Teaching Requirements Engineering (RE) is challenging, as it involves dealing with the complexity and abstraction of technical and business problems. Students need to learn how to properly identify requirements, document them, validate them, and communicate with various stakeholders, such as clients and technical teams, to understand what needs to be done. Traditional teaching methods often fail to engage students, making bridging theoretical concepts with practical applications difficult. This paper presents the Game Design Storytelling (GDS) process as a framework to gamify educational experiences in RE. GDS integrates narrative-based game elements with learning objectives, offering a structured approach to create interactive and engaging lessons. We applied GDS in an RE class focused on creating user stories using a dystopian narrative set in a fictional world called “Cyberium.” Students were challenged to solve complex problems by developing user stories within this immersive environment. The results indicate that the gamified lesson increased student engagement and facilitated the understanding of technical concepts. The professor reported greater student interest in completing the gamified activity, and the feedback from students was positive, with some stating it was the “best class” they had in their undergraduate program, highlighting the relevance of narrative and interactivity for learning.

User-centered design (UCD) is a foundational approach in software development that prioritizes users’ needs, behaviors, and expectations throughout the design process. For instance, Design Sprints effectively integrate UCD into fastpaced software development, enabling teams to fail fast, learn quickly, and refine solutions based on real user feedback. This paper explores the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) as an integrated component of UCD methodologies, specifically within the Design Sprint framework. Our goal is to analyze how LLMs can assist designers throughout different phases of the Design Sprint, improving efficiency and aiding in developing user-centered solutions. To achieve this goal, we conducted a study with Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Design students during a course on innovative software product engineering. The study was structured into three phases: (i) theoretical instruction, (ii) practical application of the design sprint methodology with LLM integration, and (iii) presentation and discussion of the developed products. We conducted focus groups to gather insights on the participants’ experiences using an LLM as a support tool for Design Sprint activities. Our results provide insights into how LLM can be leveraged to assist in rapid product design while preserving UCD principles.

Technology is reshaping how audiences engage with events, influencing emotions, arousal, and reactions. While many studies explore audience experience, they often focus on isolated concepts within specific event contexts. Our research examines how interaction technology impacts different event scenarios using a taxonomy that connects key experience concepts. We conducted an empirical study where undergraduate students analyzed recorded events featuring technological interactions. Their qualitative reports provided practical insights, refining the taxonomy. Our findings show that the taxonomy effectively characterizes interaction technology across various event settings. This study deepens our understanding of audience experience by highlighting how technology influences emotions, immersion, collaboration, and collective engagement. These insights help researchers and event managers better understand the role of technology in shaping audience participation across different contexts.

An immersive experience is a multisensory experience across a journey or task that’s contextually relevant, enabled by a combination of interactions that create intuitive and emotional value for the user. As the technological landscape has evolved, immersive experiences have become increasingly integrated into our lives. The rise of immersive experiences comes with a focus on how to evaluate those experiences considering User Experience (UX). UX is a multifaceted construct, and its importance differs according to the type of experience. In this scenario, knowing how to evaluate UX is fundamental to understanding whether immersive experiences are pleasant. Despite some attempts to address the UX, a systematic approach to addressing UX in the immersive context still needs to be developed. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to investigate how UX evaluations have been performed and the main UX dimensions that should be considered in immersive experiences, such as engagement, presence, and immersion. Our main result is a theoretical model that we proposed based on the UX definitions and relations from the literature. Our model can help study the relations between UX dimensions, establishing the primary UX dimensions regarding immersive experiences, and as a base for developing new UX evaluation techniques.

