Sofia Ouhbi

Requirements engineering education: a systematic mapping study

Requirements engineering (RE) has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. Requirements engineering education (REE) is therefore an important undertaking if the field is to have professionals who are capable of successfully accomplishing software projects. This increasing interest demands that academia should provide software engineering students with a solid foundation in the subject matter. This paper aims to identify and to present the current research on REE that is available at present, and to select useful approaches and needs for future research. A systematic mapping study was therefore performed to classify the selected studies into five classification criteria: research type, empirical type, contribution type, RE activity, and curricula. A total of 79 papers were selected and classified according to these criteria. The results of this systematic mapping study are discussed, and a list of advice obtained from the REE literature for instructors is provided.

Compliance of Blood Donation Apps with Mobile OS Usability Guidelines

The aim of this paper is to employ the guidelines of Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone to analyze the usability compliance of free blood donation (BD) apps. An analysis process based on a systematic review protocol is used to select free BD apps. An assessment is conducted using a questionnaire composed of 13 questions concerning the compliance of free BD apps with Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Phone usability guidelines. A total of 133 free BD apps have been selected from the 188 BD apps identified. Around 63 % of the free BD apps selected have a good compliance with mobile OS usability recommendations. Around 72 % of Android, 57 % of Windows Phone, 33 % of iOS and 33 % of Blackberry BD apps have a high usability score. The aspect of BD app behavior should be improved along with some style components: the use of pictures to explain ideas and the adaptation of the app to both horizontal and vertical orientations. Structure patterns should also be used to improve the structure aspect of a BD app. Usability is a quality aspect that should be improved in current BD apps. Our study provides smartphone users with a list of usable free BD apps and BD app developers with recommendations.

Free Blood Donation Mobile Applications

Blood donation (BD) is a noble act and mobile applications (apps) can help increase awareness about it. This paper analyzes and assesses the characteristics of free apps for BD as regards features and functionality. A search in Google Play, Apple Apps store, Blackberry App World and Windows Mobile App store was carried out to select 169 free BD apps from the 188 apps identified. The results presented in this paper show that the majority of the apps selected have been developed for the Android operating system. Moreover, most of the apps selected are available to help users search for donors. Few of the apps could not be installed and/or accessed. Of those that could be installed: half of them do not require any kind of authentication; a few of them are available in more than one language; half of them have a geographical restriction; around 60 % of them do not notify the user of BD events and requests; one, which is available for Android and iOS, can connect with a laboratory; around 45 % of them allow users to share information via social networks, and the majority of them do not provide BD recommendations. These results are used as a basis to provide app developers with certain recommendations. There is a need for better BD apps with more features in order to increase the number of volunteer donors.

A survey of requirements engineering education

Requirements engineering (RE) is critical to the success of a software development project. In order to have professionals who are capable of accomplishing software projects successfully, Requirements engineering education (REE) is therefore an important endeavor. The objective of this paper is to identify and to present the current research on REE in order to discuss their contribution types, identify deficits and to extract the useful approaches. A search was conducted using bibliographic databases to find as much research as possible. The papers found in this study are classified with respect to research types and their empirical type. We believe that this study will be a reliable basis for further research in Requirements engineering education.

Evaluating Software Product Quality: A Systematic Mapping Study

Evaluating software product quality (SPQ) is an important task to ensure the quality of software products. In this paper a systematic mapping study was performed to summarize the existing SPQ evaluation (SPQE) approaches in literature and to classify the selected studies according to seven classification criteria: SPQE approaches, research types, empirical types, data sets used in the empirical evaluation of these studies, artifacts, SQ models, and SQ characteristics. Publication channels and trends were also identified. 57 papers were selected. The results show that the main publication sources of the papers identified were journals. Data mining techniques are the most frequently approaches reported in literature. Solution proposals were the main research type identified. The majority of the selected papers were history-based evaluations using existing data, which were mainly obtained from open source software projects and domain specific projects. Source code was the main artifacts used by SPQE approaches. Well-known SQ models were mentioned by half of the selected papers and reliability is the SQ characteristic through which SPQE was mainly achieved. SPQE-related subjects seem to attract more interest from researchers since the past years.

