John W. Castro

A HCI technique for improving requirements elicitation

Context: To develop usable software we need to understand the users that will interact with the system. Personas is a HCI technique that gathers information about users in order to comprehend their characteristics. This information is used to define fictitious persons on which development should focus. Personas provides an understanding of the user, often overlooked in SE developments. Objective: The goal of our research is to modify Personas to readily build the technique into the requirements stage of regular SE developments. Method: We tried to apply Coopers version of the Personas technique and we found shortcomings in both the definition of the procedure to be enacted and the formalization of the product resulting from the execution of each step of the Personas technique. For each of these limitations (up to a total of 11), we devised an improvement to be built into Personas. We have incorporated these improvements into a SE version of Personas. The improved Personas avoid the weaknesses encountered by an average software developer unfamiliar with HCI techniques applying the original Personas. Results: We aim to improve requirements elicitation through the use of Personas. We have systematized and formalized Personas in the SE tradition in order to build this new version of the technique into the requirements stage. We have applied our proposal in an application example. Conclusion: The integration of Personas into the SE requirements stage might improves the understanding of what the software product should do and how it should behave. We have modified the HCI Personas technique to comply with the levels of systematization required by SE. We have enriched the SE requirements process by incorporating Personas activities into requirements activities. Requirements elicitation and requirements analysis are the RE activities most affected by incorporating Personas.

Integrating the Personas Technique into the Requirements Analysis Activity

To develop usable systems, it is necessary to understand the users that interact with the system. The personas technique from the human-computer interaction discipline (HCI) gathers data about users, gains an understanding of their characteristics, defines fictitious personas based on this understanding and focuses on these personas throughout the software development process. The aim of our research is to build personas into routine software development following software engineering (SE) guidelines. The intention is to improve the usability of the resulting software. To achieve this aim, we first present a modification of the personas technique, called Personas*. This new technique complies with SE systematization standards. Second, we incorporate the proposed Personas* technique into the software process requirements analysis activity. The benefits to be gained from the Personas* technique are: i) it provides an understanding of the user, which SE traditionally has tended to overlook, and ii) it enriches the requirements analysis activities enabling the software engineer to focus on the people involved in software system use.

A systematic mapping study on the open source software development process

Background: There is no globally accepted open source software development process to define how open source software is developed in practice. A process description is important for coordinating all the software development activities involving both people and technology. Aim: The research question that this study sets out to answer is: What activities do open source software process models contain? The activity groups on which it focuses are Concept Exploration, Software Requirements, Design, Maintenance and Evaluation. Method: We conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS). A SMS is a form of systematic literature review that aims to identify and classify available research papers concerning a particular issue. Results: We located a total of 29 primary studies, which we categorized by the open source software project that they examine and by activity types (Concept Exploration, Software Requirements, Design, Maintenance and Evaluation). The activities present in most of the open source software development processes were Execute Tests and Conduct Reviews, which belong to the Evaluation activities group. Maintenance is the only group that has primary studies addressing all the activities that it contains. Conclusions: The primary studies located by the SMS are the starting point for analyzing the open source software development process and proposing a process model for this community. The papers in our paper pool that describe a specific open source software project provide more regarding our research question than the papers that talk about open source software development without referring to a specific open source software project.

Requirements Engineering Related Usability Techniques Adopted in Agile Development Processes

This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports FLEXOR and “Realizando Experimentos en la Industria del Software: Comprension del Paso de Laboratorio a la Realidad” projects (TIN2014-52129-R and TIN2014-60490-P, respectively) and the eMadrid-CM “Investigacion y Desarrollo de Tecnologias Educativas en la Comunidad de Madrid” project (S2013/ICE-2715)

Extension of Personas Technique for the Requirements Stage

To develop usable software we need to understand the users that will interact with the system. Personas is a HCI technique that gathers information about users in order to comprehend their characteristics. This information is used to define fictitious persons on which development should focus. Personas provides an understanding of the user, often overlooked in SE developments. We aim to improve requirements elicitation through the use of Personas. We have systematized and formalized Personas in the SE tradition in order to build this new version of the technique into the requirements stage.

A pilot empirical study of applying a usability technique in an open source software project

Abstract Context The growth in the number of non-technical open source software (OSS) application users and the escalating use of these applications have redoubled the need for, and interest in, developing usable OSS. OSS communities are unclear about which techniques to use in each development process activity. Objective The aim of our research is to adapt a usability technique (visual brainstorming) to an OSS project and evaluate the feasibility of its application. Method We used the case study research method to investigate technique application and participation in a project. To do this, we participated as volunteers in the HistoryCal project. Results We identified adverse conditions that were an obstacle to technique application (like it was not easy to recruit OSS users to participate) and modified the technique to make it applicable. Conclusion We conclude that these changes were helpful for applying the technique using web artifacts like blogs.

Adapting Usability Techniques for Application in Open Source Software: A Multiple Case Study

Abstract Context As a result of the growth of non-developer users of OSS applications, usability has over the last ten years begun to attract the interest of the open source software (OSS) community. The OSS community has some special characteristics (such as worldwide geographical distribution of both users and developers and missing resources) which are an obstacle to the direct adoption of many usability techniques as specified in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. Objective The aim of this research is to adapt and evaluate the feasibility of applying four usability techniques: user profiles, personas, direct observation and post-test information to four OSS projects from the viewpoint of the development team. Method The applied research method was a multiple case study of the following OSS projects: Quite Universal Circuit Simulator, PSeInt, FreeMind and OpenOffice Writer. Results We formalized the application procedure of each of the adapted usability techniques. We found that either there were no procedures for adopting usability techniques in OSS or they were not fully systematized. Additionally, we identified the adverse conditions that are an obstacle to their adoption in OSS and propose the special adaptations required to overcome the obstacles. To avoid some of the adverse conditions, we created web artefacts (online survey, wiki and forum) that are very popular in the OSS field. Conclusion It is necessary to adapt usability techniques for application in OSS projects considering their idiosyncrasy. Additionally, we found that there are obstacles (for example, number of participant users, biased information provided by developers) to the application of the techniques. Despite these obstacles, it is feasible to apply the adapted techniques in OSS projects.

Integrating Usability into the Agile Development Process: A preliminary empirical study

Background: Interest in the integration of the agile software development process (ASDP) and user-centred design (UCD) has grown over the last decade. However, there are not many papers that study this issue holistically and uncover the current state of this integration. Aim: This study sets out to answer the following research question: What is the current state of integration between agile processes and usability? Method: We conduct a systematic mapping study (SMS). We analyze the articles and the results were cross checked by the authors, and any disagreements were discussed and resolved in meetings. Results: We retrieved a total of 161 Primary Studies. There are very few papers that study the literature holistically and report the current state of usability in the ASDP. Conclusions: We categorized according to four criteria: process, practice, team and technology integration. The largest group refers to process integration with a total of 76 Primary Studies.