagation compared against released information and corresponding events. We contribute a series of emotion classifiers and a prototype collaborative visualization of the results and discuss their implications.

The response time starts to suffer due to the limitation of the Hadoop’s FIFO scheduler, and this is unacceptable to execute the large scale instance intensive tasks. To enhance the system resource utilization, we propose a new scheduling solution. To reduce the cost, we use a delay scheduling algorithm to determine the scheduling opportunity. Delay scheduling can ensure that the current service can make full use of the resources, improve resource utilization, and reduce the probability of failure scheduling. The initial experiments demonstrate that the large scale instances intensive workflow tasks will benefit from the Min-Cost delay scheduling algorithm that is proposed in this paper.

The extraction of necessary information and its interpretation in the case of biotechnological processes may be a difficult task. This is due to the fact that the large amounts of available data are often a combination of on-line and off-line measurements with a hierarchical structure. Moreover, the measurement data can be geographically dispersed and stored in the different types of databases. To facilitate the extraction of the most significant information on the biological process, the paper presents a model of integration of the hierarchical database with the relational one in the cloud computing environment. The relational database model will allow the less experienced bioprocess designers to find the answers to specific questions. The use of cloud services ensures sufficient data storage space and ease of data management. In turn, data integrity in the cloud environment is realized by means of DataBase Management System with Open DataBase Connectivity drivers.

The paper proposes a framework for incorporating results of the analytical and laboratory measurements directly into the process control system. It is based on an object-oriented framework for cooperative testing of control algorithms implemented for experimental pilot-plants. It enables modification of the control algorithm structure without rewriting the main software component executed on the programmable automation controller (PAC). In this paper the framework is expanded to enable access to web-based services for the purpose of incorporating the results of advanced off-line measurements directly in the process control system.

Crowdsourcing is a recently developed method that relies on various alternatives of collaboration to solve problems efficiently. Crowdsourcing is a recent development to solve a variety of problems efficiently, and which implies various alternatives of collaboration. However, as novel technologies are able to exploit location-sensing capabilities of mobile devices, location-based crowdsourcing (LBCS) developed as a new concept. This paper suggests a typology for LBCS as a means for fostering collaboration with the crowd through three types of LBCS: confirmation-based, digital good-based, and physical-based. Each type is underpinned with exemplary applications. Furthermore, opportunities and challenges are analysed; and future trends in LBCS are discussed.

It is very important for undergraduate students to learn how to apply the theoretical knowledge to the practical business work. However, the widening gap between the engineering education and the real-world has always been existing. The CDIO(Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate) method is aiming at filling the gap and enables students to take the initiative, practical, integrated way to learn engineering courses based on the complete product lifecycle. The students can study from the initial concept, product development, manufacturing, until the sale and service process. In order to practice the concept of CDIO, a collaboration-based practice teaching mode is presented in this paper. The architecture of web-based practice teaching in collaboration with enterprise and a construction scheme of web-based teaching management system for engineering training are proposed. System architecture and system functions are given. Finally, the implementation and the application examples of this system are described.

Design patterns are architectural artifacts that are the results of solutions that have been applied successfully and repeatedly to a set of problems. In computer science design patterns play a crucial role in maximizing code reuse and architectural best practices.

The overdrive suppression design pattern outlined in this paper targets mainly the computing, although it can be applied to any field where simple robustness through managed redundancy is paramount.

Many ICT technologies have been used to develop systems to support collaborative learning. These systems are mainly developed to support interaction between users when they collaborate with each other to learn knowledge and solve a problem. However, there are many situations for collaborative learning in which geographically distributed participants play distinct roles and work together to produce or manipulate physical objects. For example, a teacher in a major city teaches a disabled child at a remote area; a remote tutor provides a tutoring service to a local student at home to finish an art or handcraft assignment; or more often, a teacher guides a class of students online through a series of activities in which physical objects are involved such as drawing a picture using different pens. In these scenarios, traditional learning systems may be limited since students not only need to see and hear their teacher, but also need to interact with their teacher to use or manipulate physical objects. In this paper, we introduce a novel system platform called RE-Tutor that is proposed to support this category of collaborative learning scenarios. In this system, while physically distributed, a teacher is enabled to talk to his students, see what the students are working on, and provide guidance information using hand gestures or annotations which are often needed for physical tasks.

