Simone Diniz Junqueira Barbosa

Systematic hypermedia application design with OOHDM

In this paper we analyze the process of hypermedia applications design and implementation, focusing in particular on two critical aspects of these applications: the navigational and interface structure. We discuss the way in which we build the navigation and abstract interface models using the Object-Oriented Hypermedia Design Method (OOHDM); we show which concerns must be taken into account for each task by giving examples from a real project we are developing, the Portinari Project. We show which implementation concerns must be considered when defining interface behavior, discussing both a Toolbook and a HTML implementation of the example application.

Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces

U User interfaces can be viewed as one-shot, higher-order messages sent from designers to users. The content of such messages is a designers conception of who the users are, what their needs and expectations are, and, more important, how the designer has chosen to meet these requirements through an interactive artifact. The form of the messages is an interactive language (i.e., a series of organized dialog patterns determining how and which other lower-order messages can be exchanged between users and systems. From this perspective, user interface design is a semiotic engineering task [1] whose target is to convey the specific principles of communication that are embedded in any software arti-fact. Thus, designers should be assisted in achieving this goal and in evaluating how well they do it in different situations.

A semiotic engineering approach to user interface design

Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. By presenting some of the results we have reached with semiotic engineering over the last few years, we suggest that the main contributions of semiotic theory in supporting HCI design are: to provide designers with new perceptions on the process and product of HCI design; to bind together all the stages of software development and use, giving them a unique homogeneous treatment; and to pose innovative questions that extend the frontiers of HCI investigations.

Designing and evaluating Interaction as conversation: A modeling language based on semiotic engineering

A number of design models have been proposed in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to support user-centered system design. High-level, abstract task models and detailed interface specification languages are among the most widely used. However, the need for designing applications to run in a number of different devices and platforms presents new issues that must be addressed from a platform-separable perspective. In this paper, we show how an interaction-as-conversation metaphor may face this challenge, and present an interaction modeling language that allows designers to build a blueprint of the range of interactions that will be able to take place in the application. Our goal is twofold: to motivate the designers to reflect upon the interactive solution they are creating, and at the same time provide a skeleton interaction specification that may be easily instantiated for different platforms or devices.

Semiotic engineering principles for evaluating end-user programming environments

Abstract End user programming (EUP) environments are difficult to evaluate empirically. Most users do not engage in programming, and those who do are often discouraged by the complexity of programming tasks. Often the difficulties arise from the programming languages in which users are expected to express themselves. But there are other difficulties associated with designing extensions and adjustments to artifacts that have been originally designed by others. This paper characterizes EUP as a semiotic design process, and presents two principles that can be used to illustrate the distinctions between the various kinds of techniques and approaches proposed in this field. The principles support a preliminary theoretical model of EUP and should thus facilitate the definition and interpretation of empirical evaluation studies. They also define some specific semiotic qualifications that more usable and applicable EUP languages could be expected to have.

A semiotic engineering approach to HCI

Designing software involves good perception, good reasoning, and a talent to express oneself effectively through programming and interactive languages. Semiotic theories can help HCI designers increase their power to perceive, reason and communicate. In this paper we present the semiotic engineering approach to HCI and some of the results that have been reached at the Semiotic Engineering Research Group (SERG) at the Informatics Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).

