Christopher Martin

Requirements gathering with diverse user groups and stakeholders

An interactive theatre piece has been designed to facilitate requirements gathering with a diverse range of user groups and stakeholders within the conceptual stage of telecare equipment for the home environment. The piece has been devised and produced by theatre professionals in consultation with computer engineers as part of a major research programme developing computer systems to support older and disabled people. By the interaction of a researcher, two actors and some video-clips, this piece demonstrates: a) the vital importance of all stakeholders being properly consulted and for them to inter-communicate well, and b) the role of theatre as a tool in this process. The rationale and methodology of this technique is discussed in an interactive session with the audience.

Learning Experiences in Programming: The Motivating Effect of a Physical Interface

A study of undergraduate students learning to program compared the use of a physical interface with use of a screen-based equivalent interface to obtain insights into what made for an engaging learning experience. Emotions characterized by the HUMAINE scheme were analysed, identifying the links between the emotions experienced during programming and their origin. By capturing the emotional experiences of learners immediately after a programming experience, evidence was collected of the very positive emotions experienced by learners developing a program using a physical interface (Arduino) in comparison with a similar program developed using a screen-based equivalent interface.

Scribbles: an exploratory study of sketch based support for early collaborative object oriented design.

Scribbles represents a light weight intuitive tool to support early collaborative software design. Collaboration is not well supported in many modern CASE (computer aided software engineering) environments making paper and white boards an attractive alternative. As a result of this, CASE tools tend to be more suited to documenting designs rather than assisting the generation of a design, meaning that early ideas may be lost. Scribbles uses shape recognition, to allow freehand manipulation of a hybrid Mind Map. This preserves the simplicity of paper or a whiteboard whilst adding the ability to capture early design ideas in a reusable way. This is a very lightweight modeling environment ideally suited to introducing students to Object Oriented Design.

Cognitive dimensions questionnaire applied to exploratory algorithm design

In software engineering, the stage between problem realization and implementation of a solution is not well supported by technology. It is common to see work being carried out on paper or whiteboards. This paper documents a pilot study to identify some reasons as to why paper and whiteboards are useful tools in early exploratory design and exposes some questions about where technology may fit in augmenting this stage of software engineering. The cognitive dimensions questionnaire was used to investigate notations and devices used in exploratory algorithm design.