| Active Collaborative Learning: Supporting Software Developers in Creating Redesign Proposals | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-18 | |
| Anders Bruun; Janne Juul Jensen; Mikael B. Skov; Jan Stage | |||
| Redesign proposals have been suggested as means to improve the feedback from
usability evaluation to software development. Yet redesign proposals are
usually created by usability specialists without any involvement of the
software developers who will implement the proposals. This paper reports from
an exploratory study where redesign proposals were created in an active and
collaborative learning process that involved both software developers and
usability specialists. The focus was on the support that the developers needed
in order to contribute constructively to improve the usability of the system.
The findings show that this process had a considerable impact on the
developers' understanding of the usability problems, especially the weaknesses
of the system. They were able to contribute constructively to create redesign
proposals, and they found the workshop very useful for their future efforts to
eliminate the usability problems that have been identified. Keywords: Usability evaluation; usability problem; redesign proposal; developer
involvement; active collaborative learning; exploratory study | |||
| An Autoethnographic Study of HCI Effort Estimation in Outsourced Software Development | | BIBA | Full-Text | 19-35 | |
| Shalaka Dighe; Anirudha Joshi | |||
| A fair amount of literature has been published concerning the gaps between HCI and software engineering. However, most of it tends to look at the effects of these gaps rather than their causes. We argue that the use of autoethnographic methods would help us in identifying the root causes of these gaps and can bring us closer to finding potential solutions. In this paper, we focus on issues associated with effort estimation for HCI activities in three projects in three typical engagement models for outsourced software development projects in a mainstream IT company in India, namely Fixed Price model, Mixed model, and Time & Material model. We found that the HCI practitioner needs to negotiate her position with several members of the team, both within the vendor and client organisations. At times, a foot-in-the-door project turns out to be a foot-in-the-mouth project. At other times, it leads to inefficiencies and imbalance of work load. The autoethnographic approach led to reflexive thinking by the HCI practitioner, helping her to develop a deeper understanding of all aspects of a problem, and bringing her closer to potential solutions in some cases. The paper also brings to light several aspects of autoethnography as a method, which can influence effort estimation of HCI activities for future projects. | |||
| Bridging User Context and Design Models to Build Adaptive User Interfaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 36-56 | |
| Mladjan Jovanovic; Dusan Starcevic; Zoran Jovanovic | |||
| With respect to modeling the context of interaction, two different research
communities consider the context from different viewpoints. The user-centered
view which prevails in the HCI and the device-centered view which is dominant
in the mobile and ubiquitous computing. Despite existing advances, context
modeling and user interface (UI) design methods are still poorly integrated,
making it difficult to use the contextual elements directly in UI design. This
paper focuses on bringing user-related aspects of the interaction context in UI
design. We propose a model-driven framework for the development of adaptive
user interfaces. The framework describes the interaction context by integrating
contextual factors from different context perspectives in a unison manner. Then
it provides formal semantic relations between contextual and UI elements. The
framework has been used in the data visualization domain, particularly in the
design of the software instrument table for UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that
takes into account user context, namely human perceptual abilities. Keywords: user interface design; user interface models; user context; user abilities;
model-driven engineering | |||
| Continuous Improvement in Agile Development Practice | | BIBA | Full-Text | 57-72 | |
| Marta Kristín Lárusdóttir; Åsa Cajander; Michael Simader | |||
| Agile development has positive attitudes towards continuously improving work practices of IT professionals and the quality of the software. This study focuses on value adding activities such as user involvement and gathering metrics and non-value adding activities, such as correcting defects. Interviews were conducted with 10 IT professionals working with agile development in Iceland. Results show that IT professionals emphasise communication with users both through direct contact and using email, but they rarely use metrics to make improvements measurable. The most serious non-value adding activities are: partially done work, delays and defects. The core reason is that long lists of defects in the projects exist, which means that the software is partially done and the defects cause delays in the process. There are efforts to reduce non-value adding activities in the process, but IT professionals are still confronted with problems attributed to miscommunication and the impediments by the external environment. | |||
| Dynamic Interaction Plugins Deployment in Ambient Spaces | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 73-89 | |
