Ismayle de Sousa Santos

A Quality Model for Human-Computer Interaction Evaluation in Ubiquitous Systems

The improvement in computational device miniaturization and in wireless communication has moved forward relevant advances in ubiquitous systems development. Such systems are capable of monitoring environments and users in order to provide services as naturally as possible. These systems offer new types of interactions, such as more implicit and transparent exchanges with users. Thus, the ubiquitous systems present new challenges in quality evaluation of human-computer interaction, as any assessment of quality should take into account the peculiarities of these new types of interactions. This paper proposes a quality model composed of specific characteristics and measures to human-computer interaction quality evaluation in ubiquitous systems. It also reports results obtained from a case study conducted to evaluate an application based on this model.

Quality characteristics and measures for human---computer interaction evaluation in ubiquitous systems

The advent of ubiquitous systems places even more focus on users, since these systems must support their daily activities in such a transparent way that does not disturb them. Thus, much more attention should be provided to human–computer interaction (HCI) and, as a consequence, to its quality. Dealing with quality issues implies first the identification of the quality characteristics that should be achieved and, then, which software measures should be used to evaluate them in a target system. Therefore, this work aims to identify what quality characteristics and measures have been used for the HCI evaluation of ubiquitous systems. In order to achieve our goal, we performed a large literature review, using a systematic mapping study, and we present our results in this paper. We identified 41 pertinent papers that were deeply analyzed to extract quality characteristics and software measures. We found 186 quality characteristics, but since there were divergences on their definitions and duplicated characteristics, an analysis of synonyms by peer review based on the equivalence of definitions was also done. This analysis allowed us to define a final suitable set composed of 27 quality characteristics, where 21 are generic to any system but are particularized for ubiquitous applications and 6 are specific for this domain. We also found 218 citations of measures associated with the characteristics, although the majority of them are simple definitions with no detail about their measurement functions. Our results provide not only an overview of this area to guide researchers in directing their efforts but also it can help practitioners in evaluating ubiquitous systems using these measures.

Test case design for context-aware applications

ContextCurrent software systems have increasingly implemented context-aware adaptations to handle the diversity of conditions of their surrounding environment. Therefore, people are becoming used to a variety of context-aware software systems (CASS). This context-awareness brings challenges to the software construction and testing because the context is unpredictable and may change at any time. Therefore, software engineers need to consider the dynamic context changes while testing CASS. Different test case design techniques (TCDT) have been proposed to support the testing of CASS. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no analysis of these proposals on the advantages, limitations and their effective support to context variation during testing. ObjectiveTo gather empirical evidence on TCDT concerned with CASS by identifying, evaluating and synthesizing knowledge available in the literature. MethodTo undertake a secondary study (quasi-Systematic Literature Review) on TCDT for CASS regarding their assessed quality characteristics, used coverage criteria, test type, and test technique. ResultsFrom 833 primary studies published between 2004 and 2014, just 17 studies regard the design of test cases for CASS. Most of them focus on functional suitability. Furthermore, some of them take into account the changes in the context by providing specific test cases for each context configuration (static perspective) during the test execution. These 17 studies revealed five challenges affecting the design of test cases and 20 challenges regarding the testing of CASS. Besides, seven TCDT are not empirically evaluated. ConclusionA few TCDT partially support the testing of CASS. However, it has not been observed evidence on any TCDT supporting the truly context-aware testing, which that can adapt the expected output based on the context variation (dynamic perspective) during the test execution. It is an open issue deserving greater attention from researchers to increase the testing coverage and ensure users confidence in CASS.

Challenges for usability testing in ubiquitous systems

Ubiquitous computing expands both the place where the software system is used and the traditional way of interacting with its users. This happens since technologies should be fully integrated in the user daily activities in such way they become indistinguishable. So, in this scenario, new characteristics can emerge like calmness, transparency and context awareness that should be evaluated to assure the ubiquitous system quality. One of the methods used for evaluation of traditional systems is usability testing. Then, in this paper, we identify the main challenges to perform usability testing in ubiquitous systems based on an overview of the literature studies and on our own experience in testing this kind of systems. We also describe our ongoing work where we investigate usability testing to be designed considering context-awareness and to be supported by specific measurements to the ubiquitous computing scenario.

Machine Learning and Location Fingerprinting to Improve UX in a Ubiquitous Application

GREatPrint is a ubiquitous application that prints documents from mobile devices to the closest printer to the user at the GREat research lab. The first version of the application (GREatPrint V1) was evaluated and showed a low accuracy in the detection of the closest printer. In order to improve the application, this study proposes a new version of GREatPrint (GREatPrint V2) based on a machine learning algorithm and location fingerprinting technique. Therefore, this paper describes GREatPrint V2 with the approach used to improve its context-awareness. Also, it presents results from a case study performed to evaluate the user interaction quality through software quality measures for ubiquitous systems.

