Abstract. The human-computer interaction community has largely defended the use of an iterative process in which the users and stakeholders participate in all activities throughout the development of an interactive system. This work can become challenging when users have an evolving profiles in degenerative diseases (e.g. Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s). The needs of the users at the start of the process may no longer be the same at the end when the system is validated. As consequence, it is important to integrate users in different stages of the disease in the whole process. The involvement of stakeholders (such as healthcare professionals, family members and caregivers) is also crucial for the better understanding of the user’s needs and their evolving profile. This article presents how we deal with the evolving user profile in the development of a communication aid software for people with Parkinson’s disease. To that end, we have customized the ISO 9241-210 human-centred process with a series of human-computer studies from a broad to a more focused goal. It presents this process and the complementary studies carried out with 97 people with Parkinson’s disease, 5 relatives/caregivers and 5 health professionals. In light of the insights gained from this experience, we have formulated several recommendations for human-centred design in the context of a user with an evolving profile. These recommendations outline a human-centred approach to guide the development of software applications for users with evolving profiles.

ABSTRACT Software quality models have increasingly emphasized human factors and user needs. In 2011, ISO/IEC 25010 introduced the quality‐in‐use (QinU) model, designed to evaluate software quality as an outcome of a user utilizing a system through the evaluation of five characteristics: effectiveness, efficiency, freedom from risk, satisfaction, and context coverage. As a generic reference, this standard has been customized for various software types (e.g., web portals and artificial intelligence systems). This article presents a customization for context‐aware software systems (CASSs), which are software systems that interpret and use context information (regarding the user, the software application features, and the environment) to adapt their functionalities. We are particularly interested in CASS for pervasive, or ubiquitous, environments. To address this goal, each QinU characteristic was analyzed by professionals from the academy and industry, taking into account the CASS features for pervasive/ubiquitous environments. A cyclical process of definition, revision, and improvement based on measurement theory was carried out before empirical validation in case studies. As the main result, a novel set of QinU measures specifically tailored for CASSs in a pervasive environment is provided, considering not only the classic explicit user interactions (e.g., mouse clicks and text input) but also the implicit interactions during everyday activities (e.g., walking or driving), captured through sensors and processed to support the user (e.g., recommending nearby museums and providing driving guidance). This set of measures supports CASS assessment and improvements, offering more accurate and context‐sensitive quality measurement.

With the widespread use of machine learning for algorithmic decision-making, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) systems are increasingly important. However, they are not always understandable and trustworthy for end-users, who should know when to rely on AI’s advice to make informed decisions. Hence, adequately presenting explanations in user interfaces (UIs) is essential. This paper investigates proposals in this direction and what is missing to support the design of explainable UIs aware of reliance issues. From a systematic literature review of 1,287 unique papers, we identified 120 secondary studies, of which we selected 22 for analysis. Our findings reveal that studies have been conducted to provide recommendations to specific application domains, and evidence regarding explanation effects on reliance remains inconclusive. We also found a lack of characterization of factors impacting reliance on XAI systems. Furthermore, we provide perspectives to foster appropriate reliance research on explainable UIs.

IoT, Industry 4.0, and ubiquitous applications demand an intense exchange of information between actors (humans, animals, plants, or other objects) and things. Different interaction technologies, techniques, and methods can support it, including RFID, a well-known technology capable of identifying and locating actors. However, the variety of application domains and interaction possibilities jeopardize the use of RFID without a clear understanding of its usage issues. Therefore, we have performed a systematic mapping to characterize the adoption of RFID technology in this kind of interactive software system by intercepting human-computer interaction and software engineering issues. Our goal is to reveal (i) which application domains address RFID; (ii) why RFID is used instead of other technologies; (iii) who interacts through RFID and how the interaction is; (iv) what are the requirements and limitations associated with it; and (v) what are the common quality characteristics and measures which should be considered for their evaluation. The results showed that (i) RFID is specially used for implementing implicit interactions in healthcare, embedded systems, and manufacturing applications. (ii) Passive UHF RFID is usually adopted due to being contactless, low-cost, and well-performing indoors. (iii) It interacts with humans and things in the same proportion, most frequently to collect locations of sensor data constantly. (iv) RFID presents limitations, such as causing electromagnetic interference and not working well near metallic walls. However, tags work under high temperatures and can be well hidden in cement or clothes. (v) Interactive system designers usually create applications with invisible infrastructures, which tend to keep users' focus on the real world.?

