Abstract Traditional explainability methods use 2D visualization techniques such as saliency maps. However, when applied to video data, subject and camera motion produce unstable, flickering maps that cannot be temporally aggregated in meaningful ways. This limitation is critical in medical and veterinary settings, which demand biologically grounded explanations intuitive for experts. One such domain is equine pain assessment. Horses are particularly challenging in the context of pain as they are known to hide pain signals in human presence. This leads to increased interest in automation of equine pain recognition which is explainable, i.e., highlighting informative facial and postural cues. However, current explainability approaches are inadequate for providing temporally consistent and clinically interpretable explanations. To address this gap, we present SHIC-XE, an explainability framework that leverages dense 2D-3D correspondence methods to address fundamental viewpoint-dependency limitations for dynamic scenes. Building upon the existing SHIC correspondence framework, our approach projects neural network attention onto canonical 3D surface prototypes, enabling anatomically-consistent, pose-invariant explanations across temporal sequences. Our primary contribution is establishing quantitative metrics for spatially-consistent explainability evaluation, transforming subjective visualization assessment into statistically analyzable measurements. Unlike existing approaches requiring n separate classifiers for n anatomical regions, our unified correspondence mapping maintains constant architectural complexity while achieving comparable classification performance. We provide a preliminary validation of the framework on equine pain recognition as a challenging testbed, achieving video-level F1 scores of 0.67, 0.80, and 0.70 across three datasets under leave-one-subject-out validation. Our systematic evaluation against expert pain ratings by facial region, using a validated equine pain scale, reveals significant correlations between model attention and expert pain scoring, (ears: r = 0.30, $${\varvec{p}} \varvec{<} {\textbf {0.001}}$$ p < 0.001 ; cheek muscles: r = 0.25, $${\varvec{p}} \varvec{<} {\textbf {0.01}}$$ p < 0.01 ; eyes: r = −0.19, $${\textbf {p}} \varvec{<} {\textbf {0.05}}$$ p < 0.05 ) providing the first quantitative validation of explainability methods against domain expertise in this context. This finding challenges widespread literature claims of clinical relevance based solely on qualitative saliency inspection, establishing a methodological framework for rigorous explainability validation. The correspondence-based approach generalizes beyond the demonstrated application to any domain requiring spatial consistency between 2D observations and 3D structural models, providing a foundational methodology for next-generation explainable AI systems.

Despite the availability of various methods and tools to facilitate secure coding, developers continue to write code that contains common vulnerabilities. It is important to understand why technological advances do not sufficiently facilitate developers in writing secure code. To widen our understanding of developers' behaviour, we considered the complexity of the security decision space of developers using theory from cognitive and social psychology. Our interdisciplinary study reported in this article (1) draws on the psychology literature to provide conceptual underpinnings for three categories of impediments to achieving security goals, (2) reports on an in-depth meta-analysis of existing software security literature that identified a catalogue of factors that influence developers' security decisions, and (3) characterises the landscape of existing security interventions that are available to the developer during coding and identifies gaps. Collectively, these show that different forms of impediments to achieving security goals arise from different contributing factors. Interventions will be more effective where they reflect psychological factors more sensitively and marry technical sophistication, psychological frameworks, and usability. Our analysis suggests “adaptive security interventions” as a solution that responds to the changing security needs of individual developers and a present a proof-of-concept tool to substantiate our suggestion.

Existing research has shown that developers will use StackOverflow to answer programming questions: but what draws them to one particular answer over any other? The choice of answer they select can mean the difference between a secure application and insecure one, as the quality of supposedly secure answers can vary. Prior work has studied people posting on Stack Overflow—a two-way communication between the original poster and the Stack Overflow community. Instead, we study the situation of one-way communication, where people only read a Stack Overflow thread without being actively involved in it, sometimes long after a thread has closed. We report on a mixed-method study including a controlled between-groups experiment and qualitative analysis of participants’ rationale (N=1188), investigating whether explanation detail, answer scoring, accepted answer marks, as well as the security of the code snippet itself affect the answers participants accept. Our findings indicate that explanation detail affects what answers participants reading a thread select (p0.05)—theinverseof what research has shown for those asking and answering questions. The qualitative analysis of participants’ rationale further explains how several cognitive biases underpin these findings. Correspondence bias, in particular, plays an important role in instilling readers with a false sense of confidence in an answer through theway it looks, regardless of whether it works, is secure, or if the community agrees with it. As a result, we argue that StackOverflow's use as a knowledge base by people not actively involved in threads—when there is only one-way-communication—may inadvertently contribute to the spread of insecure code, as the community's voting mechanisms hold little power to deter them from answers.

