Vinícius C. V. B. Segura

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.

History Viewer: Displaying User Interaction History in Visual Analytics Applications

Effective and efficient strategies are needed to extract unknown and unexpected information from data of unprecedentedly large size, high dimensionality, and complexity [7]. Only a combination of data analysis and visualization techniques can handle these complex and dynamic data [4]. Visual analytics applications aim to integrate the best of both sides.

Using Microservices and Software Product Line Engineering to Support Reuse of Evolving Multi-tenant SaaS

In order to achieve economies of scale, a Software as a Service (SaaS) should be configurable, multi-tenant efficient, and scalable. But building SaaS with these characteristics comes at a price of having more complex services. Some works in the literature integrate software product line engineering and service-oriented architecture to tackle the complexity of building multi-tenant SaaS. Most of these works focused on centralized approaches that rely on middleware or platforms, but they do not investigate the use of decentralized architectural style. Microservices architecture is an architectural style that relies on small, decentralized, and autonomous services that work together. Thus, this paper investigates the integrated use of microservices architecture and software produt line techniques to develop multi-tenant SaaS. We conducted an empirical study that analyzes the behavior of software reuse during the evolution of a multi-tenant SaaS. This empirical study showed an average software reuse of 62% of lines of code among tenants. We also provide lessons we learned during the the re-engineering and maintenance of such multi-tenant SaaS.

UISKEI++: multi-device wizard of oz prototyping

Low-fidelity prototyping is an inexpensive and quick alternative for exploring different design solutions. And with Wizard of Oz experiments, one can present an interactive - yet unfinished - prototype to the final user, who can see how the system is planned to work. Combining low-fidelity prototyping with Wizard of Oz can be a low cost and time-efficient way to prototype both the user interface and the interaction. This would be particularly useful in the case of prototyping for multiple devices, since different solutions need to be developed and tailored to suit each devices characteristics. This proposal discusses plans for developing a tool to provide multi-device prototyping support through the incorporation of different abstraction levels and support for Wizard of Oz experiments.

WISE-SPL: bringing multi-tenancy to the weather InSights environment system

Weather conditions affect many cities and companies. The WISE (Weather In Sights Environment) system serves as a central place to gather and present weather related information for decision makers. It was initially developed to fit a single tenant. Due to a multi-tenant opportunity, WISE is evolving to be deployed on a Cloud environment to support on-demand computing resources and multiple clients. Software product line techniques were applied to model common and variable features of tenants. WISE-SPL enables the derivation of products for each client and also the deployment on Cloud infrastructure. The contribution of this work is a demonstration and discussion of benefits and limitations in applying SPL techniques, following a extractive approach, to build a multi-tenant Cloud application.

Multi-level communicability evaluation of a prototyping tool

Semiotic engineering views human-computer interaction as a form of human communication between designers and users, mediated by a computer system. If we consider a design application, such as a prototyping tool, this communication is about the construction of a second communication, one between the user of the prototyping tool (in the role of the designer) and another user, who will interact with the system being designed. This article explores an extension to the Communicability Evaluation Method for design tools. This extension focuses not only on considering the kinds of communicability breakdowns, but also on what abstraction level they occur.

UISK: Supporting Model-Driven and Sketch-Driven Paperless Prototyping

Sketches are often used during user interface design and evaluation as both a design support tool and a communication tool. Despite recent efforts, computational support to user interface sketching has not yet reached its full potential. This paper reports a study comparing two evaluation techniques: paper prototyping and a simulation-based evaluation supported by the UISKEI tool.

Abstraction Levels as Support for UX Design of User’s Interaction Logs

User interaction logging is a powerful tool for user behavior studies, usability testing, and system metrics analysis. It may also be applied in large data contexts, such as social networks analysis, helping data scientists to understand social patterns. Data scientists, User Experience (UX) designers, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) practitioners, and software engineers have been performing the analysis of this kind of data to obtain knowledge regarding the source system’s usage. User interaction log data, however, can also be critical for final users themselves. They can use interaction log data, for example, (i) to revisit his own interaction path, redoing his steps that lead to a relevant insight or discovery; (ii) to learn from someone else’s interaction path new ways to perform a given task; (iii) or even to analyze critical steps of a process supported by the source system. The need for final users to consume interaction log data is presenting significant challenges for UX researchers. Influenced by Semiotic Engineering, a HCI theory that views human-computer interaction as a form of human communication between designers and users mediated by a computer system, we propose three user interaction log abstraction levels - strategic, tactical, and operational - to frame and guide user interaction logs’ UX design. In this paper, we discuss how those abstraction levels can be used as UX design guidelines and present some research questions to be explored - how source system captures interaction log is central for log analysis strategy and how a strategic level can be identified thought the analysis of interaction logs data from other abstraction levels.

Cognitive dimensions of notation tailored to environments for visualization and insights

Visualization diversity is a core resource for interpreting and getting insights about data. Different representations can support real-time decision-making and make more knowledge available for forecast and planning processes involving historical data analysis. Cognitive characteristics of visualization resources are crucial for visualization and insights environments. We present an initial tailored definition of Cognitive Dimensions of Notations (CDN) to support the evaluation and (re)design of such an environment. Using WISE (Weather InSights Environment) as a use case, we show evidences of how the tailored CDN can support HCI evaluation and discussions about the (re)design.

A combination of stroke manipulation and recognition strategies to support user interface construction and interactive behavior definition through sketching

To realize the full potential of pen-based interfaces, it is important to provide adequate support to sketching, comparable to paper and pencil. This kind of support is paramount for highly flexible activities, such as user interface sketching. This paper discusses an implementation of a few recognition strategies to support this kind of activity, presenting accuracy test results for each one.