Over the past two decades, many studies have been published in diverse fields of application combining agent abilities (knowledge processing, communication, learning, mobility, etc.) and data mining approaches (clustering, decision trees, ontologies, etc.). We performed a systematic mapping study to quantitatively analyse these contributions about agent mining. We determined that most of the publications were in the field of data mining using agent systems to collect or mine the data. Some used data mining solutions to improve agent behaviour, and very few publications integrated both agent and mining approaches. In the latter case, most were published in the last few years, which highlights the advances in research integrating agents and mining approaches.

The growing importance of new markets on the Internet in the 1990s led to the development of new guidelines and interface design principles ensuring online consumer trust. These guidelines have been rapidly spoofed by attackers who integrated interface design principles maliciously to deceive users with phishing emails. In this paper we propose to adapt an inspection method, Cognitive Walkthrough, to understand how users walk through the processing of a phishing email. 23 experienced evaluators used the proposed method, Cognitive Walkthrough for phishing emails, in a pilot study and gave a feedback on it. The method allows to analyze the areas of a phishing email eliciting users to trust, to act, and to distrust. These areas are then commented allowing to understand the interface design principles exploited maliciously by attackers when they are saying to users: Trust me and click!

New technologies and approaches lead to the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Such a paradigm enables the engineering of more autonomous and smarter software systems solutions. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, it involves several knowledge areas such as software and connectivity that should be combined coherently and uniformly. It should comprise different voices and expertise to deal with IoT in a multi-faceted way. In this context, what to consider while specifying, designing, and implementing IoT software systems? This work raises this discussion by defining a roadmap about what should be considered for engineering IoT software respecting all their facets. Such a roadmap is defined based on evidence acquired at the technical literature combined with a qualitative study.

The advance of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and Internet of Things (IoT) brought a new set of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs), especially related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Invisibility is one of these NFRs, and it refers to either the merging of technology in the user environment or the decrease of the interaction workload. This new NFR may impact traditional NFRs (e.g., Usability), revealing positive correlations, when one NFR helps another, and negative correlations, when a procedure favors an NFR but creates difficulty for another one. Software engineers need to know about these correlations, so they can select appropriate strategies to satisfy Invisibility and traditional NFRs. Correlations between NFRs are usually stored in catalogs, which is a well-defined body of knowledge gathered from previous experience. Although Invisibility has been recently cataloged with development strategies, the literature still lacks catalogs with correlations for this NFR. Therefore, this work aims at capturing and cataloging invisibility correlations for UbiComp and IoT systems. To do that, we also propose to systematize the definition of correlations using the following well-defined research methods: Interview, Content Analysis and Questionnaire. As a result, we defined a catalog with 110 positive and negative correlations with 9 NFRs. This well-defined body of knowledge is useful for supporting software engineers to select strategies to satisfy Invisibility and other NFRs related to user interaction.

Abstract Do human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers agree about which HCI approaches should be used in the development of an interactive system? To address this question, we performed a study based on the engineering process areas (requirements development, technical solution, product integration, verification and validation) of the CMMI-DEV (Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development), a software engineering model commonly used in the industry. To carry out this study, a literature review was performed, a specific instrument was designed based on CMMI-DEV and interviews with 20 researchers from the HCI domain were conducted. Analyzing the interview data with monovariate and multivariate statistical approach (Multiple Correspondence Analysis - MCA), we find the greatest agreement occurred among researchers for HCI approaches that support verification and validation phases and the use of functional prototypes in some activities of the last phases of software development (technical solution and product integration). However, we identified lack of agreement among researchers regarding requirements development activities.

The MPS for Software reference model (MR-MPSSW) is one of the models currently used in Brazilian industry. This software process capability maturity (SPCM) model describes Software Engineering (SE) practices that are applied in the software development by the use of approaches (such as methods, techniques and so on). The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has defined specific approaches (methods, techniques, patterns, and standards) for the conception, design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive systems development. Nevertheless, the literature points out that those approaches are not sufficiently used in industry. Taking advantage of the large use of SPCM models, we have identified HCI approaches that could support SPCM practices related to five processes (Requirements Development, Design and Construction of the Product, Product Integration, Verification and Validation) advocated by the MR-MPS-SW. Analyzing the HCI literature and MR-MPS-SW, we identified a set of HCI approaches for interactive systems development. We interviewed twenty HCI experts to validate and improve this initial set. Thus, we identified 14 HCI categories with examples of methods, techniques, patterns, and standards adequate for performing SE practices of the MR-MPS-SW when developing interactive systems.

