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Outputs (44)

Photographer-guided attributes for underwater image aesthetics (2024)
Journal Article
Emberton, S., & Simons, C. (2024). Photographer-guided attributes for underwater image aesthetics. Quality and User Experience, 9, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41233-024-00065-y

Automated aesthetic assessment of photographs is an active research area with applications in image editing and retrieval. There are many suggestions on the various factors of importance in making an image ‘good’ or ‘aesthetically pleasing’. However,... Read More about Photographer-guided attributes for underwater image aesthetics.

Users’ experiences of enhancing underwater images: An empirical study (2021)
Journal Article
Emberton, S., & Simons, C. (2021). Users’ experiences of enhancing underwater images: An empirical study. Quality and User Experience, 7(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41233-021-00048-3

Within the worldwide diving community, underwater photography is becoming increasingly popular. However, the marine environment presents certain challenges for image capture, with resulting imagery often suffering from colour distortions, low contras... Read More about Users’ experiences of enhancing underwater images: An empirical study.

Using active learning to understand the videoconference experience: A case study (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Llewellyn, S., Simons, C., & Smith, J. (2020). Using active learning to understand the videoconference experience: A case study. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63799-6_30

Videoconferencing is becoming ubiquitous, especially so during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, user experience of a videoconference call can be variable. To better understand and classify the performance of videoconference call systems, this paper re... Read More about Using active learning to understand the videoconference experience: A case study.

A metaheuristic search framework to derive Cancer Care Services from business process models (2019)
Conference Proceeding
Aljawawdeh, H., Odeh, M., Simons, C., & Lebzo, N. (2019). A metaheuristic search framework to derive Cancer Care Services from business process models. In Proceedings - 2018 1st International Conference on Cancer Care Informatics (CCI) (142-151). https://doi.org/10.1109/CANCERCARE.2018.8618153

Cancer Care involves not only handling patients' medical or physical needs but also other services to facilitate patient needs which are underpinned by appropriate software systems that assist in patient care processes. The Service-Oriented Architect... Read More about A metaheuristic search framework to derive Cancer Care Services from business process models.

Beneficial role of humans and AI in a machine learning age of the Telco ecosystem (2018)
Presentation / Conference
Cassidy, S., Perrett, J., & Simons, C. (2018, May). Beneficial role of humans and AI in a machine learning age of the Telco ecosystem. Paper presented at TM Forum Digital Transformation World, Nice, France

The adoption of new technology in the telecommunications industry raises challenges, particularly when exploiting advances in artificial intelligence (AI) (e.g. dynamic optimisation and machine learning). Indeed, opinions have been expressed that AI... Read More about Beneficial role of humans and AI in a machine learning age of the Telco ecosystem.

Simply the best: Optimising with an evolutionary computing framework (2018)
Presentation / Conference
Buontempo, F., & Simons, C. (2018, April). Simply the best: Optimising with an evolutionary computing framework. Presented at Annual Conference of Association of C and C++ Users 2018 (ACCU 2018), Bristol, UK

These are the slides of the interactive programming workshop on optimising with an evolutionary computing framework at ACCU 2018. Java Class Library for Evolutionary Computing (JCLEC) is used as the example framework. Example optimisation problems in... Read More about Simply the best: Optimising with an evolutionary computing framework.

A systematic review of interaction in search-based software engineering (2018)
Journal Article
Ramirez, A., Romero, J. R., & Simons, C. (2019). A systematic review of interaction in search-based software engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 45(8), 760-781. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2018.2803055

IEEE Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE) has been successfully applied to automate a wide range of software development activities. Nevertheless, in those software engineering problems where human evaluation and preference are crucial, such insi... Read More about A systematic review of interaction in search-based software engineering.

Evolutionary computing frameworks for optimisation (2017)
Journal Article
Simons, C., & Ramirez, A. (2017). Evolutionary computing frameworks for optimisation

Evolutionary algorithms can find optimal solutions to problems. This article gives an overview of some programming frameworks available to solve optimisation problems.

