Natasha M. Costa Valentim

Integrating the Usability into the Software Development Process

With the increasing use of interactive applications, there is a need for a development with better quality and a good interaction that facilitates the use for end users, because such applications are increasingly present in daily life. Therefore, it is necessary to include usability, which is one of the important quality attributes, in the development process for obtaining good acceptance rates and, consequently, improving the quality of these applications. In this paper we present a Systematic Mapping Study (SM) that assists categorizing and summarizing technologies that have been used in order to improve usability. The results from our SM show some technologies that can help improving usability in various applications. Also, it identifies gaps that still need to be researched. We found that most technologies have been proposed for the Testing phase (67.28%) and that Web applications are the most evaluated type of application (52.65%). We also identified that few technologies assist designers improving usability in the early stages of the development process (13.50% Analysis phase and 15.95% Design phase). The results from this SM allow observing the state of the art regarding technologies that can be integrated into the development process, aimed at improving the usability of interactive applications.

A controlled experiment with Usability Inspection Techniques applied to Use Case Specifications: comparing the MIT 1 and the UCE techniques

A Use Case Model is composed of use cases that describe software functionalities through Use Case Specifications. The evaluation of the specifications that compose such a model can allow for an early identification of usability defects. We previously proposed MIT 1-Model Inspection Technique for Usability Evaluation that aims to support the identification of usability defects through the evaluation of use cases specifications. In this paper, we present the evaluation of this technique through a controlled experiment that measured its efficiency, effectiveness, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness when compared to the Use Case Evaluation (UCE) method. Our quantitative findings indicate that MIT 1 allows users to find more usability defects in less time than UCE. However, UCE was considered easiest to use and more useful than MIT 1, highlighting improvement needs for MIT 1.

Evaluating the Use of Pair Programming and Coding Dojo in Teaching Mockups Development: An Empirical Study

Collaborative programming is an important pedagogical tool in computer science higher education. In this context, Pair Programming has been established as an effective practice for teaching programming. In addition, Coding Dojo has recently emerged as a collaborative group practice that uses Pair Programming as a mechanism to allow everyone to participate. However, both Pair Programming and Coding Dojo are rarely used in different types of programming tasks such as front-end programming tasks. In this paper, we present an empirical study comparing Pair Programming and Coding Dojo in the teaching of mock-ups development. Our goal was to evaluate both practices regarding three dimensions: motivation, user experience and learning perceived by students. The results showed that Pair Programming was well accepted by the students with positive results in all three dimensions. Moreover, although Coding Dojo has presented positive results in the leaning process, students reported several challenges related to motivation and user experience.

The students' perspectives on applying design thinking for the design of mobile applications

Design Thinking (DT) is relevant for companies committed to developing a more creative and innovative application. DT provides a human-centered view of technological artifact design. Therefore, it is important to learn DT in Computer Science and Software Engineering courses as an analytic and creative process, in order to better prepare students for the software development industry. We conducted an empirical study with 17 postgraduate students in the context of mobile applications design. We used coding procedures from the Grounded Theory method for analyzing the obtained qualitative data. Based on the results, we identified some difficulties that participants experienced in using different DT techniques. The results of this study can help teachers understand the difficulties faced by students in learning DT and, consequently, help them to look for new teaching strategies for their classes. Moreover, these results can contribute to the software industry showing the competitive advantages of using DT in the design of the applications under development, especially in mobile applications.

Collaborative identification of code smells: a multi-case study

Code smells are anomalous program structures that may indicate software maintainability problems. God Classes and Feature Envies are examples of code smells that frequently become the target of software refactoring. However, smell identification might be harder than expected due to the subjectivity involved in the recognition of the apparently simple structure of each smell. Moreover, smell identification might require the knowledge of multiple program elements, which are better understood by different developers. Thus, the use of collaboration among developers may have the potential to improve effectiveness on smell identification. However, current knowledge, especially empirically developed and evaluated in the industry, is quite scarce. This paper reports an industrial case study aimed at observing how 13 developers individually and collaboratively performed smell identification in five software projects from two software development organizations. Our results suggest that collaboration contributes to improving effectiveness on the identification of a wide range of code smells. We also analyzed the factors contributing to such effectiveness improvement.