The appearance of the so-called first-generation of social tools such as blogs, wikis or CMS made possible for the Web to be used as an interaction arena for healthcare purposes. Currently, this interaction has been improved by means of different social networks such as PatientsLikeMe, HealthVault or Inspire, just to cite a few. The business world, not to be left behind, is rapidly catching up with this change in interpersonal communications, allowing third parties (clients, patients, colleagues, providers, etc) to participate in the process execution by performing social operations such as voting, commenting, ranking, sharing, following, inviting, etc. However, this integration is being done in an ad-hoc manner, not existing understandable notations to include social interactions in Business Process Modelling (BPM). Moreover, the user has to face several social applications to perform simple social tasks, i.e., scheduling a meeting and sharing a diagnostic must be done through different applications. While the former problem affects the design phase, the latter affects the execution phase. In this paper we present a case study in order to illustrate how the use of SocialBPM solves these problems, where SocialBPM denotes to the combination of social technologies and BPM. SocialBPM eases both, the cooperative design of social processes, and their cooperative execution.

Merging three-dimensional visualization artifacts interactively from arbitrary sources is a promising approach to support interoperability in engineers’ software landscape. Based on previous work, which yielded a framework for asynchronous processing of OpenGL, we present a component, which combines three-dimensional visualizations from OpenGL-streams into one three-dimensional visualization space in real-time. In our current setup, CAX software is integrated with pointcloud rendering from an RGBD-camera to resemble an orthoscopic virtual mirror, which combines a user’s reality in front of the mirror with the CAX software’s virtual reality inside the mirror. We present results, how the tested augmented reality setup fosters cooperative decisions in product development and engineering.

The challenges of engineering team collaboration—establishing trust, fostering productive informal communication, cultivating knowledge exchange—are often exacerbated in virtual teams by geographical separation as well as team members’ cultural and linguistic differences. Researchers have observed that powerful collaboration in collocated teams is supported by shared visualizations with which the team engages in informal, flexible and active ways. In studying virtual team interactions in a virtual world known as the CyberGRID, we see that just as with AEC collocated teams, shared visualizations were instrumental for the teams as they define, understand, and generate knowledge when working on interrelated tasks. Emerging from this analysis is an empirically supported theory that while avatar-model interaction supports mutual discovery, more messy interactions of brainstorming, knowledge exchange and synthesis requires flexible, active, and informal shared visualizations.

Design of localized traffic is a decision-making process for producing the viable solutions of where the parking lots, roads, entrances, exits, and the associated facilities should be built. In a traditional design case, a planner may take into account numerous factors, such as economy, constructability, geological impacts, layout constraints, connection of localized and external traffic, etc., and the process is mainly relied on a master plan and two-dimensional design drawings. Such pattern has certain limitations as these important factors can hardly be overall considered at the same time. It is promising to cope with the issues using a cooperative system where Geographic Information System (GIS) incorporates with Building Information Modelling (BIM). The research aims to optimize and evaluate the site layout for effective traffic planning based on the integrative approach of BIM and GIS. From the case study, the paper also demonstrates: 1) the approach of analyzing the statistical data to represent the existing traffic condition around the building via GIS and 2) the approach of making use of the advanced vehicle simulation models to optimizing the localized traffic facilities design, considering the possible impact of the localized traffic to the ambient traffic. Referring to the cooperative system, the bottlenecks of the initial design of parking facilities are identified, and the corresponding improvements are suggested.

Collaboration is an integral part of modern scientific research. It is hard to imagine any modern scientific endeavor that does not involve a group of people. However, collaboration is frequently constrained to close partners or proximal groups. Finding new potential partners with whom to exchange ideas is an important step in establishing new working groups. We propose to use automated system to recommend potential collaborators, and present a system for this purpose. One of the problems involved is establishing criteria to select these potential partners. We address this issue by (1) automatically constructing users profiles from publicly available data to establish areas of expertise and (2) employing an analysis of users’ networks to select partners with the potential for fruitful relationships.

The work presented in this paper is part of a more comprehensive one which aims to propose appropriate natural user interactions to support collaborative decision making in synchronous 4D simulation. It presents the issue and previous works on natural user interfaces in 4D simulation. It also introduces a first prototype and a 4D case study from a real construction site.