Metaheuristic design patterns - new perspectives for larger-scale search architectures (2017)
Book Chapter
Krawiec, K., Simons, C., Swan, J., & Woodward, J. (2017). Metaheuristic design patterns - new perspectives for larger-scale search architectures. In P. Vasant, S. Z. Alparslan-Gok, & G. Weber (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Emergent Applications of Optimization Algorithms (1-36). IGI Global Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2990-3.ch001

Design patterns capture the essentials of recurring best practice in an abstract form. Their merits are well established in domains as diverse as architecture and software development. They offer significant benefits, not least a common conceptual... Read More about Metaheuristic design patterns - new perspectives for larger-scale search architectures.

Evolutionary computing frameworks for optimisation (2017)
Presentation / Conference
Ramirez, A., & Simons, C. (2017, September). Evolutionary computing frameworks for optimisation. Presented at Meeting of Bristol Branch of the Association of C and C++ Users (ACCU), Bristol, UK

Presentation on frameworks for optimisation using evolutionary computing.

Machine learning with Python (2017)
Presentation / Conference
Ferreira, P., & Simons, C. (2017, April). Machine learning with Python. Presented at 2017 Conference of the Association of C and C++ Users (ACCU 2017), Bristol, UK

This presentation is a case study taken from the travel and holiday industry. Paxport/Multicom, based in UK and Sweden, have recently adopted a recommendation system for holiday accommodation bookings. Machine learning techniques such as Collaborativ... Read More about Machine learning with Python.

Exploiting antipheromone in ant colony optimisation for interactive search-based software design and refactoring (2016)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Smith, J. (2016, July). Exploiting antipheromone in ant colony optimisation for interactive search-based software design and refactoring. Poster presented at ACM-SIGEVO Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO ’16, Denver, CO, USA

Preventing user-fatigue in interactive meta-heuristic search places as great an emphasis on efficiency as it does on ef- fectiveness. Engagement may also be boosted if the system provides a sense of “responsiveness” - for example, avoiding unpopular... Read More about Exploiting antipheromone in ant colony optimisation for interactive search-based software design and refactoring.

The truth is out there: Reflections on search in software engineering (2016)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C. (2016, June). The truth is out there: Reflections on search in software engineering. Presented at First International Summer School on Search-Based Software Engineering, University of Cadiz, Spain

In the popular science fiction horror drama TV series "The X-Files", two FBI agents (Mulder and Skully) investigate unsolved case files relating to emerging paranormal phenomena and possible alien life. Many explanations and conspiracy theories aboun... Read More about The truth is out there: Reflections on search in software engineering.

Refactoring: 25 years on (2016)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C. (2016, April). Refactoring: 25 years on. Presented at 2016 Annual Conference of the Association of C and C++ Users (ACCU), Bristol, UK

It’s been some 25 years since ‘refactoring’ was suggested and is now central to programming practice. But how is refactoring conducted today compared to its original notions? After a quick recap on the original ideas of refactoring, this workshop exp... Read More about Refactoring: 25 years on.

Metaheuristic design pattern: Preference (2015)
Presentation / Conference
Aljawawdeh, H., Simons, C., & Odeh, M. (2015, July). Metaheuristic design pattern: Preference. Paper presented at Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2015 (GECCO 2015), Madrid, Spain

In interactive metaheuristic search, the human helps to steer the trajectory of the search by providing qualitative evaluation to assist in the selection of solution individuals. It can be challenging to design mechanisms to exploit human qualitative... Read More about Metaheuristic design pattern: Preference.

Search-based refactoring: Metrics are not enough (2015)
Journal Article
White, D. R., Simons, C., Singer, J., & White, D. (2015). Search-based refactoring: Metrics are not enough. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 9275, 47-61. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22183-0_4

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Search-based Software Engineering (SBSE) techniques have been applied extensively to refactor software, often based on metrics that describe the object-oriented structure of an application. Recent... Read More about Search-based refactoring: Metrics are not enough.

The influence of search components and problem characteristics in early life cycle class modelling (2014)
Journal Article
Smith, J., & Simons, C. (2015). The influence of search components and problem characteristics in early life cycle class modelling. Journal of Systems and Software, 103, 440-451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2014.11.034

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. This paper examines the factors affecting the quality of solution found by meta-heuristic search when optimising object-oriented software class models. From the algorithmic perspective, we examine the effect... Read More about The influence of search components and problem characteristics in early life cycle class modelling.