Fifteen years of industry and academia partnership: lessons learned from a Brazilian research group

In Brazil, software industry and academia have formed partnerships more often due to funding agencies and tax incentives originated, for example, from Brazils Informatics Law. Like in many relationships, each party brings different experiences, and goals to be achieved. However, for a partnership to be successful, it is necessary to learn how to deal with these differences, respecting the limits of each party and fostering mutual growth. The aim of this paper is to present challenges and lessons learned faced by the GREat research group at the Federal University of Cear × over the past 15 years of partnership with industry. Besides, we present the GREat Business process for projects with industry and how the software engineering evolved in our group within these projects. We believe this report can help other industry and academic partnerships around the world not only because our main partners are international companies but also because what we have learned from practice is globally applied.

Model Verification of Dynamic Software Product Lines

Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs) extend the concept of Software Product Lines enabling adaptation at runtime according to context changes. Such dynamic behavior is typically designed using adaptation rules, context-triggered actions responsible for features activation and deactivation at runtime. The erroneous specification and the interleaving of adaptation rules (i.e., the parallel execution of adaptation rules) can lead DSPL to reach an undesired (improperly or defective) product configuration at runtime. Thus, in order to improve the reliability of DSPL behavior, design faults must be rigorously identified and eliminated in the early stages of DSPL development. In this paper, we address this issue introducing Dynamic Feature Transition Systems (DFTSs) that allow the modeling and formal verification of the DSPLs adaptive behavior. These transition systems are derived from the adaptation rules and a Context Kripke Structure, which is a context evolution model. Furthermore, we formally define five properties that can be used to identify existing design faults in DSPL design. Aiming to assess the feasibility of our approach, a feasibility study was conducted using two DSPLs, Mobile Visit Guides and Car. In both cases, design faults were automatically detected indicating that our formalism can help in the detection of design faults in the DSPLs adaptive behavior.

Templates for textual use cases of software product lines: results from a systematic mapping study and a controlled experiment

Use case templates can be used to describe functional requirements of a Software Product Line. However, to the best of our knowledge, no efforts have been made to collect and summarize these existing templates and no empirical evaluation of the use cases’ comprehensibility provided by these templates has been addressed yet. The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we present a systematic mapping study about the SPL variability description using textual use cases. From this mapping, we found twelve SPL use case templates and observed the need not only for the application of these templates in real SPL but also for supporting tools. Secondly, this work presents an evaluation of the comprehensibility of SPL use cases specified in these templates through a controlled experiment with 48 volunteers. The results of this experiment show that the specification of variabilities in the steps’ numeric identifiers of the textual use cases is better to the use case understanding than the other approaches identified. We also found evidence that the specification of variabilities at the end of the use cases favors the comprehension of them and the use of questions associated to the variation points in the use cases improves the understanding of use cases. We conclude that each characteristic of the existing templates has an impact on the SPL use case understanding and this should be taken into account when choosing one.

Software Testing Process in a Test Factory - From Ad hoc Activities to an Organizational Standard.

Software testing is undoubtedly essential for any software development. However, testing is an expensive activity, usually costing more than 50% of the development budget. Thus, to save resources while performing tests with high quality, many software development companies are hiring test factories, which are specialized enterprises for the delivery of outsourced testing services for other companies. Although this kind of organization is common in the industry, we have found few empirical studies concerning test factories. In this paper, we report our experience in the definition, use, and improvement of a software testing process within a test factory. To support the implantation of the test factory, we applied the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle using the lessons learned in the PDCA check phase to improve the testing process. As a result, we have decreased the number of failures found after the software delivery and thus a higher value for DRE (Defect Removal Efficiency) measure. We also present 12 lessons learned that may be applicable by other test factories.

Retrospective for the Last 10 years of Teaching Software Engineering in UFC's Computer Department

Software Engineering (SE) is a discipline of Computer Science dedicated to teaching topics related to software development. It involves a wide variety of topics, so the teaching of SE is a challenge, especially to make the discipline attractive to the students. Therefore, in the last 10 years, the process of teaching SE has been applied and improved continually in the computer science course of the Computer Science Department of the Federal University of Ceará. This paper presents a current version of this process, as well as the results of questionnaires answered by students and monitors. The activities related to the discipline of SE are also presented, including dynamics and the practical use of the theory through the development of software applications by the students.