This innovative practice article describes how society is transforming its daily life due to advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which primarily affect how people interact and perform their functions at work, home, and even leisure time. The social impacts must be perceived before they become a problem, meaning that during the conception (design) of an Information System (IS), social, cultural, environmental, and legal aspects must be considered to define sociotechnical requirements. Traditional requirements gathering does not address the above, resulting in less inclusive and less sustainable systems that may negatively impact society. This research presents the execution of a Socially Aware Design (SAwD) workshop to uncover sociotechnical requirements for designing an interactive game aimed at teaching Software Engineering, applying techniques, and generating artifacts proposed by SAwD. Design theory addresses techniques and artifacts that contribute to IS construction, and organizational culture theory studies the behavior and values of a group of people. Planning and execution of a semi-participatory design workshop divided into three phases. The first phase uses brainstorming to build artifacts: stakeholder diagram, evaluation framework, value cake, and semiotic ladder. The second phase employs brain writing to collaboratively build the game, and the third phase uses braindrawing to prototype the game. With active participation from workshop participants, it was possible to generate all planned artifacts with content that effectively contributed to the game prototype, considering the semiotic ladder's social aspects and defined requirements. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of workshop results is presented. The number of participants, completion time, and generated requirements contributed to quantitative analysis, while observation and participant experience reporting contributed to qualitative analysis. This research contributes to the dissemination of techniques and artifacts proposed by SAwD and provides a step-by-step guide to their application in the pursuit of sociotechnical requirements, essential for the construction of inclusive, sustainable, and effective IS.

The term Internet of Things (IoT) describes an environment where billions of objects, restricted in resources, use the Internet as an infrastructure for exchanging messages. In the IoT system, a set of heterogeneous devices such as sensors, actuators, energy sources, and processors are fundamental for the interaction between objects. The construction of these systems demands the professionals’ knowledge in identifying, analyzing, and specifying the requirements that impact the system quality. However, there are challenges in developing these systems because the different perceptions of stakeholders and the different use of computing resources can cause errors in requirements gathering and lead to ambiguities in developing IoT systems. In addition, its characteristics and its large number of elements tend to increase the complexity of its configuration. Therefore, it is necessary to develop techniques to promote effective communication between the stakeholders, regardless of their areas of knowledge, to establish, define and clarify the requirements. This work proposes comic strips (CS) for defining and gathering requirements for IoT systems. The first set of non-functional requirements for IoT systems was identified in the literature, such as maintainability, security, integration, and performance. We developed a syntax for building comics to assist in the definition and requirements gathering of IoT systems from this set. We conducted a feasibility study using informal, formal, and technical workshops with professionals and users to identify the potential for continuity of this proposal. In addition, this discussion was carried out with undergraduate students who could participate in the process, improving their knowledge in requirements engineering. The students could identify divergence among interests and concepts from stakeholders and propose adequated solutions during requirements elicitation. The results obtained from an established comic were positive and promoted communication between stakeholders. This work’s contribution approaches the grammar for defining IoT systems in comics and an effective interaction method.

This is a full paper research about building of a digital game. Traditional ways of teaching, based on theoretical explanations, make it difficult for students to learn related content, mainly in Software Engineering (SE), since connecting theory with practice is made more difficult in such approaches. The use of educational games emerges as a possibility to support a kind of teaching and learning process that changes the student’s status from passive to active, and uses playful activities as a motivational element, since students learn by playing, in addition to allowing the simulation of problems and search for solutions. The objective of this article is to present the development of a digital educational game by students to support SE teaching and learning, using Socially Aware Design (SAwD), considering elements for the construction of learning objects, such as characteristics of learners and instructors, adoption of learning theories, activity sequencing, scope definition, granularity, instructional content, and evaluation criteria. SAwD seeks to discover characteristics of the social, cultural, environmental, economic, legal, and regional context, to build interactive and inclusive systems, one of its pillars being design for all. The methods for developing the work involve a life cycle model for learning object development, semi-participatory design workshops with brainstorming and braindrawing techniques, and prototyping. The prototype was finalized, applied as a didactic instrument and evaluated. It is expected to contribute to the expansion of the production and application of games in the teaching and learning of SE as well as the dissemination of SAwD.

Increases in forced migration crises and the digitalization of humanitarian response require ongoing innovation in information management tools and processes. Our research-in-progress examines emergent data aggregation and data quality management methods enabled by a humanitarian data sharing platform from the Global North. Through an international and inter-regional comparison of this platform's use, our team of international faculty will generate insights for humanitarian informatics theory as well as practice. Specifically, our research examines the role of power and control in collaborative humanitarian operations. Given the neocolonial dimensions of the humanitarian system, we also explore potential North/South divides and their effects. Preliminary results provide insight into power exercised in national response, diversity in aggregation procedures related to technology and staff preferences, and the loss of data's meaning due to the centralization processes supported by data aggregation.

This paper presents the AI Task Allocation tool (ATA’) for allocating software requirements into versions using the artificial intelligence (AI) planning technique. A model using AI planning language is proposed for a software project representation containing a set of requirements and one or more development teams. The generated plan indicates the allocation of requirements considering as criteria: requirement development time, priority levels, and dependency relationships. A case study was carried out to assess the use of the ATA’ tool to provide a plan that organizes the software requirements. The preliminary results indicated that plans allocate requirements according to the assigned criteria. Thus, the results suggested that ATA’ can contribute to the planning of incremental development projects, allowing the requirement allocation among teams.

The principle of Network Neutrality (NN) has been debated around the world for nearly two decades. NN states that all traffic in the Internet must be treated equally, regardless of content, origin and/or destination. The main motivation for this principle is to protect fair competition, innovation, and ensure freedom of choice for consumers. The global debate revolves around whether NN should be enforced through regulations or not, as well as the potential impact of such regulations – or lack thereof – on the telecommunications market. In this context, multiple governments worldwide have already implemented NN regulations. In this work, we give an overview of NN regulations in 50 countries across five continents. We first give a brief introduction to the NN global debate. Then, we describe some of the main aspects related to the regulatory process of each country/region. Finally, we compare the different regulations according to common and divergent features identified.

Pentesting is an important process to reduce the risks associated with attacks in Web applications. However, testers may find some difficulties while conducting this process. This paper aims to discuss the main challenges founded while performing pentesting. For this, an exploratory study was conducted with five pentesting tools and seven Web applications. We analyzed and executed these tools and applications, and identified and evaluated some of their characteristics and functionalities. Preliminary results showed that one of the major challenges relates to pentesting tools execution in Web applications is the poor standardization of input parameters in the authentication process.