How Do Software Developers Identify Design Problems?: A Qualitative Analysis

When a software design decision has a negative impact on one or more quality attributes, we call it a design problem. For example, the Fat Interface problem indicates that an interface exposes non-cohesive services Thus, clients and implementations of this interface may have to handle with services that they are not interested. A design problem such as this hampers the extensibility and maintainability of a software system. As illustrated by the example, a single design problem often affects several elements in the program. Despite its harmfulness, it is difficult to identify a design problem in a system. It is even more challenging to identify design problems when the source code is the only available artifact. In particular, no study has observed what strategy(ies) developers use in practice to identify design problems when the design documentation is unavailable. In order to address this gap, we conducted a qualitative analysis on how developers identify design problems in two different scenarios: when they are either familiar (Scenario 1) or unfamiliar (Scenario 2) with the analyzed systems. Developers familiar with the systems applied a diverse set of strategies during the identification of each design problem. Some strategies were frequently used to locate code elements for analysis, and other strategies were frequently used to confirm design problems in these elements. Developers unfamiliar with the systems relied only on the use of code smells along the task. Despite some differences among the subjects from both scenarios, we noticed that developers often search for multiple indicators during the identification of each design problem.

Privacy Evaluation of Online Social Network Stories Feature: An Empirical Study with PDM

In recent years, privacy design and evaluation in the context of Online Social Network (OSNs) have become a relevant requirement to support the quality of use of these applications. This paper presents a study about the Privacy Design Model (PDM) that is used to support the designer in the elaboration and evaluation of the designer-to-user discourse in OSNs. In this context, the aim of this study was to extend the initial evaluation of the PDM. We analyzed the understanding and perception about ease-of-use and usefulness of PDM from the point of view of potential designers. In this way, we seek to understand how PDM can be used as a tool to support the privacy evaluate. Our results show that PDM was able to express clarity and comprehension as a tool to support the evaluation of privacy in OSNs. In this way, we hope to provide a better understanding about the privacy dimensions proposed in PDM and which can be changed to improve on it.

Evaluating an Inspection Technique for Use Case Specifications

Usability inspections in early stages of the development process help revealing problems that can be corrected at a lower cost than at advanced stages of the development. The MIT 1 (Model Inspection Technique for Usability Evaluation) is a usability inspection technique, which aims to anticipate usability problems through the evaluation of use cases. This technique was evaluated using a controlled experiment aimed at measuring its efficiency and effectiveness, when compared to the Heuristic Evaluation (HEV) method. According to quantitative results, the MIT 1 exceeded the HEV in terms of effectiveness and obtained a similar performance in terms of efficiency. In other words, the MIT 1 allows finding more problems than the HEV. On the other hand, the subjects spent more time finding these problems using MIT 1. Moreover, the MIT 1 was considered easy to use and useful by the subjects of the study. We analysed the qualitative data using the procedures from the Grounded Theory (GT) method and results indicate improvement opportunities.

Applying user-centered techniques to analyze and design a mobile application

IntroductionTechniques that help in understanding and designing user needs are increasingly being used in Software Engineering to improve the acceptance of applications. Among these techniques we can cite personas, scenarios and interaction models. Personas are fictitious representations of target users. Scenarios provide various types of information at different levels of abstraction. Interaction models help in design of an adequate user interaction with the system.Case descriptionThis paper presents a research that reports a set of practical activities applied by a software team using techniques in the analysis and design phases of a mobile application. In the analysis phase, we created personas and scenarios for the extraction of requirements. In the design phase, we created interaction models for describes the behavior between user and system during the interaction. We employed these interaction models to develop other artifacts, such as prototypes. In addition, we presented a technique developed by the analysis and design team for the inspection of interaction models. This technique reduced the spread of defects in the interaction models.Discussion and evaluationFrom the results of this research, we suggest: (i) employing personas and scenarios to understand the requirements; (ii) employing interaction models to understand the behavior between user and system; and (iii) using interaction models as basis to develop other artifacts.ConclusionsThrough the reporting of this set of practical activities, we hope to provide support for software engineers willing to adopt techniques that support the analysis and design of applications aiming at better quality of use for their users.

An Acceptance Empirical Assessment of Open Source Test Tools.

Software testing is one of the verification and validation activities of software development process. Test automation is relevant, since manual application of tests is laborious and more prone to error. The choice of test tools should be based on criteria and evidence of their usefulness and ease of use. This paper presents an acceptance empirical assessment of open source testing tools. Practitioners and graduate students evaluated five tools often used in the industry. The results describe how these tools are perceived in terms of ease of use and usefulness. These results can support software practitioners in the process of choosing testing tools for