Software Quality Requirements: A Systematic Mapping Study

Software quality requirements (SQR) play a central role in software quality (SQ) success. The importance of mastering SQR can be seen as obvious, however, when it comes to customer satisfaction, end-users are often dissatisfied with SQ. In this paper, a systematic mapping study aims to summarize SQR research by answering nine mapping questions. In total, 51 articles were selected and classified according to multiple criteria: publication source, publication year, research type, research approach, contribution type of SQR literature, requirements engineering activity, well-known SQ model, software artifact and SQR type. The results show an increased interest in SQR research in recent years and reveal that conferences are the main SQR publication target. Most SQR research has used case studies. The dominant contribution type of SQR research is method while specification is the main requirements engineering activity identified. SQ models need to be more used for SQR identification. Design module and requirements documentation are the principal artifacts reported in SQR literature. External and internal SQR were the main SQR types addressed in literature. Identifying empirical solutions to address SQR is a promising research direction for researchers.

E-health internationalization requirements for audit purposes

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE In the 21st century, e-health is proving to be one of the strongest drivers for the global transformation of the health care industry. Health information is currently truly ubiquitous and widespread, but in order to guarantee that everyone can appropriately access and understand this information, regardless of their origin, it is essential to bridge the international gap. The diversity of health information seekers languages and cultures signifies that e-health applications must be adapted to satisfy their needs. METHODS In order to achieve this objective, current and future e-health programs should take into account the internationalization aspects. This paper presents an internationalization requirements specification in the form of a reusable requirements catalog, obtained from the principal related standards, and describes the key methodological elements needed to perform an e-health software audit by using the internationalization knowledge previously gathered. RESULTS S Health, a relevant, well-known Android application that has more than 150 million users in over 130 countries, was selected as a target for the e-health internationalization audit method and requirements specification presented above. This application example helped us to put into practice the proposal and show that the procedure is realistic and effective. CONCLUSIONS The approach presented in this study is subject to continuous improvement through the incorporation of new knowledge originating from additional information sources, such as other standards or stakeholders. The application example is useful for early evaluation and serves to assess the applicability of the internationalization catalog and audit methodology, and to improve them. It would be advisable to develop of an automated tool with which to carry out the audit method.

Co-located and distributed natural-language requirements specification: traditional versus reuse-based techniques

Requirements Engineering (RE) includes processes intended to elicit, analyse, specify and validate systems and software requirements throughout the software life cycle. Mastering the principles of RE is key to achieving the goals of better, cheaper and quicker systems and software development projects. It is also important to be prepared to work with remote teammates, as distributed and global projects are becoming more common. This paper presents an experiment with a total of 31 students from two universities in Spain and Morocco who were assigned to either a co‐located or a distributed team. Both traditional and reuse‐based requirements specification techniques were applied by the participants to produce requirements documents. Their outcomes were then analysed, and the approaches were compared from the point of view of their effect on a set of performance‐based and perception‐based variables in co‐located and distributed settings. We found significant differences in only productivity (Z = −2.320, p = 0.020) and difficulty (Z = −2.124, p = 0.034) as regards the scores attained for non‐reuse and reuse conditions, both in the co‐located modality. Our findings show that, in general, the participants attained similar results for requirements specification when using the two strategies in both distributed and non‐distributed environments. Copyright

Are mobile blood donation applications green

On a global scale, software sustainability is attracting more and more attention. The term green software often refers to environmental sustainability applied to software systems, however, it is impacted by the different dimensions of sustainability. Green software can be divided into green by software and green in software. Blood donation mobile applications are more and more used by smartphone users. They represent an alternative way to attract volunteers and increase awareness about the importance of blood donation acts. The aim of this paper is to assess the greenability of seventy-two free blood donation applications using individual, social, environmental and technical dimensions of sustainability. The type, functionality and energy consumption of each app are identified and analyzed. Results have shown that the type of the BD app has a great impact on its level of greenability.

An analysis of free Web-based PHRs functionalities and I18n

The growth of the Internet, Web technologies, and other electronic tools are allowing the public to become more informed and actively engaged in their health care than was possible in the past. Personal Health Records (PHR) offer users possibility of managing their own health data. Many patients are using PHRs to communicate with doctors in order to improve healthcare quality and efficiency. A large number of companies have emerged to provide consumers with the opportunity to use online PHRs within a healthcare platform, proposing different functionalities and services. This paper analyzes and assesses the functionalities and internationalization (i18n) of free Web based PHRs.