| Bashar Altakrouri; Andreas Schrader | |||
| A large-scale dynamic runtime deployment of existing and future interaction
techniques remains an enduring challenge for engineering real-world pervasive
computing ecosystems (ambient spaces). The need for innovative engineering
solutions to tackle this issue increases, due to the ever expanding landscape
of novel natural interaction techniques proposed every year to enrich
interactive eco-systems with multitouch gestures, motion gestures, full body in
motion, etc. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of Interaction
Plugins as a possible solution to address this challenge. The discussed
approach enables interaction techniques to be constructed as standalone
dynamically deployable objects in ambient spaces during runtime. Keywords: Ambient Assisted Living; Natural User Interfaces; Kinetic Interactions;
Dynamic Interaction Deployment; Sharing Interactions | |||
| Extending OpenUP to Conform with the ISO Usability Maturity Model | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 90-107 | |
| Andrés Rodríguez | |||
| Integrating practices and methods of Interaction Design and Usability into
Software Engineering processes has posed some challenges. In this paper we
extend a SE process to enable its instantiation as user centered in order to
improve the usability level reachable by the final system. Also, we suggest a
kind of a road map that enables software organizations to instantiate
cumulative versions of this process to grow in their capability regarding the
usability practices. The paper is organized in two parts. First, we describe de
open source version of the Unified Process (OpenUP) and the ISO Usability
Maturity Model (UMM-ISO) and present the results of an assessment made on the
first to determine its conformity with the latter. In the second part we
present an extension to OpenUP to fill the gaps discovered and report the
highlights of an implementation of these contributions in a real project and
the lessons learned. Keywords: User Centered Design; Usability Maturity Model; OpenUP | |||
| Integrating Agile Development Processes and User Centred Design -- A Place for Usability Maturity Models? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 108-125 | |
| Dina Salah; Richard Paige; Paul Cairns | |||
| The aim of this paper is to explore and evaluate the role that can be played
by Usability Maturity Models (UMMs) in integrating agile processes and User
Centred Design (UCD). UMMs can be utilised in Agile projects as a diagnostic
tool to assess the extent to which UCD is systematically and consistently
implemented and the extent of effective implementation of UCD in development
projects. This paper investigated the suitability of Nielsen Corporate
Usability Maturity Model for utilisation in the Agile domain in order to assess
the organisation's UCD capability. It reported on applying Nielsen Model in
five case studies that performed Agile and User Centred Design Integration
(AUCDI) and utilising the model in assessing their usability maturity level.
The results revealed the existence of a correlation between the success of
AUCDI attempts and the AUCDI case study's usability maturity level. These
results can have positive implications on AUCDI practice since practitioners
who aim to achieve the integration can utilise Nielsen model to identify their
strengths and weaknesses in regards to UCD related aspects and accordingly plan
for improvement. Keywords: Agile Software Development Processes; User Centred Design; Agile User
Centred Design Integration; Usability Maturity Models; Maturity Models | |||
| LiLoLe -- A Framework for Lifelong Learning from Sensor Data Streams for Predictive User Modelling | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 126-143 | |
| Mirko Fetter; Tom Gross | |||
| Adaptation in context-aware ubiquitous environments and adaptive systems is
becoming more and more complex. Adaptations need to take into account
information from a plethora of heterogeneous sensors, while the adaptation
decisions often imply personalised aspects and individual preferences, which
are likely to change over time. We present a novel concept for lifelong
learning from sensor data streams for predictive user modelling that is
applicable in scenarios where simpler mechanisms that rely on pre-trained
general models fall short. With the LiLoLe-Framework, we pursue an approach
that allows ubiquitous systems to continuously learn from their users and adapt
the system at the same time through stream-based active learning. This
Framework can guide the development of context-aware or adaptive systems in
form of an overall architecture. Keywords: Lifelong Learning; User Modelling; Framework | |||
| Rapid Task-Models Development Using Sub-models, Sub-routines and Generic Components | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 144-163 | |
| Peter Forbrig; Célia Martinie; Philippe Palanque; Marco Winckler; Racim Fahssi | |||
| Whilst task models are perceived as critical artifacts within User Centered
Design methods, task models development is often considered as a resource and
time consuming activity. Structuring techniques can support handling issues
such as reuse and scalability and can improve analysts' productivity and the
overall quality of models. In this paper we propose (based on the notation of
the HAMSTERS project) several means to structure task models and present how
they can be used in order to increase reusability and scalability in task
models. Besides sub-models and sub-routines, generic components are described.
