René Noël

Development of Software that Supports the Improvement of the Empathy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by a decrease in social interaction, communication, creativity, imagination and organization of daily living activities of those who have this condition. Empathy is a skill related to understanding the feelings of other people, which is an important element of social relationships. Currently in Chile there are no software applications that support the development of empathy in autistic children by taking advantage of the characteristics of multi-touch devices. For this reason, this study presents the development of such software. Due to the specific characteristics and needs of the target user, the User Centered Design methodology was used to guide the design process. This article presents the stages of the design process and describes the developed application. We also discuss the lessons learned during the process.

Developing competencies for software requirements analysis through project based learning

The course “Software Analysis Methodologies” of Computer Science career at the University of Valparaiso has among its objectives to contribute to the development of competencies related to software requirements analysis. Traditionally, through the course the students applied methods and techniques for software requirements analysis in a project with real stakeholders. Nonetheless, this activities were performed outside the classroom, not allowing the teacher to assess the performance of critical competencies, not only related to the application of software engineering knowledge, but also related to the articulation of skills such as obtaining requirements through interviews, information organization and modeling, peer communication, analysis and validation using technical language, conflict management with stakeholders, and requirements validation with stakeholders using nontechnical language. This paper presents the approach of project-based learning with work activities with real stakeholders in classes. As result it has managed to continuously assess the development of skills, a pass rate of 96%, and the achievement of learning outcomes validated by a real counterpart (stakeholder), and also by the teacher and teammates. Also, this initiative shows the articulation of two Institutional Improvement Projects funded by the Ministry of Education, for STEM teaching methodologies, and for the application of Information Technology in the classroom.

Using app inventor to change perceptions about software engineering

During recent years, a growing shortage of skilled professionals in the area of Information and Communication Technologies has been seen. This is compounded by a lack of general awareness regarding the role of the professionals in this area of our society. The rise in recent years in the use of mobile devices translates into an opportunity to help solve the problems mentioned above. This paper presents the design, structure, execution and results of a mobile applications development workshop that also aims to increase the interest of secondary education students in following a Software Engineering career. The design of the workshop is discussed in terms of constructivist learning foundation concepts, and the selection of tools is presented following key features for supporting the designed activities. The results obtained show that the workshop had a positive impact on the perception of Software Engineering as a possible field of education in the 60 students that participated during the implementation of the workshop. It also explores gender differences in terms of areas of interest for the development of mobile solutions, programming performance and preferred development activities.

Mitigating security threats using tactics and patterns: a controlled experiment

Security Patterns and Architectural Tactics are two well-known techniques for designing secure software systems. There is little or no empirical evidence on their relative effectiveness for security threats mitigation. This study presents MUA (Misuse activities + Patterns), an extension of misuse activities that incorporates patterns, and reports on a controlled comparison of this method that incorporate these techniques for threat mitigation with regard to MAST (Methodology for Applying Security Tactics) which already incorporates tactics. A simple Tsunami Alert System design was analyzed and modified by 40 undergraduate students, and significant difference was found for security threats mitigation (averaging 3.0 for Patterns versus 1.9 for Tactics, in a 1-to-5 scale). This result is contrary to previous results with professional subjects, leading us to believe that novices benefit more of detailed advice than of high-level concepts.

Software Development Initiatives to Identify and Mitigate Security Threats - Two Systematic Mapping Studies

Software Security and development experts have addressed the problem of building secure software systems. There are several processes and initiatives to achieve secure software systems. However, most of these lack empirical evidence of its application and impact in building secure software systems. Two systematic mapping studies (SM) have been conducted to cover the existent initiatives for identification and mitigation of security threats. The SMs created were executed in two steps, first in 2015 July, and complemented through a backward snowballing in 2016 July. Integrated results of these two SM studies show a total of 30 relevant sources were identified; 17 different initiatives covering threats identification and 14 covering the mitigation of threats were found. All the initiatives were associated to at least one activity of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC); while 6 showed signs of being applied in industrial settings, only 3 initiatives presented experimental evidence of its results through controlled experiments, some of the other selected studies presented case studies or proposals.

Proyect@ matemáticas: A learning object for supporting the practitioners in autism spectrum disorders

Autism Spectrum Disorder is the name of a group of neurodevelopmental disorders which affect social skills that should be developed at an early age. For this reason, they may hinder the development of other basic skills such as the cognitive ones related to logical and mathematical thinking. The development of these skills is a primary goal for special education initiatives on a permanent basis as they allow the acquisition of knowledge that is used in everyday life. These skills may also facilitate social inclusion and a future insertion in the labor market. In Chile there are no Learning Objects available that potentiate the development of mathematical skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. For this reason, a Learning Object for multi-touch devices was developed in order to support therapeutic and co-therapeutic initiatives for the development of math skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The Learning Object is currently available at Google Play and had more than 15,000 downloads.

Informal HCI: what may students learn from playability issues during a game design workshop?

Human-Computer Interaction topics have been previously used to motivate and attract students to the field of Computer Science. However, as students are growing up in contact with several interactive computational devices, one could suspect that they already possess an empirical, informal knowledge about the quality of some types of human-computer interfaces. In order to test this hypothesis, we developed a Game Design Workshop to be offered to high school students. Based on the results of its first offering, we identified that issues related to displaying the game status and score, response time of controls and graphical and sound features were quite relevant to students. Students added additional features to solve those issues in a spontaneous way. An analysis of the developed games indicates that students had to learn and apply new concepts related to programming in order to implement the additional features.

Adding planned design to xp might help novices' productivity (or might not): two controlled experiments

Extreme Programming (XP) suggests using Evolutionary design, always implementing the simplest solution that satisfies the current iterations requirements, instead of Planned (or Traditional) up-front design. Some developers have questioned the usefulness of Evolutionary approachs enabling practices (e.g., refactoring, test-driven development) arguing for the naturalness of, and need for, Planned design. Two controlled experiments were conducted to compare both approaches regarding product quality and programmer productivity. Results from both studies show that (1) there is no significant difference in the product quality, independently of experience, but (2) novices are more productive using the Planned approach.