A Semiotic Framing for End-User Development

One approach to designing usable and enjoyable computer applications is to say that designers need better methods and tools to understand users and their contexts, and to encode this understanding into closed computer systems. Another is to acknowledge that there will always be unattended user needs, and that the way to increase users’ satisfaction is to help them modify systems in order to meet constantly changing requirements. Different techniques are proposed in one approach usually without reference to the other. We present an overarching perspective of human–computer interaction where both meet, and provide a semiotic characterization of designers’ and users’ activities that clarifies the tradeoffs involved in designing and choosing techniques in either approach. Central to this characterization is the role of intentions in what users mean to say and do when using computers. Our characterization is in line with a broader concept of usability, in which systems must support users’ improvisation and creativity. 1. Meeting End-Users’ Expectations In spite of speedy technological evolution and voluminous knowledge generated by research and development in human–computer interaction (HCI), users of information technology (IT) products still have to live with a high dosage of frustration and confusion when trying to get systems to do what they want. Building usable and enjoyable systems remains a challenge for the IT industry, regardless of the excitement brought about by such things as miniature multi-function mobile devices, sophisticated virtual reality caves, or intelligent buildings and vehicles. The old challenge can be stated in very simple terms: how do we design technology that meets the users’ needs? Very large portions of contemporary work in HCI center around techniques and tools that can help designers enhance their understanding of users and use situations. Their aim is to minimize the mismatch between what users want to do with computer systems and how computer systems respond to their expectations. There is a variety of approaches for solving this problem, two of them lying at opposite ends. One seeks to increase a designer’s ability to capture finer distinctions in the users’ behavior and context, and to encode such improved distinctions into computer systems. The idea is to cover a maximum share of the users’ world and to prepare the system to react appropriately as situations evolve. The other approach seeks to empower users with the ability to tailor computer systems to their specific needs, by customizing the systems’ Henry Lieberman et al. (eds.), End User Development, 401–426.

A case study for evaluating interface design through communicability

Communicability evaluation is a method based on semiotic engineering that aims at assessing how designers communicate to users their design intents and chosen interactive principles, and thus complements traditional usability evaluation methods. In this paper, we present a case study in which we evaluate how communicablity tagging of an application changes along users learning curves. Our main goal was to have indications of how communicability evaluation along a learning period helps provide valuable information about interface designs, and identify communicative and interactive problems, as users become more proficient in the application.

UISKEI: a sketch-based prototyping tool for defining and evaluating user interface behavior

Sketching is viewed as an efficient way to design the user interface. However, there are few tools that help designers go from sketching the user interface to simulating its behavior with endusers during early evaluation. We have developed a pen-based tool called UISKEI, which goes beyond allowing designers to define simple navigation between user interface snapshots, into allowing them to define more complex interactive behavior with conditional changes in the state of the user interface. We have conducted two studies on how UISKEI compares to similar prototyping techniques: paper and pencil; widget-based (Balsamiq) and other sketch-based user interface prototyping tools (DENIM and SketchiXML). The studies revealed that UISKEIs sketch-based definition of the user interface behavior for later simulation is better than the analogous mechanisms provided by the other tools.

Quantifying usability of domain-specific languages

A usability measurement framework for DSLs was developed based on the cognitive dimensions of notations.With our proposed metrics was possible to identify DSL usability limitations.Our metrics suite revealed specific DSL features favoring maintenance tasks.Eight critical DSL usability dimensions based on the CDN framework were analyzed in this study. A domain-specific language (DSL) aims to support software development by offering abstractions to a particular domain. It is expected that DSLs improve the maintainability of artifacts otherwise produced with general-purpose languages. However, the maintainability of the DSL artifacts and, hence, their adoption in mainstream development, is largely dependent on the usability of the language itself. Unfortunately, it is often hard to identify their usability strengths and weaknesses early, as there is no guidance on how to objectively reveal them. Usability is a multi-faceted quality characteristic, which is challenging to quantify beforehand by DSL stakeholders. There is even less support on how to quantitatively evaluate the usability of DSLs used in maintenance tasks. In this context, this paper reports a study to compare the usability of textual DSLs under the perspective of software maintenance. A usability measurement framework was developed based on the cognitive dimensions of notations. The framework was evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively using two DSLs in the context of two evolving object-oriented systems. The results suggested that the proposed metrics were useful: (1) to early identify DSL usability limitations, (2) to reveal specific DSL features favoring maintenance tasks, and (3) to successfully analyze eight critical DSL usability dimensions.