Pressure for higher productivity and faster delivery is increasingly pervading software organizations. This can lead software engineers to act like chess players playing a gambit—making sacrifices of their technically sound estimates, thus submitting their teams to time pressure. In turn, time pressure can have varied detrimental effects, such as poor product quality and emotional distress, decreasing productivity, which leads to more time pressure and delays: a hard-to-stop vicious cycle. This reveals a need for moving on from the more passive strategy of yielding to pressure to a more active one of defending software estimates. Therefore, we propose an approach to support software estimators in acquiring knowledge on how to carry out such defense, by introducing negotiation principles encapsulated in a set of defense lenses, presented through a digital simulation. We evaluated the proposed approach through a controlled experiment with software practitioners from different companies. We collected data on participants' attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions to perform the defense of their estimates in light of the Theory of Planned Behavior. We employed a frequentist and a bayesian approach to data analysis. Results show improved scores among experimental group participants after engaging with the digital simulation and learning about the lenses. They were also more inclined to choose a defense action when facing pressure scenarios than a control group exposed to questions to reflect on the reasons and outcomes of pressure over estimates. Qualitative evidence reveals that practitioners perceived the set of lenses as useful in their current work environments. Collectively, these results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and its perceived relevance for the industry, despite the low amount of time required to engage with it.

The difficulty in reading and interpreting the text has been a common problem in several types of intellectual disability, such as autism and dyslexia. Moreover, it triggers numerous damages to students throughout their academic life. However, this work presents an approach to the inclusive learning of reading, using beauty technology, a playful activities box, and an emotional assessment tool. To verify the approach’s applicability, we tarried out a learning workshop with six students with some literacy difficulty in elementary school. The results showed that the playful experience of nails with the activity box and the tangible evaluation of use could make students feel good when practicing a challenging discipline.

In this work, an initial study on the automatic recognition of the main Brazilian music genres is presented: Axé, Forró, MPB, Rock, Samba, and Sertanejo. Through the extraction of representative musical characteristics, automatic classification experiments were performed applying classical supervised learning algorithms and Weka ML tool. An analysis of the main available databases was also carried out: GTZAN, FMA, AudioSet, RWC, ISMIR, Magnatune, and LMD. There is a scarcity of cultural diversity on these bases, most of which concentrate globally more popular styles such as Pop and Rock, reinforcing the need to include more diverse and culturally identifiable genres, such as Brazilians. The preliminary results obtained demonstrate the adequacy of the recognition process of the main Brazilian musical genres.

Using mobile devices is part of modern daily life for communication, work, and leisure. Its use in entertainment events such as music concert and sports games is easily noted. Thus, in this work, we investigate how these devices can increase engagement in entertainment events. For this, we developed a collaborative game called Cabo DIGuerra that uses motion and audio sensors in an interactive dynamic with the audience using concepts from Mobile Crowd Sensing and User eXperience. The game was evaluated through experimental studies both in a controlled environment and in real use scenarios of the application, highlighting its educational potential beyond entertainment.

In the software maintenance, business process models help practitioners understanding of the software, because it represents the organisational process in which software is embedded. BPMN (Business Process Modelling and Notation) is the standard notation for business process modelling. However, it is common for the BPMN diagrams to be outdated, which, among other possibilities, may be caused due to the lack of adequate knowledge of some practitioners about the notation. It is important to provide means to stimulate the evolution of these models and, consequently, to aid in the learning of BPMN notation. With this focus, the authors proposed and evaluated the e‐VOL BPMN, a technique that supports the evolution and the learning of BPMN diagrams. In this evaluation, they compared e‐VOL BPMN with the BPMN 2.0 Poster, an artefact used commonly to support BPMN notation in companies. Participants who used the e‐VOL BPMN in a scenario of diagrams evolution presented more correct BPMN diagrams and had a higher learning perception of the notation. In addition, in a written exam on BPMN notation, participants who used e‐VOL BPMN scored higher. From these results, they notice that e‐VOL BPMN support both evolution and learning of BPMN diagrams.

Background: Software development teams adopt various communication tools to support coordination and team interaction during the software development process. Among many other communication channels, developers' use instant messaging to discuss ideas, decisions and other project related issues with team members. Due to the informal nature of instant messaging, many of these discussions and decisions are lost. This situation could be even more critical in startups and other software companies that rely more heavily on instant message tools or other informal communication channels.Aims: This work investigates the effectiveness of using a semiautomatic approach for identifying, extracting, and determining a project's lost knowledge that was discussed using unstructured communication tools such as instant message.Methodology: We employed data-mining techniques to automatically retrieve discussions from instant message logs and showed them to the project managers to identify lost knowledge from two startup companies.Results: Our results demonstrate that the data-mining technique was capable of retrieving sentences with relevant issues discussion; reaching a precision of 75% at the first 10 relevant sentences evaluated. Moreover, the qualitative analysis conducted involving project managers shows an association of retrieved sentences with the project's lost knowledge.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that automated approaches can be used to identify such lost knowledge in software development projects. Follow-up interviews revealed the interest of PMs in adopting such automated tools in other projects.

