Guillaume Godet-Bar

HCI and business practices in a collaborative method for augmented reality systems

Context: Every interactive system is composed of a functional core and a user interface. However, the software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI) communities do not share the same methods, models or tools. This usually induces a large work overhead when specialists from the two domains try to connect their applicative studies, especially when developing augmented reality systems that feature complex interaction cores. Objective: We present in this paper the essential activities and concepts of a development method integrating the SE and HCI development practices, from the specifications down to the design, as well as their application on a case study. Method: The efficiency of the method was tested in a qualitative study involving four pairs of SE and HCI experts in the design of an application for which an augmented reality interaction would provide better user performance than a classic interactive system. The effectivity of the method was evaluated in a qualitative study comparing the quality of three implementations of the same application fragment (based on the same analysis model), using software engineering metrics. Results: The first evaluation confirmed the ease of use of our method and the relevance of our tools for guiding the design process, but raised concerns on the handling of conflicting collaborative activities. The second evaluation gave indications that the structure of the analysis model facilitates the implementation of quality software (in terms of coupling, stability and complexity). Conclusion: It is concluded that our method enables design teams with different backgrounds in application development to collaborate for integrating augmented reality applications with information systems. Areas of improvement are also described.

Towards A System of Patterns for the Design of Multimodal Interfaces

Since R. Bolt’s seminal “Put that there” demonstrator, more and more robust and innovative modalities can be used and empirical work on the usage of multiple modalities is now available for guiding the design of efficient and usable multimodal interfaces. This paper presents a system of patterns for capitalizing and formalizing this design knowledge about multimodal interfaces as patterns. Patterns are used for illustrating our system of patterns.

A Software Engineering Method for the Design of Mixed Reality Systems

The domain of mixed reality systems is currently making decisive advances on a daily basis. However, the knowledge and know-how of HCI scientists and interaction engineers, used in the design of such systems, are not well understood. This chapter addresses this issue by proposing a software engineering method that couples a process for designing mixed reality interaction with a process for developing the functional core. Our development method features a Y-shaped development cycle that separates the description of functional requirements and their analysis from the study of technical requirements of the application. These sub-processes produce Business Objects and Interactional Objects, which are connected to produce a complete mixed reality system. The whole process is presented via a case study, with a particular emphasis on the design of the interactive solution.

When Interaction Choices Trigger Business Evolutions

In the context of development methods, early collaborations between specialists (SE, HCI, business, usability experts ...) allows having a broader view of the development possibilities, notably in terms of user-system interaction. Consequently, in-depth transformations of the processes and concepts can be considered with minimum financial or temporal impact. We discuss in this paper the opportunities for business process evolutions emerging from the application of our collaborative method, based on the choices made for designing the interaction.

A Case Study for Improving a Collaborative Design Process

We propose a design method for supporting the design of rich user interfaces. It integrates software engineering and human-computer interaction practices through collaborations and focuses on the traceability of processes and models. In this paper, we investigate these collaborative aspects with a case study, which gave us some insights in order to improve the process.

Using software metrics in the evaluation of a conceptual component model

Every interactive system has a functional part and an interactive part. However the software engineering and the human-computer-interaction communities work separately in terms of methods, models and tools, which induces a work overhead for integrating the results of these efforts, as well as increased inconsistency risks. We endeavour to treat this problem by proposing a design method, which couples the functional kernel and the interaction design. In particular, this method proposes a specific way of structuring the interaction and the business spaces. The structure is based on components called Symphony Objects. In this article, we attempt to evaluate the technical aspect of a Symphony Object model issued from the method by measuring its implementations with software metrics.

Sonata: Flexible connections between interaction and business spaces

Every interactive system features a functional core and a user interface. Over the years, several types of software architectures for connecting these conceptual elements have been proposed, all of which fail to conciliate two essential qualities: enabling both business and interaction objects reuse, and limiting the amount of communication-specific code in reusable objects. We have described in previous work the Symphony Architecture, which bridges the gap between the interaction and business spaces, while requiring no code overhead in either business or interaction objects. Resulting development features minimal coupling between technology-agnostic business and interaction constructs, called Symphony Objects, and improves their reusability by clearly isolating them from the applicative logic and from technical objects. In this paper, we present an original software framework, called Sonata, which capitalizes on the conventions used for building and organizing Symphony Architecture instances, for minimizing the amount of configuration required for setting up connections between the business and interaction spaces.

Principes pour une méthode de conception de systèmes mixtes

This paper presents the principles and the setup of a design method. This method aims to unify interaction desing and functional core design. We focus at the moment on the methods functional branch (from business requirements to analysis), which allows the design of traditional or mixed interactive systems, depending on the requirements. The method is formalized and instrumented using a pattern-based approach.