Reference multimedia corpora for use in automated indexing algorithms require lots of manual work. The Camomile project advocates the joint progress of automated annotation methods and tools for improving the benchmark resources. This paper shows some work in progress in interactive visualization of annotations, and perspectives in harnessing the collaboration between manual annotators, algorithm designers, and benchmark administrators.

Our objective was to verify whether modern computer network and audio-visual technologies can enable collaborative work of performing artists over large distances. Such collaborative environments would bring new opportunities for artists, audience and engineers. We describe our experience obtained during a three-continent cyber performance done during the 36th APAN meeting.

The network connection of a mobile device can get slow temporarily due to its high mobility. This could make synchronous mobile learning system unable to receive the video and audio from the server, thereby making students find difficulty understanding the real-time lecture on their mobile devices. Thus, we propose a synchronous mobile learning system that enables students to follow the ongoing lecture in such temporary slow network connection. The system allows students to watch an instructor and slide with annotation in real time. The students can send questions to an instructor and discuss together in text. To make students not to miss the lecture while the video and audio can’t be delivered due to low-speed network connection, live speech text is supported by converting the instructor’s speech to text in real time.

This article presents the basic concepts of Optosa, a visual analytics solution for the optimization of online sales, designed to support manufactures in all phases of the online sales process from the product specification to the price fixing and more. Optosa combines a data processing module that builds and constantly updates operational knowledge related to sales positioning with a decision assistant that uses relevant aspects of the knowledge for helping the tasks of the different teams along the integrated chain of the sales. After reviewing the challenges of the approach, we discuss the first significant experiments with Optosa on some formalized use-cases.

Agents, agent-oriented modelling and multi-agent systems (MAS) introduce new and unconventional concepts in computer science. These elements are able to sparkle new modelling perspectives in behavioural knowledge and in environmental domain, where interactions between humans and natural/artificial agents are not standardized. MAS are considered as “societies of agents” interacting to coordinate their behaviour and often cooperate to achieve some collective goal. In order to show the involved agents and their roles in a quasi-hierarchical scale of interaction behaviours, we propose the setting up of schemes aimed at simplifying the behaviors and the interactions between human and non-human agents in indoor spaces for urban microclimate management.

A built environment is ambiguous, because space can be understood in a Euclidean way, symbolically, socially as well as architecturally, image-scientifically or psychologically. This conference paper is dedicated to learning about the correlations of these perceptions in a wider sense with means to disclose time-dependent and functional layers related dynamically to the space.

We have chosen our campus for the case study, which was a garrison beginning in the 1930s and served different armies before it was converted to a university in the 1990s. Our intention is to offer social, informative benefits and knowledge about the campus, which in turn contributes to participatory development of the campus and hence to identification with the place as well as with collective memory, for everyone on site.

We are developing an app that facilitates innovative space perception. The digital tools in the app consist of geocaching, an interactive map, communication tools and various multimedia information components. This so-called ”geo-knowledge-caching” shall be used to expand a university campus to a complex knowledge construct with buildings in which knowledge is imparted and a library that houses knowledge and a place for discussion, encounters and leisure activities.

Real-time collaborative editing systems such as Google Drive are increasingly common. However, no prior work questioned the maximum acceptable delay for real-time collaboration or the efficacy of compensatory strategies. In this study we examine the performance consequences of simulated network delay on an artificial collaborative document editing task with a time constant and metrics for process and outcome suitable for experimental study. Results suggest that strategy influences task outcome at least as much as delay in the distribution of work in progress. However, a paradoxical interaction between delay and strategy emerged, in which the more generally effective, but highly coupled strategy was also more sensitive to delay.

UNIX-based operative systems were always empowered by scriptable shell interfaces, with a core set of powerful tools to perform manipulation over files and data streams. However those tools can be difficult to manage at the hands of a non-expert programmer.

This paper proposes the creation of a Collaborative Web Platform to easily create workflows using common UNIX command line tools for processing Big Data through a collaborative web GUI.

