Usability has become increasingly important as an essential part of the design and development of software and systems for all sectors of society, business, industry, government and education, as well as a topic of research. Today, we can safely say that, in many parts of the world, information technology and communications is or is becoming a central force in revolutionising the way that we all live and how our societies function. IFIP's mission states clearly that it "encourages and assists in the development, exploitation and application of information technology for the benefit of all...

Organizational Semiotics regards organizations as the real information systems in which technologies have an essential role to play. It develops this perspective using the established discipline of semiotics, the theory of signs. A sign is anything that stands for something else within a certain community. This fundamental notion supports a unified treatment of human and technical aspects of information systems.
Organizational Semiotics: Evolving a Science of Information Systems covers such issues as:

-Fundamental concepts such as 'information', 'data', 'message',...

Security, trust and confidence can certainly be considered as the most important parts of the Information Society. Being protected when working, learning, shopping or doing any kind of e-commerce is of great value to citizens, students, business people, employees and employers. Commercial companies and their clients want to do business over the Internet in a secure way; business managers when having meetings by videoconferencing tools require the exchanged information to be protected; the publishing industry is concerned with the protection of copyright; hospital patients have a right to...

Knowledge and Technology Integration in Production and Services presents novel application scenarios for balanced distributed and integrated systems based on knowledge and up-to-date technology and provides a great opportunity for discussion of concepts, models, methodologies, technological developments, case studies, new research ideas, and other results among specialists. It comprises the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information Technology for BALANCED AUTOMATION SYSTEMS in Manufacturing and Services (BASYS'02), which was sponsored by the...

Since the early 1980's, the IFIP WG8.1 conferences have provided a forum for the presentation and exchange of research results and practical experiences in the field of Information System Engineering. The WG8.1 '02 Conference is held in the beautiful Kanazawa area in North western Japan. The ubiquitous Web has revolutionised the way organisations communicate and work internally as well as externally and, consequently, the nature of information systems supporting business activities. Web-based systems have become the state of the art in information systems engineering in a very short time. As...

The 2002 IFIP Workshop on Internet Technologies, Applications, and Societal Impact (WITASI 2002), held in Wroclaw, Poland, October 10-11, 2002, presents different research aspects of the Internet, both technical and societal. The workshop aims at getting together scientists and practitioners from different research areas to work together on Internet development and reflect on Internet consequences to the economy and society. The papers presented in these proceedings describe state-of-the-art research in such areas of Internet applications as languages, mobility, multimedia, quality of...

BE 2002 is the second in a series of conferences on eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovemment organised by the three IFIP committees TC6, TC8, and TCll. As BE 2001 did last year in Zurich, BE 2002 continues to provide a forum for users, engineers, and researchers from academia, industry and government to present their latest findings in eCommerce, eBusiness, and eGovernment applications and the underlying technologies which support those applications. This year's conference comprises a main track with sessions on eGovernment, Trust, eMarkets, Fraud and Security, eBusiness (both B2B and B2C), the...

Several aspects of informatics curricula and teaching methods at the university level are reported in this volume, including:
*Challenges in defining an international curriculum;
*The diversity in informatics curricula;
*Computing programs for scientists and engineers;
*Patterns of curriculum design;
*Student interaction;
*Teaching of programming;
*Peer review in education.

This book contains a selection of the papers presented at the Working Conference on Informatics Curricula, Teaching Methods and Best Practice (ICTEM 2002), which was sponsored by the...

The international initiative on Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration (EI3-IC) had the objective to increase both international consen- sus (IC) and public awareness on enterprise integration. In these proceedings we intend to present the current status in inter- and intra-organisational inte- gration for electronic commerce and thereby to further increase awareness and consensus within academia and industry about enterprise inter-and intra- organisational integration. The conference proceedings contain the papers presented at the ICEIMT conference in Valencia, Spain,...

This volume is the Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Entertainment Computing (IWEC 2002). Entertainment has been taking very important parts in our life by refreshing us and activating our creativity. Recently by the advancement of computers and networks new types of entertainment have been emerging such as video games, entertainment robots, and network games. As these new games have a strong power to change our lives, it is good time for people who work in this area to discuss various aspects of entertainment and to promote entertainment related researches. Based on these...