Abstract This article introduces a new class of socio-technical systems, interspecies information systems (IIS) by describing several examples of these systems emerging through the use of commercially available data-driven animal-centered technology. When animal-centered technology, such as pet wearables, cow health monitoring, or even wildlife drones captures animal data and inform humans of actions to take towards animals, interspecies information systems emerge. I discuss the importance of understanding them as information systems rather than isolated technology or technology-mediated interactions, and propose a conceptual model capturing the key components and information flow of a general interspecies information system. I conclude by proposing multiple practical challenges that are faced in the successful design, engineering and use of any IIS where animal data informs human actions.

Research has established the wide variety of security failures in mobile apps, their consequences, and how app developers introduce or exacerbate them. What is not well known is why developers do so---what is the rationale underpinning the decisions they make which eventually strengthen or weaken app security? This is all the more complicated in modern app development's increasingly diverse demographic: growing numbers of independent, solo, or small team developers who do not have the organizational structures and support that larger software development houses enjoy.

Abstract We report on a mixed-method, comparative study investigating whether there is a difference between privacy concerns expressed about pet wearables as opposed to human wearables – and more importantly,why. We extracted the privacy concerns found in product reviews (N=8,038) of pet wearables (activity, location, and dual-function trackers), contrasting the (lack of) concerns and misuse to a curated set of reviews for similar human-oriented wearables (N=20,431). Our findings indicate that, while overall very few privacy concerns are expressed in product reviews, for pet wearables they are expressed even less, even though consumers use these devices in a manner which impacts both personal and bystander privacy. An additional survey of pet owners (N=201) eliciting what factors would cause them to not purchase (or stop using) pet wearables indicated comparably few privacy concerns, strengthening the representativeness of our findings. A thematic analysis reveals that the lack of privacy concerns may be explained by, among other factors, emotional drivers to purchase the device, and prioritization of (desired) functionality to support those emotional drivers over privacy requirements. Moreover, we found that pet wearables are used in different ways than originally intended, which raise novel privacy implications to be dealt with. We propose that in order to move towards more privacy-conscious use of pet wearables, a combination of understanding consumer rationale and behavior as well as ensuring data protection legislation is adequate to real-world use is needed.

INTRODUCTION: The Physics of Notations (PoN) is a theory for the design of cognitively effective visual notations, emphasizing the need for design grounded in objective and verifiable rationale. Although increasingly applied, no systematic analysis of PoN applications has yet been performed to assess the theory's efficacy in practice. OBJECTIVES: Our primary objective was to assess the scope and verifiability of PoN applications. METHOD: We performed a systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-reviewed PoN applications. We analyzed what visual notations have been evaluated and designed using the PoN, for what reasons, to what degree applications consider requirements of their notation's users, and how verifiable these applications are. RESULTS: Seventy PoN applications were analyzed. We found major differences between applications evaluating existing notations and applications designing new notations. Particularly, in the case of new notations, we found that most applications adopted the PoN with little critical thought towards it, rarely considered its suitability for a particular context, and typically treated and discussed the PoN with few, if any, verifiable details and data. CONCLUSION: The results warrant consideration for those applying the PoN to do so carefully, and show the need for additional means to guide designers in systematically applying the PoN.

Data privacy and security is a leading concern for providers and customers of cloud computing, where Virtual Machines (VMs) can co-reside within the same underlying physical machine. Side channel attacks within multi-tenant virtualized cloud environments are an established problem, where attackers are able to monitor and exfiltrate data from co-resident VMs. Virtualization services have attempted to mitigate such attacks by preventing VM-to-VM interference on shared hardware by providing logical resource isolation between co-located VMs via an internal virtual network. However, such approaches are also insecure, with attackers capable of performing network channel attacks which bypass mitigation strategies using vectors such as ARP Spoofing, TCP/IP steganography, and DNS poisoning. In this paper we identify a new vulnerability within the internal cloud virtual network, showing that through a combination of TAP impersonation and mirroring, a malicious VM can successfully redirect and monitor network traffic of VMs co-located within the same physical machine. We demonstrate the feasibility of this attack in a prominent cloud platform - OpenStack - under various security requirements and system conditions, and propose countermeasures for mitigation.

This paper proposes a systematic framework for applying the Physics of Notations (PoN), a theory for the design of cognitively effective visual notations. The PoN consists of nine principles, but not all principles lend themselves equally to a clear and unambiguous operationalization. As a result, many visual notations designed according to the PoN apply it in different ways. The proposed framework guides what information is required of a reported PoN application to ensure that the application of each principle is verifiable. The framework utilizes an evidence-driven design rationale model to structure information needed to assess principles requiring user involvement or cognitive theories. This approach aims to reduce ambiguity in some of the principles by making design choices explicit, and highlighting the level of evidence presented to support it. We demonstrate the proposed framework in a showcase of a recently published visual notation which has been designed with the PoN in mind.