Conflicts between non-functional requirements (NFRs) can happen when a particular solution favors the first NFR but creates difficulty for the second one. Usually, in the literature, the conflict identification uses catalogs to indicate conflicting NFRs. The authors focus on NFRs that are generic to any system. However, applications from Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and Internet of Things (IoT) introduce new kind of NFRs (e.g., Context-Awareness and Mobility). They are not included in these catalogs and can impact the traditional ones (e.g., Security and Usability). Therefore, there is a need to create a catalog that considers conflicts among quality characteristics for UbiComp and IoT applications. However, the literature lacks a process or guideline about how to create a catalog. This paper aims then to present a process and initial findings towards a catalog of conflicts between specific HCI quality characteristics in UbiComp and IoT applications and Usability.

A new set of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) have appeared with the advent of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and more recently Internet of Things (IoT). Invisibility is one of these NFRs that means the ability to hide technology from users. Although invisibility is long seen as an essential characteristic for achieving the goals of UbiComp, it has not been cataloged regarding its subcharacteristics and solutions, making its design and requirements specification in such applications a challenging task. Considering the Softgoal Interdependency Graph (SIG), which is a well-known format to catalog NFRs, this work aims at capturing subcharacteristics and solutions for Invisibility and cataloging them in a SIG. Since there is no systematic approach on how to build SIGs, we also propose to systematize the definition of Invisibility SIG using the following well-defined research methods: snowballing, database search, grounded theory and questionnaires. As a result, we got an Invisibility SIG composed of two main subcharacteristics, twelve sub-subcharacteristics, ten general solutions and fifty-six specific solutions. This organized body of knowledge is useful for supporting software engineers to specify requirements and practical solutions for UbiComp and IoT applications. Furthermore, the proposed methodology used to capture and catalog requirements in a SIG can be reused for other NFRs.

Abstract Human‐computer interaction (HCI) and software engineering (SE) are undoubtedly important domains for the development of interactive systems. The quality of an interactive system is usually considered dependent on the user interface design and evaluation, which implies the use of HCI and SE approaches on the adequate software process. With the wide use of software process capability maturity (SPCM) models in the industry and their role of proposing best practices for software development and maintenance, some questions come up: To what extent are HCI approaches known and used to develop interactive systems? What is their level of use compared to SE approaches? To answer these questions, we conducted an empirical study in the Brazilian industry. Thirty‐six official consultants for the 2 SPCM models used in Brazil (CMMI‐DEV and MR‐MPS‐SW) provided us with their perception of knowledge and use concerning a set of predefined categories of approaches for HCI and SE that support the engineering practices of those SPCM models. By using a pairedttest, we concluded that consultants of those models do not know and do not use HCI approaches as well as they know and use SE approaches. Moreover, they know little about HCI approaches, which may justify their poor use.

The last decade marked the development of a large number of tools for assessing the usability of user interfaces. Those tools are based on different subjective and objective methods. For obtaining a good assessment of usability, integrating findings in a single and complementary manner, is promising. In this paper, we present an evaluation support environment that addresses this issue. This environment is built on the concepts of measurement information model defined by ISO/IEC 15939 standard. This model goes from the collection of base measures extracted from specific evaluation tools to the definition of indicators. These indicators provide a basis framework that integrates measures and supports decision-making. The environment contributes to automate the collection and analysis of measures. Further, it supports the interpretation of results and allows detecting accurate usability problems. Finally, it gives some recommendations for enhancing user interfaces. The feasibility and the execution of the environment are presented into a case study for assessing a traffic supervision system.

Even though coming from different communities, Software Engineering (SE) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) engineering have similar goals: the definition of methods, techniques and standards to support the development of software systems, and, in particular for HCI, of interactive systems. Currently, several SE approaches are largely applied in practice thank to the widespread use of capability maturity models in companies. To benefit from this situation and taking advantage of the similarity of SE and HCI goals, we have studied how to support the developers that use these models with approaches from HCI while developing interactive systems. In this paper we present the part of this study regarding requirements development process, an undoubtedly important area from software life cycle. This study involves a detailed analysis of one of the most known models (the CMMI-DEV — Capability Maturity Model Integration for Developers) and interview with twenty experts in HCI domain. As result, a set of HCI approaches to support the developers in the requirements development process area is presented.