These mechanisms are duly illustrated within a project for the ground segments
of satellite missions. This paper shows, by example, how such elements look
like and how both readability and quality of models is improved by their use. Keywords: Generic components; sub-models; sub-routines; task models | |||
| To Trust or Not to Trust | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 164-181 | |
| Alexander G. Mirnig; Sandra Troesterer; Elke Beck; Manfred Tscheligi | |||
| In today's rapidly developing Internet, the web sites and services end users
see are more and more composed of multiple services, originating from many
different providers in a dynamic way. This means that it can be difficult for
the user to single out individual web services or service providers and
consequently judge them regarding how much they trust them. So the question is
how to communicate indicators of trustworthiness and provide adequate security
feedback to the user in such a situation. Contemporary literature on trust
design and security feedback is mostly focused on static web services and,
therefore, only partially applicable to dynamic composite web services. We
conducted two consecutive studies (a qualitative and a quantitative one) to
answer the questions of how and when security feedback in dynamic web service
environments should be provided and how it influences the user's trust in the
system. The findings from the studies were then analyzed with regards to
Riegelsberger and Sasse's ten principles for trust design [24]. The outcome we
present in this paper is an adapted list of trust principles for dynamic
systems. Keywords: trust; automation; dynamic web services; feedback design | |||
| Understanding End-User Development of Context-Dependent Applications in Smartphones | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 182-198 | |
| Gabriella Lucci; Fabio Paternò | |||
| We are using our mobile devices in an increasing number of dynamic contexts,
thus we need more and more context-dependent applications. However, only end
users can know the most appropriate ways their applications should react to
contextual events. In order to facilitate end user development of
context-dependent applications in smartphones a first generation of mobile
environments has been proposed in the market. In this work we analyse three
such Android applications in terms of their ability to express the relevant
concepts and their usability, also through a user study. We indicate some
limitations of the current solutions and provide indications that can support
future work for providing more effective results. Keywords: End-User Development; Context-dependent Applications; Smartphones | |||
| Usability Engineering in the Wild: How Do Practitioners Integrate Usability Engineering in Software Development? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 199-216 | |
| Nis Bornoe; Jan Stage | |||
| It has been argued that too much research on usability engineering is
incoherent with the processes, and settings being the realities for
practitioners. In this paper we want to extend the existing knowledge about
usability engineering in the wild. Through 12 semi-structured interviews we
wanted to get an understanding of how usability is perceived, and practiced in
reality. We found that our participants primarily focus on upfront work to
support the design, and implementation process. They implement usability
engineering through informal evaluations, and by following a set of local de
facto standards. We want to extend the existing body of knowledge about
usability engineering in practice, to support the development of methods aimed
at practitioners. Keywords: Usability; usability engineering; user experience (UX); software
development; agile development; usability practitioners | |||
| Usage-Based Automatic Detection of Usability Smells | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 217-234 | |
| Patrick Harms; Jens Grabowski | |||
| With an increasing number of supported devices, usability evaluation of
websites becomes a laborious task. Therefore, usability evaluation should be
automated as far as possible. In this paper, we present a summative method for
automated usability evaluation of websites. The approach records user actions
and transforms them into task trees. The task trees are then checked for
usability smells to identify potential usability issues. The approach was
applied in two case studies and shows promising results in the identification
of four types of usability smells. Keywords: task trees; usage-based; automatic usability evaluation | |||
| Aspects of Human-Centred Design in HCI with Older Adults: Experiences from the Field | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 235-242 | |
| Ana Correia de Barros; Sílvia Rêgo; João Antunes | |||
| Common characteristics of older adults have led to the rise of
recommendations to conduct user research and testing with this particular age
group. Even though guidelines exist regarding human-centred design with older
adults, there are not many reports on experiences with creating and maintaining
elderly user groups for design and research purposes. This paper reviews
previous reports in the literature about user groups and adds i) results of
qualitative research about the experience of researchers who built their entire
professional experience with user groups of older adults, along with ii) the
authors' own account of building and maintaining an elderly user group for
years. The paper provides recommendations for recruiting, maintaining and
motivating elderly user groups towards participation in HCI design and research
activities, along with suggestions of strategies to use during field work. Keywords: Human-centred design; older adults; interviews; recommendations; qualitative
methods; user recruitment; user group | |||
| CASSIS: A Modeling Language for Customizable User Interface Designs | | BIBA | Full-Text | 243-250 | |
| Jan Van den Bergh; Karin Coninx | |||
| Current user interface modeling languages usually focus on modeling a single
user interface and have a fixed set of user interface components; adding
another user interface component requires an extension of the language.