This paper presents an interdisciplinary approach designed to join theoretical foundations required in software engineering with practice required for professional performance in software industry. Although this is a recurring issue on software engineering education, students still have difficulties in dealing with software development environments that are usually more complex than any software projects they have worked at university courses. We developed an approach aligned with market demands and theoretical requirements in software engineering education that incorporates principles of Project Based Learning (PBL) and Agile Methods. It aims to support development of student technical and soft skills in three different, but related, disciplines: Software Engineering Practice, Database Practice and Software Project Management. We describe a set of seven recommendations on how we used largely adopted tools in software development industry in order to develop student technical and soft skills. We describe two case studies: (1) an exploratory case study with three professors and 24 students involving multiple projects; and (2) a confirmatory case study with three professors and 15 students involving a large-scale project. As a result, we point seven recommendations for tool adoption on capstone courses based on lessons learned.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents the use of the project-based learning methodology anchored to the multiple intelligences cognitive theory applied to an introductory course in informatics for engineering majors in blended learning. This course is mandatory for fourteen majors of all areas, as Civil, Mechanic and Production Engineering, but also Natural Sciences, Agronomy and Managing, making very hard for the teachers to explore the same content with very diverse majors' and students' profiles. In this context, we discuss the results for this last change in the course. For that aim, we conducted an exploratory case study to have a diagnostic students' behavior and some cognitive insights for identifying cognitive profiles, achieved by an analysis conducted using the algorithm k-means to find the emerging clusters and further exploited with the definition of strategies for identification cognitive profiles.

Usability and UX (User eXperience) are some of the most important factors for evaluating the quality of mobile applications.They focus on how easy to use an application is and the emotions that such use evokes.However, these aspects are often evaluated separately in industry through different evaluation techniques.Although it is possible to identify more usability and UX problems by employing different UX and usability evaluation methods, this distributed approach may not be cost effective and may not allow to thoroughly explore the identified issues.In order to support the identification of both UX and usability problems in a single evaluation, we have proposed Userbility, an UX and usability inspection technique that allows evaluating these aspects in mobile applications.This paper presents an empirical study over the second version of Userbility to verify its feasibility.In this study, we compared Userbility with the UX and Usability Guidelines Approach (UUGA) that helps the evaluation of usability and UX separately in mobile applications.According to the quantitative results, considering efficiency, UUGA was better than the Userbility technique.However, the qualitative results suggest that Userbility pointed more improvement suggestions, which could be useful for redesigning the evaluated application.

Offering upper-level courses for the population that lives in remote areas, like the Amazon, is a huge challenge due to the difficulties of access and the low development level. To address this challenge, the Center for Distance Education (CDE) in Federal University of Amazonas, implemented an educational project that provides distance courses in graduate and undergraduate degree in these places using a Learning Management System (LMS). However, evasion, failure and dropout rates in the disciplines are still worrying. In order to face this problem, MobiMonitor, a mobile application integrated with multi-agent system was developed. This app allows instrumenting course mediators with tools for monitoring students' behavior and performance in a LMS, especially monitoring student participation in specific academic activities (assignments and forums) and provides support in advance to identify students who need a direct pedagogical intervention in order to avoid possible course evasion, failure or dropout. MobiMonitor enables mediators to check these data on the fly, classifying students' participation into four levels (excellent, good, low and very low). The mediators access this report by monitoring through mobile application and send alert messages to students according to their attendance status. Experiments conducted in two poles show the feasibility of the proposal.

This article presents an exploratory case study with a mobile application devised to promote social inclusion of visually impaired people through collaborative mapping considering changes in the local environment. General strategies and technological resources used in tools like this provide greater independence and social inclusion for people with disabilities. Test results suggest that this application can support and expand communication and mobility in physical spaces such as schools, public institutions and the community at large.