Beatrice Alenljung

Portraying the practice of decision-making in requirements engineering: a case of large scale bespoke development

Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of requirements engineering (RE) and the need for improved decision support for RE decision-makers has been identified by a number of authors in the research literature. A first step toward better decision support in requirements engineering is to understand multifaceted decision situations of decision-makers. In this paper, the focus is on RE decision-making in large scale bespoke development. The decision situation of RE decision-makers on a subsystem level has been studied at a systems engineering company and is depicted in this paper. These situations are described in terms of, e.g., RE decision matters, RE decision-making activities, and RE decision processes. Factors that affect RE decision-makers are also identified.

Decision-Making Activities in Requirements Engineering Decision Processes: A Case Study

Decisions are made at all steps in information systems development (ISO), for example with regard to requirements, architecture, components, project planning, validation etc. (Kotonya and Sommerville 1998; Rube 2003). In the same way the requirements engineering (RE) process can be viewed as a decision-making process (Aurum and Wholin 2003; Regnell et al. 2001).

User Experience in Social Human-Robot Interaction

Socially interactive robots are expected to have an increasing importance in human society. For social robots to provide long-term added value to peoples lives, it is of major importance to stress the need for positive user experience UX of such robots. The human-centered view emphasizes various aspects that emerge in the interaction between humans and robots. However, a positive UX does not appear by itself but has to be designed for and evaluated systematically. In this paper, the focus is on the role and relevance of UX in human-robot interaction HRI and four trends concerning the role and relevance of UX related to socially interactive robots are identified, and three challenges related to its evaluation are also presented. It is argued that current research efforts and directions are not sufficient in HRI research, and that future research needs to further address interdisciplinary research in order to achieve long-term success of socially interactive robots.

Affective Touch in Human–Robot Interaction: Conveying Emotion to the Nao Robot

Affective touch has a fundamental role in human development, social bonding, and for providing emotional support in interpersonal relationships. We present, what is to our knowledge, the first HRI study of tactile conveyance of both positive and negative emotions (affective touch) on the Nao robot, and based on an experimental set-up from a study of human–human tactile communication. In the present work, participants conveyed eight emotions to a small humanoid robot via touch. We found that female participants conveyed emotions for a longer time, using more varied interaction and touching more regions on the robot’s body, compared to male participants. Several differences between emotions were found such that emotions could be classified by the valence of the emotion conveyed, by combining touch amount and duration. Overall, these results show high agreement with those reported for human–human affective tactile communication and could also have impact on the design and placement of tactile sensors on humanoid robots.

Designing Simulation-Based Training for Prehospital Emergency Care: Participation from a Participant Perspective

Simulation-based training for prehospital emergency care is characterized by high degrees of complexity. Thorough knowledge of both the work and the setting is crucial and it is therefore important to involve both end-users and other stakeholders during the whole design process. This paper investigates a design process by focusing on how project participants experience the work process and participation of a multi-disciplinary, research-practitioner design team. This case study focuses on the work within a development project of a new prehospital emergency training facility. Open-ended interviews were conducted with the project participants halfway through the project. Strikingly, the results show that while there are problems and tensions that potentially could overturn the project, all participants express strong satisfaction with their participation in the project. This implies that the accumulated positive experiences are so strong that they overshadow tensions and problems that under other circumstances could have caused a project breakdown.

DESCRY: A Method for Evaluating Decision-Supporting Capabilities of Requirements Engineering Tools

Complex decision-making is a prominent aspect of requirements engineering (RE) and the need for improved decision support for RE decision-makers has been identified by a number of authors in the research literature. Decision-supporting features and qualities can be integrated in RE tools. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the decision-supporting capabilities of RE tools. In this paper, we introduce a summative, criteria-based evaluation method termed DESCRY, which purpose is to investigate to what extent RE tools have decision-supporting capabilities. The criteria and their related questions are empirically as well as theoretically grounded.

The Conceptual Confusion Around “e-service” : Practitioners Conceptions

The e-service concept has been a central concern in many research and practitioner areas in recent years. There are expectations of citizens, customers, commercial companies and public organizations of what e-services are, their functionality and benefits. However, there is conceptual confusion that may hamper collaboration and research viability. This paper explores the conceptual vagueness and presents an empirical investigation of how the e-service concept is treated in practice, along with its kindred concept “IT service”. Results show that public and commercial organizations approach e-services differently, that translation problems can cause lack of comparability in research results, and that additional concepts may be introduced instead of e-service.