In this paper we present CASSIS, a concise language that supports creation of user interface components using models instead of language extensions. It also allows the specification of design-time and runtime user interface variations. The support for variations has been used to generate constraints for custom user interface components, to specify design patterns and design decisions. CASSIS has been used in several projects including a multi-disciplinary applied research project. | |||
| Creating and Using Personas in Software Development: Experiences from Practice | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 251-258 | |
| Jane Billestrup; Jan Stage; Anders Bruun; Lene Nielsen; Kira S. Nielsen | |||
| Personas is a technique that supports designing and engineering interactive
systems with the focus on the end-users. This paper reports from a case study,
where we interviewed four software developers about their usage of personas in
software development practice. The purpose of was to identify the practices of
personas development in the software development industry. How the respondents
perceive personas and its use does not always correlate with what is described
as best practice in the literature. We found that practitioners are not using
personas as stated in the literature but are developing their own practices
both in regards to when and how personas are created. Keywords: Personas; software development practice; persona creation | |||
| Improving UX Work in Scrum Development: A Three-Year Follow-Up Study in a Company | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 259-266 | |
| Kati Kuusinen | |||
| This paper presents a three-year follow-up study considering the improvement
process of user experience work in a software company utilizing Scrum. Problems
encountered in the organization included managing the product vision, timing of
UX, lack of cooperation among disciplines, and understanding user needs. We
also observed changes in the organization over two years. They included ceasing
the centralized UX team and dividing the UX specialists over business lines. UX
specialists were given influential roles in regard to product decisions -- such
as nominated as product owners. Keywords: User experience (UX); Scrum; Agile development | |||
| Model-Based Development of Adaptive UIs for Multi-channel Self-service Systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 267-274 | |
| Enes Yigitbas; Holger Fischer; Thomas Kern; Volker Paelke | |||
| Self-Service Systems are technically complex and provide products and
services to end users. Due to the heterogeneity of the users of such systems
and their short residence time, the usability of a system's user interface is
of great importance. Currently, an intuitive and flexible usage is often
limited because of the monolithic system architecture of existing Self-Service
Systems. Furthermore, today's Self-Service Systems represent the one-and-only
endpoint of communication with a customer when processing a transaction. The
integration of the customer's personal computing devices, like desktop PC,
notebook, and smartphone is not sufficiently covered yet. In order to tackle
these problems, we have established a methodology for developing adaptive UIs
for Multi-Channel Self-Services where a customer may, for example, start a
transaction on a PC at home, modify it with the smartphone, and finally finish
it at a Self-Service terminal. In this paper we describe our integrated
model-based approach for the development of adaptive user interfaces for
distributed Multi-Channel Self-Service Systems. Keywords: MBUID; Self-Service Systems; user interface; model-based development;
usability; adaptive user interfaces; user experience | |||
| On the Delivery of Recommendations in Social Software: A User's Perspective | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 275-282 | |
| Nan Jiang; Raian Ali | |||
| Recommendation is a popular feature of social software. Recommendations
could be made by the software autonomously or by social contacts who are often
aided by the software on what to recommend. A great deal of emphasis in the
literature has been given to the algorithmic solution to infer relevant and
interesting recommendations. Yet, the delivery method of recommendation is
still a widely unexplored research topic. This paper advocates that the success
in deducing recommendations is not the sole factor for "recommendees" to
consider. Users have their own requirements on the way a recommendation is made
and delivered. Failure in meeting user expectations would often lead to the
rejection of the recommendations as well as the violation of user experience.