Using evolutionary computation to shed light on the effect of scale and complexity on object-orientedsoftware design (2014)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Smith, J. (2014, October). Using evolutionary computation to shed light on the effect of scale and complexity on object-orientedsoftware design. Paper presented at 2014 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, San Diego, CA, USA

Early lifecycle software design is an intensely human activity in which design scale and complexity can place a high cognitive load on the software designer. Recently, the use of evolutionary search has been suggested to yield insights in the natur... Read More about Using evolutionary computation to shed light on the effect of scale and complexity on object-orientedsoftware design.

Metaheuristic design pattern: Interactive solution presentation (2014)
Presentation / Conference
Shackelford, M., & Simons, C. (2014, July). Metaheuristic design pattern: Interactive solution presentation. Paper presented at Workshop on Metaheuristic Design Patterns (MetaDeeP), at the 2014 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2014), Vancouver, Canada

Interactive ant colony optimization (iACO) for early lifecycle software design (2014)
Journal Article
Simons, C., Smith, J., & White, P. (2014). Interactive ant colony optimization (iACO) for early lifecycle software design. Swarm Intelligence, 8(2), 139-157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-014-0094-2

Finding good designs in the early stages of the software development lifecycle is a demanding multi-objective problem that is crucial to success. Previously, both interactive and non-interactive techniques based on evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have... Read More about Interactive ant colony optimization (iACO) for early lifecycle software design.

A comparison of meta-heuristic search for interactive software design (2013)
Journal Article
Smith, J. E., Simons, C. L., Simons, C., & Smith, J. (2013). A comparison of meta-heuristic search for interactive software design. Soft Computing, 17(11), 2147-2162. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-013-1039-1

Advances in processing capacity, coupled with the desire to tackle problems where a human subjective judgment plays an important role in determining the value of a proposed solution, has led to a dramatic rise in the number of applications of Interac... Read More about A comparison of meta-heuristic search for interactive software design.

A comparison of two memetic algorithms for software class modelling (2013)
Presentation / Conference
Smith, J., & Simons, C. (2013, July). A comparison of two memetic algorithms for software class modelling. Paper presented at Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2013 (GECCO 2013), Amsterdam, Netherlands

Recent research has demonstrated that the problem of class modelling within early cycle object orientated software engineering can be successfully tackled by posing it as a search problem to be tackled with meta-heuristics. This “Search Based Softwa... Read More about A comparison of two memetic algorithms for software class modelling.

Whither (away) software engineers in SBSE? (2013)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C. (2013, May). Whither (away) software engineers in SBSE?. Paper presented at First International Workshop on Combining Modelling with Search-Based Software Engineering, San Francisco, USA

This challenges and open problems paper discusses the role of software engineers when combining modeling with Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE). With SBSE techniques increasingly providing insights into difficult software modeling problems, th... Read More about Whither (away) software engineers in SBSE?.

Elegant object-oriented software design via interactive, evolutionary computation (2012)
Journal Article
Parmee, I. C., Simons, C. L., Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2012). Elegant object-oriented software design via interactive, evolutionary computation. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C: Applications and Reviews, 42(6), 1797-1805. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMCC.2012.2225103

Design is fundamental to software development but can be demanding to perform. Thus, to assist the software designer, evolutionary computing is being increasingly applied using machine-based, quantitative fitness functions to evolve software designs.... Read More about Elegant object-oriented software design via interactive, evolutionary computation.

Dynamic parameter control of interactive local search in UML software design (2010)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2010, October). Dynamic parameter control of interactive local search in UML software design. Paper presented at 2010 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC '10), Istanbul, Turkey

User-centered Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) has been applied to a wide variety of areas, including UML software design. The performance of evolutionary search is important as user interaction fatigue remains an on-going challenge in IEC.... Read More about Dynamic parameter control of interactive local search in UML software design.

Interactive, evolutionary search in upstream Object-oriented class design (2010)
Journal Article
Parmee, I. C., Simons, C., & Gwynllyw, R. (2010). Interactive, evolutionary search in upstream Object-oriented class design. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 36(6), 798-816. https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2010.34

Although much evidence exists to suggest that early life cycle software engineering design is a difficult task for software engineers to perform, current computational tool support for software engineers is limited. To address this limitation, intera... Read More about Interactive, evolutionary search in upstream Object-oriented class design.