With the advance of modern technologies, computer-based systems for animals are gaining popularity. In particular, there is an explosion of products and gadgets for pets: wellness monitoring applications (e.g., FitBark and PetPace), automatic food dispensers, cognitive enrichment apps, and many more. Furthermore, the discipline of Animal-Computer Interaction has emerged, focusing on a user-centric development of technologies for animals, making them stakeholders in the development process. Animal-centric technologies have already been developed to support activities of rescue and assistance dogs, to provide environmental and cognitive enrichment for animals in captivity, and to support conservation and animal behavior research. Going beyond human stakeholders poses new exciting challenges for requirement engineering and can be used to significantly expand its boundaries under broader theoretical and methodological frameworks. This paper highlights these challenges and proposes a research agenda for developing methodologies for requirement elicitation and analysis for a user-centric development of computerized systems for non-human users.

Effectively using visualizations in socio-technical artifacts like information systems and software yields a number of challenges, such as ensuring that they allow for all necessary information to be captured, that visualizations can be efficiently and correctly read, and perhaps most important: that communication is fostered, leading rather to a shared understanding instead of misunderstandings and communication breakdowns. While over the last years many strides have been made to propose visualizations for specific purposes (such as modeling language notations, software interfaces, visual methods, and games), there has been less attention for frameworks and guidelines meant to support the people making such visualizations. When taking a closer look at the deficiencies in research on visualizations in information systems today, it turns out that especially a deeper understanding of the mental processes behind comprehending visualizations and the way humans are cognitively affected by visualizations, is required in order to gain advanced theoretic underpinnings for the creation and use of visualizations in information systems. In this paper we build towards a research agenda on visualization in information systems engineering by identifying a number of relevant requirements for research to address, of fundamental, methodical and tool nature.

This position paper presents the preliminary findings of a systematic literature review of applications of the Physics of Notations: a recently dominant framework for assessing the cognitive effectiveness of visual notations. We present our research structure in detail and discuss some initial findings, such as the kinds of notations the PoN has been applied to, whether its usage is justified and to what degree users are involved in eliciting requirements for the notation before its application. We conclude by summarizing and briefly discussing further analysis to be done and valorization of such results as guidelines for better application.

New visual languages and extensions of existing notations are increasingly introduced for various purposes. There are many frameworks and theories that aid designers in creating cognitively effective visual notations. They usually provide general guidelines, which are not easily operationalized without extensive user involvement. However, often such user involvement is difficult to achieve, especially in scientific settings where finding enough participants with the needed background knowledge is far from trivial. In this paper we propose the idea of creating a searchable marketplace of visual elements, in which designers could share and exchange elements of visual notations. A key feature of such marketplace would be the ability to certify such elements via procedures grounded in empirical research. We discuss a proposed structure of the marketplace, and the challenge that the need for certification poses to its design.

The occurrence of risks in an enterprise can result in differences between business goals and their realization. Risk management is a central activity in the design of an enterprise: risk assessments supports the identifications of problems that expose the enterprise to risk, while risk treatment plans are drivers for enterprise engineering. Risk treatment plans are typically created in isolation, and often informal. We deal with this problem by developing a collaborative risk management framework, that involves all levels of an organization in conducting risk assessments and formalizing the treatment plans. We propose procedures to perform an integrated risk analysis, as well as metrics to deal with the collaborative aspect of risk management.

Being able to respond flexibly to business opportunities is essential for the manufacturing industries to stay competitive. Making flexible use of the plant floor equipment is an essential aspect to this. The research presented proposes an approach to automation systems design and implementation, focusing on (but not limited to) batch processes and derived from the ISA-88 standard, with the aim of minimising the programming effort required for a new product by following a modular approach. Particular attention is given to implementing the interfaces between system modules in an open manner using the OPC UA communication standard.

Evolvability is one of the most desirable non-functional requirements of software architectures. In the area of automation control, the permanent shift of the requirements and the prevention of side-effects are key points. In addition, adaptability and flexibility in manufacturing systems continue to gain importance. This paper proposes an approach to achieve evolvability in IEC 61131-3 based software modules, from a structural point of view, i.e., starting from an individual line of code. We based our design of an evolvable ISA88 Equipment Phase on the Normalized Systems theory recently introduced. It seems indeed possible to develop evolvable IEC 61131-3 based modules with the existing, commercially available development environments. However, our guidelines require a disciplined programming style in extending software, based on a limited set of anticipated changes.

Normalized systems theory has recently been proposed to engineer evolvable information systems. This theory includes a potential of improvement in control software for the automation of production systems. This paper aims at contributing towards evolvable and therefore easy-to-maintain control software. We introduce IEC 61131-3 code which complies with the theorems of normalized systems, forming a building block which complies with the model of an ISA88 control module, accessible via an OPC UA interface. Since OPC UA brings control software to a new level, it enables original intra-process projects to interoperate in an inter-process context. OPC UA offers new possibilities for system integration, but might also lead to a larger impact of evolvability problems.