Collaborative discussion is an integral part of exchanging ideas and solving important problems. However, traditional approaches to group discussion have used analog tools that create problems for collaborative contributions. Many researchers have tried to use technology to overcome these limitations, but current digital collaboration systems isolate users from each other and do not promote efficient idea creation or allow users space to support ideas with evidence. The Digital Affinity Diagram System (DADS) presents a solution that encourages better group discussion by implementing three features: 1) Separation of private and common areas during initial phase to allow ideas to mature without initial critique 2) Intuitive input and navigational design to help users create, edit, view and manipulate generated ideas, and 3) Multi-platform synchronization technology to create real-time visual feedback on the discussion accessible to all users. DADS’ dual-monitor setup uses real-time network socket infrastructure so that multiple users can interact with each other under one discussion environment. We capitalize on multi-touch hardware to create a natural, deep and structured collaborative environment.

Commercial Computer-Aided Design systems have been mainly focused in give support to the process of capturing and representing geometric shapes and incorporating technological information. Conversely, few utilities in these systems are present to facilitate decision making in the early stages of the design process, such as the capture, modeling and conceptual design synthesis of solutions. Typical tasks of the conceptual design process in mechanical design are intended for applications stand-alone or are based on the heuristic knowledge of the designer. Such approaches are non-interoperable with the commercial computer-aided design systems which results in non-continuous information in the design process. This study addresses this subject and proposes a method to improve the integration of product conceptual design synthesis into a Computer Aided Design system. To validate the feasibility of the approach implemented, a prototype application based on a Computer Aided Design system was developed and a study case is presented.

Recent studies in the area of collaborative design have proposed the use of 3D annotations as a tool to make design information explicitly available within the 3D model, so that different stakeholders can share information throughout the product lifecycle. Annotation practices defined by the latest digital definition standards have formalized the presentation of information and facilitated the implementation of annotation tools in CAD systems. In this paper, we review the latest studies in annotation methods and technologies and explore their expected benefits in the context of collaborative design. Next, we analyze the implementation challenges of different annotation approaches, focusing specifically on design intent annotations. An analysis of the literature suggests that the use of annotations has a positive effect on collaborative design communication as long as proper implementation practices, tools, and user interaction mechanisms are in place.

When designing a control system, the customer specifies some control requirements and the expert provides the parameterized optimal controller. A change of the control algorithm to a more advanced one may lead to a better performance of the closed loop system. On the other hand, implementation and parameterization of the advanced controllers require more extensive knowledge. A possible solution is a group of cooperating experts that are able to determine the most suitable control algorithm, depending on the customer’s requirements. However, in practice, hiring more experts is an expensive approach. Hence, the performance of majority of industrial systems is not optimal. The paper presents the metamorphic controller with extended functionality for selection of an optimal control algorithm (including advanced controllers). As a result, only one expert, cooperating with the customer, is sufficient to ensure the optimal system performance. The proposed solution has been implemented and tested on the industrial controller.

Fragmented practices are common in construction industry due to the traditional procurement system and poor adoption of advanced technologies and approaches for construction projects. Building Information Modelling is an emerging technology and able to transform the conventional practice. It can create a collaborative working platform for a project, particularly during the design stage. Therefore, the research aims to improve the conventional design practices by incorporating the BIM technology in addressing the design collaboration for a complex building. A case study was adopted from a complex building in Beijing, China. The data were collected and observed during the design process. A framework was developed to explain the design collaboration process. The findings show the duration of the design has significantly shortened and also improved the design performance in the project. The research renders an important insight into promoting BIM-based design collaboration in the construction industry.

The paper describes the way expertise and field-knowledge can impact the transfer of graphical intentions during architectural cooperative design. The analysis of 28 controlled experiments reveals what matters in transmitting architectural intents and more specifically underlines how novices’ intuitive, deductive processes based on previous and embodied experiences interestingly complement experts’ knowledge of the architectural field and its semantics. The results directly inform how we, as researchers, designers and engineers, should take advantage of both novices’ and experts’ strategies to develop tools, methods or interfaces to support next generation cooperative design.

In this paper, we present new methods of interaction with multi-touch surfaces implemented with optical frames by using tangible elements. Since interactive surfaces typically allow simultaneous detection of a large number of touch points, we propose the use of physical objects (which can be 3D printed) to reproduce different touch patterns, similar to using finger gestures on the table. These patterns are identified and recognized by our system and used to calculate the position and orientation of the mark on the surface. We propose the use of these tangible elements as a method to manage information locally in an interactive surface and also to exchange information between different surfaces to support collaborative design work.

