Ahmed Seffah

Human-Centered Software Engineering - Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle

The fields of HCI and Software Engineering have evolved almost independently of each other until the last decade, when it became apparent that an integrated and combined perspective would benefit the development of interactive software applications. The chapters in this book are written by prominent researchers who bring to light the major integration issues and challenges, and offer a variety of solutions to bridging the HCI and SE gap, including: Extending software engineering artifacts for UI specification, such as annotating use cases with task descriptions, Enhancing object-oriented software engineering notations and models Possible extensions of HCI methods for requirements gathering through field observations and interviews, deriving a conceptual design model from scenario, task models and use cases and using personae as a way to understand and model end-users, New methodologies for interactive systems design, as well as approaches complementing existing methodologies.

Human-Centered Software Engineering

This book aims at establishing a meaningful dialog between the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community and Software Engineering (SE) practitioners and researchers on the results (both good and bad), obstacles, and lessons learned associated with applying software development practices in the field of user interface. Human-Centered Software Engineering provides accounts of the application of software engineering practices (which may be principles, techniques, tools, methods, processes, etc.) to a specific domain or to the development of a significant interactive system. The book gathers experiences gained by various companies and research centers working in the field of user interface engineering over a significant amount of time.

Integrating Human Factors into Use Cases and Object-Oriented Methods

This article summarizes the workshop on human factors in use cases and object-oriented development methods. The following questions were the main focus of the workshop: Can use cases be improved by the incorporation or consideration of formal task analysis models and human centered design techniques in general? Are there ways of integrating human factors and user-centered techniques into use cases and object-oriented methods? The workshop brought a multidisciplinary blend of researchers and practitioners involved in user-centered design together with those interested by user requirements and use cases. It highlighted fundamental problems arising from the integration of human factors in use cases and OO methods.

PERCCOM: A Master Program in Pervasive Computing and COMmunications for Sustainable Development

This paper presents the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Pervasive Computing and Communications for Sustainable Development (PERCCOM). This program brings together 11 academic partners and 8 industry partners to combine advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with environmental awareness to enable world-class education and unique competences for ICT professionals who can build cleaner, greener, more resource and energy efficient cyber-physical systems. First, this paper describes the rationale and motivations for ICT education for sustainability challenges. It then details the structure and contents of the programs including the courses offered at the three teaching locations (Nancy France, Lappeenranta Finland, and Lulea Sweden). The ways that the program has been running as well as students selection, their thesis works, involvement of industry, are also discussed. The program was built and managed using a solid academic standards and strategies student-centered learning.

Patterns of HCI Design and HCI Design of Patterns

As interactive systems are quickly becoming integral to our everyday lives, this book investigates how we can make these systems, from desktop and mobile apps to more wearable and immersive applications, more usable and maintainable by using HCI design patterns. It also examines how we can facilitate the reuse of design practices in the development lifecycle of multi-devices, multi-platforms and multi-contexts user interfaces. Effective design tools are provided for combining HCI design patterns and User Interface (UI) driven engineering to enhance design whilst differentiating between UI and the underlying system features. Several examples are used to demonstrate how HCI design patterns can support this decoupling by providing an architectural framework for pattern-oriented and model-driven engineering of multi-platforms and multi-devices user interfaces. Patterns of HCI Design and HCI Design of Patterns is for students, academics and Industry specialists who are concerned with user interfaces and usability within the software development community.

Generative patterns for designing multiple user interfaces

End users interacting with mobile services through a wide diversity of mobile devices and platforms inevitably endure various user experiences when no consistency is ensured across these devices and platforms. Developing the same service for heterogeneous devices remains a challenging task: how to ensure that the service will provide end users with the same level of user experience or at least a common minimum level of usability across software devel-opment and deployment platforms. This paper addresses this problem by introducing a generative design pattern-based approach for cross-device services: a design pattern captures frequent interactive behaviors at a higher level of abstraction than the code level, the selection of such a design pattern is then subject to parametrization so as to drive a code generation process. The pattern is not only considered descriptive, since it specifies a consistent user experience across devices, but also generative because it ensures some consistency across different devices and platforms since the pattern is instantiated in the same way for each device or platform. To exemplify this process, the master-details design pattern is detailed and illustrated on a case study for a car rental mobile service. A pilot study conducted with thirty-two participants suggests that this is a viable approach for quickly producing multi-devices services, with limited development effort, but also with limited variability.

