Nor Shahida Mohamad Yusop

Reporting usability defects: do reporters report what software developers need?

Reporting usability defects can be a challenging task, especially in convincing the software developers that the reported defect actually requires attention. Stronger evidence in the form of specific details is often needed. However, research to date in software defect reporting has not investigated the value of capturing different information based on defect type. We surveyed practitioners in both open source communities and industrial software organizations about their usability defect reporting practices to better understand information needs to address usability defect reporting issues. Our analysis of 147 responses show that reporters often provide observed result, expected result and steps to reproduce when describing usability defects, similar to the way other types of defects are reported. However, reporters rarely provide usability-related information. In fact, reporters ranked cause of the problem is the most difficult information to provide followed by usability principle, video recoding, UI event trace and title. Conversely, software developers consider cause of the problem as the most helpful information for them to fix usability defects. Our statistical analysis reveals a substantial gap between what reporters provide and what software developers need when fixing usability defects. We propose some remedies to resolve this gap.

The design of a software fault prone application using evolutionary algorithm

Most of the current project management softwares are utilizing resources on developing areas in software projects. This is considerably essential in view of the meaningful impact towards time and cost-effective development. One of the major areas is the fault proneness prediction, which is used to find out the impact areas by using several approaches, techniques and applications. Software fault proneness application is an application based on computer aided approach to predict the probability that the software contains faults. The application will uses object oriented metrics and count metrics values from open source software as input values to the genetic algorithm for generation of the rules to classify the software modules in the categories of Faulty and Non Faulty modules. At the end of the process, the result will be visualized using genetic algorithm applet, bar and pie chart. This paper will discussed the detail design of software fault proneness application by using genetic algorithm based on the object oriented approach and will be presented using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The aim of the proposed design is to develop an automated tool for software development group to discover the most likely software modules to be high problematic in the future.

Reporting Usability Defects: A Systematic Literature Review

Usability defects can be found either by formal usability evaluation methods or indirectly during system testing or usage. No matter how they are discovered, these defects must be tracked and reported. However, empirical studies indicate that usability defects are often not clearly and fully described. This study aims to identify the state of the art in reporting of usability defects in the software engineering and usability engineering literature. We conducted a systematic literature review of usability defect reporting drawing from both the usability and software engineering literature from January 2000 until March 2016. As a result, a total of 57 studies were identified, in which we classified the studies into three categories: reporting usability defect information, analysing usability defect data and key challenges. Out of these, 20 were software engineering studies and 37 were usability studies. The results of this systematic literature review show that usability defect reporting processes suffer from a number of limitations, including: mixed data, inconsistency of terms and values of usability defect data, and insufficient attributes to classify usability defects. We make a number of recommendations to improve usability defect reporting and management in software engineering.

Understanding Usability Defect Reporting in Software Defect Repositories

Software defect management is a critical component of good software engineering practice. The information reported about a defect is a key element to ensure defects are rectified effectively. However, based on research, reporting usability defects using an existing defect tracking system (DTS) is impractical. This is due to text-centric design and lack of features to support usability attributes. In addition, not all defects can be explained textually; especially defects that involve interface redesign. Another aspect to consider is that the reporters describe usability defects based on their usability knowledge and the information available at the time the defects are found. Defects stored in a DTS in a universal format. Therefore, when reporting usability defects there are some possibilities: the data may not be relevant or irrelevant, useful or not useful, or may even be beyond the reporters knowledge. This makes it impossible to submit a high quality defect report. To address these issues, I propose a custom defect template that can adjust defect form according to whom, when and how the defect is found. In this way, it will provide flexibility to the reporters to record data based on their expertise and knowledge.

Survey of Software Engineering Practices in Undergraduate Information System Projects

Past research stated that the effectiveness of software engineering (SE) course is determined by theoretical knowledge, added with some practices and improved by the individual experiences [2]. An Information Systems Engineering programme, coded as CS226, has been introduced in Universiti Teknologi MARA in December 2000 with the aim to produce graduates who have extensive knowledge and skills in information technology mainly in software engineering fields. This paper describes a survey done to understand the undergraduate students’ habit in applying SE practices in developing IS projects. This research collected data by distributing questionnaires to 78 ISE students. The questionnaire consists of questions related to systems planning, systems requirement and analysis, system design and implementation and system testing activities. Data collected are then analyzed using SPSS and the result can be used to measure the effectiveness of the courses taught and improve flaws that exists in SE curriculum.