In the process of web-based 3D cooperative design, it is difficult to avoid concurrent design conflicts among designers. B/S structure requires that most computational work must be done in service side, so conventional solution to desktop-based cooperative system is not well applicable to web-based one. Therefore, during the conflict detection process, when to make conflict detection, conflict resolution and broadcast result operations to all cooperative sites become a key problem. In this article we propose a novel web-based 3D cooperative design framework and a concrete implementation to conflict detection.

By this framework we can achieve automatic operation submission, real-time conflict detection based on dynamically adjustable time, and automatic conflict resolution with designers’ customization, which is much different from conventional solutions that require frequent participation of designers to submit changes and resolve conflicts. And through tests and analysis our solution shows good performance, scalability and design interactivity.

The variety of product types and spesifications make new product development (NPD) tasks tough work in discrete manufacturing enterprises, which makes it a common strategy to refer to similar outcomes (e.g. the product drawings, work instructions, etc.) of former tasks during NPD processes. To improve the efficiency of discovering similar historical outcomes, this paper presents a novel approach to measure the similarity between task execution contexts in process-aware information systems, and exploit it for runtime task knowledge recommendation. In our framework, the measurement of similarity is preceded by 1) modeling the task context with ontology theory, 2) using the ontology matching algorithms to evaluate the similarities between the corresponding context ontology entities of different tasks instances. The TD-IDF is then utilized to compute the context cohesion between the user’s current task and historical tasks, and the tasks with the highest similarity will be recommended to the task executors, along with their outcomes. Comparative evaluation is performed using TF-IDF, Levenshtein and Affine Gaps, and results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves good precision and recall, and is efficient in task knowledge recommendation.

Collaborative manufacturing execution system (c-MES) is very important for manufacturing enterprises to realize informatization under the networked manufacturing environment. Production characteristics, typical production flow and collaborative management requirements of multi-workshop production in discrete manufacturing enterprise is analyzed. An architecture oriented to discrete manufacturing enterprises of c-MES is put forward. Main functions of c-MES and key technologies to realize c-MES are analyzed. Finally some system interfaces are introduced by a case study.

Solving the dispatch and optimization of block erection of shipbuilding is a complex problem, especially when the spatial constraints are considered. The block erection scheduling problem can be defined as an identical parallel machine scheduling problem with precedence constraints and machine eligibility (PCME) restrictions, as well as limited layout space. An enhanced genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to find the near-optimal solution, and a few lower bounds. Also, the percentage of the reduced makespan is defined to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The proposed GA method of steering optimization produces quicker and lesser values of makespan than the RANDOM heuristic algorithm for the collected real instances. It not only allows users to steer a computing towards effective direction and leverages computing, but also is guided by the intelligence of human to get a global view when the users are in immersive environment. The dispatch of block erection to the crane is modeled into a parallel machine scheduling problem with spatial constraints. Meanwhile a 3D layout of block erection is modeled with real size, and an interactive GA optimization is developed to solve this problem with the objective of minimizing makespan.

With the development of cloud computing, cloud manufacturing has been gained more and more attention. According to the peculiarity of cloud manufacturing, the resource designated as manufacturing service is always massive, complex and heterogeneous, and the high degree of user participation, and user diversity are also the main features. This paper presents a method of resource selection based on service evaluation, which consists of predictive evaluation and recommended evaluation. In detail, predictive evaluation is based on user’s historical service evaluations which may have different influence according to the experience in different time. Recommended evaluation is given by the recommenders who are generated by 2-step selection and have different recommended weight according to their similarities and objectivities. Finally, experiment results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance.

In light of the rapid development of network technology, the general concept of software requires redefinition. New opportunities provided by broadband networking, distributed processing, and available network resources i.e. what is widely called a cloud, makes the classic software architecture obsolete. In this paper it is proposed to apply the web service oriented approach and cloud-related techniques to the tasks of the control algorithms design, engineering and training. Basing on the literature, the necessary concepts are defined and the limitations specific to the considered domain are identified. Next, with the two specific applications as the examples, it is described how to apply the new approach to the classic tasks, in order to turn the classic software into the cloud-based software.