The human side of software as a service: building a tighter fit between human experiences and SOA design practices

Software as a Service (SaaS) is now recognized as an effective model for the development, deployment, and customization of software. It has been reported that it reduces the costs as well as ensures the long-term sustainability of software systems. Monolithic software systems are seen as a set of interrelated and geographically distributed services over the Internet. Developers and providers can easily customize services while being able to accommodate a large range of stakeholders. At the core of this service orientation of the whole field of software development are the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) design principles. These principles detail what we should do, but not how and by whom it has to be done. From a human perspective -- all stakeholders -- we argue that the current SOA design principles can be linked and benefit from the user experience/user-centric design. Such combination can lead to a user experience-centric and SOA-based design approach that guarantees that SaaS is secure, yet trustable, useful, usable and accessible. In this position paper, we reviewed SOA/SaaS from the human dimension with the goal to bridging the gaps between SOA design principles and the User Experience (UX) design communities including Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and service design. One practical goal is to enhance the SOA, as a technological platform with elements of UX including the social aspects of their interactions within the organizational structure and processes.

An ASPIRE-based method for quality requirements identification from business goals

Quality requirements are the main drivers for modeling and evaluating software quality at an early stage, and ASPIRE is an engineering method designed to elicit and document the quality requirements of embedded systems. This paper proposes an extension to ASPIRE to identify quality requirements from the business goals of the organization and ensure their traceability. This extension includes a set of added components created from the main concepts of the SOQUAREM methodology, including the BMM (business motivation model), derivation rules, the quality attribute utility tree, the quality attribute scenario template, the quality attribute documentation template, and ISO 9126. The applicability of the extended method is illustrated with a wireless plant control system as an example.

Designing for Effective Interactions with Data in the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT), a type of cyber-physical system, has led to a drastic growth in the number of devices and sensors connected to each other and to the digital word. This has further led to an exponential increase in the amount of data being produced and disseminated throughout such systems. This data has the potential to provide valuable insights into user behavior that can inform a design process. It also comprises an important aspect of an IoT product or service that an end user might interact to gain actionable insights. For example, when to use energy in the home, how to avoid polluted or flooded areas, or to visit the shops at quiet times. These same users may also be one source of the data that is analysed to provide this intelligence. However, in many case more intelligence is gained by combining different data sets. This raises questions about how to help both designers and end-users to get the most value from the insights acquired through the combination and analysis of IoT data, whilst being sensitive to issues around privacy and security of data contributed by the public. There is currently no clear framework to support designers in navigating through a design process that uses and combines such complex data. The aim of this one day workshop is to explore how to effectively incorporate data into a design process and how to design for more effective interactions between humans and data within IoT technologies. It will also create a roadmap for development of new methods and tools to support responsible, data-driven, co-design of new IoT interactive products and services.

UIPLML: Pattern-based engineering of user interfaces of multi-platform systems

Information systems become more accessible as a service offered to anybody, anywhere, at any time, via almost any device and computing platform. The continuous growth and the heterogeneity of these devices induce diverse user experiences depending on the device and challenge designers to creating methods and tools for engineering usable, yet accessible, information systems. Instead of repeating a similar development life cycle, design patterns concentrate design solutions with embedded usability and accessibility. Once a pattern is selected, the developer is responsible for adequately program the pattern code, which is a tedious and error-prone task. In order to address these challenges, this paper presents UIPLML (User Interface Pattern Language Markup Language), a XML-compliant markup language for defining user interface patterns for multiple contexts of use, e.g., for different users carrying out a task on different devices in different environments. A meta-model with new expressiveness enables multi-facet pattern matching. To validate it, four UIPLML pattern databases have been created: a base of 237 entries for multi-platform systems, a base of 42 entries for context-aware interfaces, a base of 10 entries for culturally-aware interfaces, and a base of 52 entries for accessibility. The master/detail pattern is in particular supported by a software for generative pattern-based approach where application parameters and contextual data govern automated user interface XML creation which, in turns, generates code for multi-platform information systems.