Usability evaluation for interactive systems is one of the greatest interests for the Human–Computer Interaction community. To support this evaluation, several subjective and objective methods have been proposed and applied in academy and industry. In this context, usability evaluators usually work with a lot of and different kinds of data (e.g., ordinal values from questionnaires and performance rates) generated from different methods and tools and related to different usability criteria. In this article, we propose to integrate these data in a single way to better support the quality evaluators’ decision-making for traffic supervision systems domain. We apply the measurement information model defined by IEC/IEC 15939 with the use of indicators in an interactive system evaluation environment. Four indicators are presented from their specifications to their application in the evaluation of a system from a company. These indicators integrate evaluation results from usability questionnaires, an automated ergonomic guidelines inspector, and an electronic informer.

Software process performance analysis is a challenge for software organizations that aim to achieve higher levels of maturity models and quality standards, as it usually depends on knowledge of quantitative and statistical techniques, and experience with software processes and in the organizational context. This paper presents a knowledge-based environment proposed for supporting software organizations during the execution of process performance analysis. This environment aims to provide a body of knowledge and a set of activities and tasks for software process performance, which will be executed based on rules that guide the user during the execution of this analysis. The initial body of knowledge of this environment was collected and the set of activities and tasks was identified. The environment tools and their communication are also shown in this paper.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) has gained attention from human-computer interface community because of its capability of code generation from abstract models and transformations. MDA approaches and tools in this context include, usually, the personalization of interface design elements (such as I/O fields, screen resolution, screen size, and so on) based on some information about the context of use. However, to really achieve the personalization, it is important not only to consider the container but also the content that means, which information should be provided in each situation. This paper presents a MDA approach in this direction. Our goal is to define during user interface design what information should be personalized for a specific domain considering the context information. To address this goal, a context model and a domain ontology are used as central elements for models design and transformations.

Abstract To achieve high‐level maturity in software process improvement, organizations must change the project management focus from the empirical assessment of process performance to quantitative management of the software process based on performance measures and statistical techniques. To this purpose, managers need to work with years of measurement data to establish control limits and conduct performance analyses. In this context, some difficulties are encountered: Which measures should be used, considering that early definition is important? Which statistical technique is more adequate in each case? How should we work with the data? We found more than 500 different measures in the literature applicable to software process performance and a number of different statistical techniques to analyze and choose from. This article aims at defining a catalog of indicators with their related measures in answer to the above questions, in a way that can help managers perform process performance analysis of the Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI‐DEV) engineering processes. This article presents how we define and use this catalog and the complete specification of two indicators. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Choose the best way to move from one place to another can involve different information: offers of different transport modes, their combination in the same journey and other information about services (such as restaurants, libraries, etc) that can be available in the route and useful for the passenger. Different approaches have been proposed to support the passenger's planning considering some part of this information. In this paper we present a public transportation domain ontology that considers different concepts related to the best and more relevant planning for the passenger. This ontology is formalized with OWL in Protégè tool. Using real instances and inferences, we show the ontology application, its relevance and consistency.

There can be no doubt that risk management is an important activity in the software engineering area. One proof of this is the large body of work existing in this area. However, when one takes a closer look at it, one perceives that almost all this work is concerned with risk management for software development projects. The literature on risk management for software maintenance is much scarcer. On the other hand, software maintenance projects do present specificities that imply they offer different risks than development. This suggests that maintenance projects could greatly benefit from better risk management tools. One step in this direction would be to help identifying potential risk factors at the beginning of a maintenance project. For this, we propose taxonomy of possible risks for software management projects. The ontology was created from: i) an extensive survey of risk management literature, to list known risk factors for software development; and, ii) an extensive survey of maintenance literature, to list known problems that may occur during maintenance.

In the recent years, software products have increased in size and complexity, becoming a critical and strategic asset in the organizations' business. In this scenario it is a challenge to obtain software products of quality under the time and resources constraints established in projects. Standards, methodologies and techniques to promote software quality assurance have been continually proposed by the researchers and used by software engineers in the industry. The Workshop on Software Quality (WoSQ) aims at bringing together academic, industrial and commercial communities interested in software quality topics to discuss the different technologies being defined and used in the software quality area.

One of the main reasons why the development of software does not meet the client's need is the lack of understanding of the software's real objective, and consequently, the tasks it should perform and how they should be performed. With this assumption, we have defined a structure to represent the task knowledge which supports software engineers in understanding problems starting from the understanding of the tasks which comprise these problems. This structure combines task ontologies and problem solving methods, providing the developer with the necessary task knowledge to guide him throughout the development process. This article shows how task knowledge is defined and used to help the development of software, presenting as an example, use cases modeling.