In this paper, we conduct an empirical research to explore such user's
perspective. We start with qualitative phase, based on interviews, and confirm
and enhance the results in a quantitative phase through surveying a large
sample of users. We report on the results and conclude with a set of guidelines
on how recommendations delivery should be designed from a user's perspective. Keywords: social software; recommender systems; user-centric design | |||
| Persona as a Tool to Involving Human in Agile Methods: Contributions from HCI and Marketing | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 283-290 | |
| Leydi Caballero; Ana M. Moreno; Ahmed Seffah | |||
| Human centricity refers to the active involvement in the overall product
lifecycle of different human actors including end-users, stakeholders and
providers. Persona is one of the different tools that exist for human
centricity. While marketing is the original domain in which persona was
introduced, this technique has also been widely used in user-centered design
(UCD) design. In these two perceptions, persona has demonstrated its potential
as an efficient tool for grouping the users or customers and focusing on user
or customer needs, goals and behavior. A segmentation technique is generally
used with persona in order to group individual users according to their common
features, identifying within these groups those that represent a pattern of
human behavior. This paper investigates how persona has been used to improve
the usability in the agile development domain, while studying which
contributions from marketing and HCI have enriched persona in this agile
context. Keywords: Persona; Agile Usability; HCI methods in software engineering | |||
| Seeding the Design Process for Future Problems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 291-298 | |
| Peter Newman; Stephen Forshaw; Will Simm; Maria Angela Ferrario; Jon Whittle; Adrian Friday | |||
| Designing with the community brings about a number of benefits, including
tacit and contextual knowledge about the problem domain; this is especially
apparent in rural settings. However, designing for problems that have yet to
embed themselves in the fabric of society (i.e. future problems) poses a number
of challenges, as they typically present intangible scenarios and concepts that
have yet to be experienced by the wider-community. Using the OnSupply project
as a case study, we share our experience in working with the Tiree community to
address a future problem through a technology-mediated enquiry. Furthermore, we
present a novel process that uses creative workshops augmented with physical
artefacts to inform and learn from the community about a problem space, and to
seed the design of a system that addresses it. Keywords: User-driven; Creative workshop; Design; Future problem | |||
| Usability of Single- and Multi-factor Authentication Methods on Tabletops: A Comparative Study | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 299-306 | |
| Anders Bruun; Kenneth Jensen; Dianna Kristensen | |||
| With the introduction and adoption of tabletop technologies a need for
different user authentication mechanisms has arisen. Tabletops support close
collaboration between users, typically in close physical proximity and such
settings are more vulnerable to shoulder surfing attacks compared to desktops
settings where users are more distantly located. Previous studies on desktop
interfaces have shown that multi factor authentication provides a higher level
of security than single factor authentication. This study extends previous work
by comparing the usability of several authentication methods applied in
tabletop settings. The aim of the study is to contribute with proposals on
which authentication methods to apply when engineering user interfaces for
tabletop devices. We compare single factor and multi-factor authentication
mechanisms from a usability perspective. Keywords: Usability; tabletop; multi-factor; authentication; TUI | |||
| User Centered Inclusive Design for People with Dyslexia: Experiences from a Project on Accessibility | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 307-314 | |
| Dominik Rupprecht; Rainer Blum; Birgit Bomsdorf | |||
| User participation is a key element in user centered design of interactive
systems. However, applying established methods is not straightforward while
realizing a system for people with cognitive impairment due to their specific,
heterogeneous needs and abilities. This paper presents experiences from
conducting a user centered inclusive design process within an ongoing project.
It aims at the development of a web application for people with dyslexia caused
by cognitive impairment. A distinctive feature is the intended use of the
application: It must support the counseling interviews for planning the real
life inclusion of the target group. In addition, it must enable cognitively
impaired as well as non-impaired people using it cooperatively. One of the most
challenging issues was how and when to involve cognitively impaired users. Keywords: User Centered Design; Inclusive Design; Accessibility; User Participation;
Methods and Techniques; Dyslexia | |||
| End-User Software Engineering: Toward a Future Beyond the Silos | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 315-316 | |
| Margaret Burnett | |||
| This paper summarizes the keynote address on the future of end-user software
engineering. We believe the future that we envision has implications for not
only end-user software engineering, but also for "classic" software
engineering. Keywords: End-user software engineering (EUSE); end-user programming; end-user
development | |||
| How People Really (Like To) Work | | BIBA | Full-Text | 317-321 | |
| Wil M. P. van der Aalst | |||
| Software forms an integral part of the most complex artifacts built by humans. Communication, production, distribution, healthcare, transportation, banking, education, entertainment, government, and trade all increasingly rely on systems driven by software. Such systems may be used in ways not anticipated at design time as the context in which they operate is constantly changing and humans may interact with them an unpredictable manner. However, at the same time, we are able to collect unprecedented collections of event data describing what people and organizations are actually doing. Recent developments in process mining make it possible to analyze such event data, thereby focusing on behavior rather than correlations and simplistic performance indicators. For example, event logs can be used to automatically learn end-to-end process models. Next to the automated discovery of the real underlying process, there are process mining techniques to analyze bottlenecks, to uncover hidden inefficiencies, to check compliance, to explain deviations, to predict performance, and to guide users towards "better" processes. Process mining reveals how people really work and often reveals what they would really like to do. Event-based analysis may reveal workarounds and remarkable differences between people and organizations. This keynote paper highlights current research on comparative process mining. One can compare event data with normative process models and see where people deviate. Some of these deviations may be positive and one can learn from them. Other deviations may reveal inefficiencies, design flaws, or even fraudulent behavior. One can also use process cubes to compare different systems or groups of people. Through slicing, dicing, rolling-up, and drilling-down we can view event data from different angles and produce process mining results that can be compared. | |||