An empirical investigation of search-based computational support for conceptual software engineering design (2009)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2009, July). An empirical investigation of search-based computational support for conceptual software engineering design. Paper presented at 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, San Antonio, Texas, USA

Conceptual software engineering design is an intensely people-oriented and non-trivial activity, yet current computational tool support is limited. While a number of search-based software engineering approaches to support software design have been r... Read More about An empirical investigation of search-based computational support for conceptual software engineering design.

Agent-based support for interactive search in conceptual software design (2008)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2008, July). Agent-based support for interactive search in conceptual software design. Poster presented at 10th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO' 08), Atlanta, Georgia, USA

While recent attempts to search a conceptual software engineering design search space with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have yielded promising results, the practical application of such search-based techniques remains to be addressed. This... Read More about Agent-based support for interactive search in conceptual software design.

User-centered, evolutionary search in conceptual software design (2008)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. C. (2008, June). User-centered, evolutionary search in conceptual software design. Paper presented at IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 2008. CEC 2008. (IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence)

User-centered, evolutionary search in conceptual software design (2008)
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2008, June). User-centered, evolutionary search in conceptual software design. Paper presented at IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation CEC '08 (IEEE World Conference on Computational Intelligence), Hong Kong

Although much evidence exists to suggest that conceptual software engineering design is a difficult task for software engineers to perform, current computationally intelligent tool support for software engineers is limited. While search-based appro... Read More about User-centered, evolutionary search in conceptual software design.

Discovery in design: People-centred computational issues (2007)
Book Chapter
Parmee, I., Hall, E., Miles, J., Noyes, J., Simons, C., & Smith, D. (2007). Discovery in design: People-centred computational issues. In T. Inns (Ed.), Designing for the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Questions and Insights (232 - 245). Ashgate Publishing

The Designing for the 21st Century Initiative is a joint EPSRC/AHRC multi-disciplinary collaborative investigation supporting a variety of clusters of design research. The Discovery in Design: People-centred Computational Issues cluster is significan... Read More about Discovery in design: People-centred computational issues.

A cross-disciplinary technology transfer for search-based evolutionary computing: From engineering design to software engineering design (2007)
Journal Article
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. (2007). A cross-disciplinary technology transfer for search-based evolutionary computing: From engineering design to software engineering design. Engineering Optimization, 39(5), 631-648. https://doi.org/10.1080/03052150701382974

Although object-oriented conceptual software design is difficult to learn and perform, computational tool support for the conceptual software designer is limited. In conceptual engineering design, however, computational tools exploiting interactive e... Read More about A cross-disciplinary technology transfer for search-based evolutionary computing: From engineering design to software engineering design.

A forward look at computational support for conceptual design (2006)
Journal Article
Miles, J., Hall, L., Noyes, J., Parmee, I., & Simons, C. (2006). A forward look at computational support for conceptual design. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, LNCS, volume 4200, 492-499. https://doi.org/10.1007/11888598_44

Future research needs for computational support for conceptual design are examined. The material is the result of the work of a so called design cluster. The cluster has, through a series of workshops, defined what it believes are the salient areas i... Read More about A forward look at computational support for conceptual design.

35 years on: To what extent has software engineering design achieved its goals? (2003)
Journal Article
Parmee, I. C., Simons, C., & Coward, P. D. (2003). 35 years on: To what extent has software engineering design achieved its goals?. IEE Proceedings Software, 150(6), 337-350. https://doi.org/10.1049/ip-sen%3A20031198

The term 'software engineering' was coined in 1968 to introduce the disciplines of established branches of engineering design to software manufacture. Some 35 years on, this paper attempts to gauge the success of software engineering against its orig... Read More about 35 years on: To what extent has software engineering design achieved its goals?.

A comparison of genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming in conceptual software design
Presentation / Conference
Simons, C., & Parmee, I. A comparison of genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming in conceptual software design. Paper presented at Seventh International Conference of Adaptive Computing in Design and Manufacture

The conference paper reports on initial attempts to transfer the stochastic search, exploration and exploitation techniques widely used in engineering design to an object-oriented conceptual design search space as the basis of conceptual design tool... Read More about A comparison of genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming in conceptual software design.