Development and Specification of Virtual Environments

This thesis concerns the issues involved in the development of virtual environments (VEs). VEs are more than virtual reality. We identify four main characteristics of them: graphical interaction, multimodality, interface agents, and multi-user. These characteristics are illustrated with an overview of different classes of VE-like applications, and a number of state-of-the-art VEs. To further define the topic of research, we propose a general framework for VE systems development, in which we identify five major classes of development tools: methodology, guidelines, design specification, analysis, and development environments. Of each, we give an overview of existing best practices

Automated specification-based testing of graphical user interfaces

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrónica e de Computadores. 2006. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Departamento de Informática, Escola de Engenharia. Universidade do Minh

Design, construction, and application of a generic visual language generation environment

2000-2001 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Developing and validating process-aware GUIs in an industrial setting

With classic cars being worth hundreds of thousands to even millions of euros, it is a deal of great importance that any restoration processes that these vehicles go through are following national and international regulations. Certification of the authenticity of restored cars plays a major role in this context. There is also a need to keep their owners informed about the process remotely, especially since these cars are often sent overseas to be repaired. This research is about assessing how monitoring the progress of classic cars’ restora- tion processes can be helpful for involved stakeholders: plant shop managers, certifica- tion bodies, and classic car owners. For that purpose, we developed a process monitoring platform that combines data gathered from plant shop sensors with input provided by a plant shop manager using a process-aware graphical user interface (GUI). The under- lying process is compliant with the best practices expressed in FIVA’s Charter of Turin and any evidence generated can be attached to its tasks to facilitate certification. After the process ends, an automatically generated PDF file that contains a summary of the process and the evidence attached to it can be downloaded. Last, but not least, a plat- form was developed where video-conference sessions with remotely controlled cameras can be performed to allow car owners to witness and record important milestones in the restoration/preservation process. This work allows for workshops using the developed system to show their quality and that the best practices identified by FIVA are followed. For this reason, it has gathered a lot of interest from several parties invested in the industry, including several national classic car workshops. If our system becomes widespread, it could not only distinguish the best workshops but also differentiate the country’s industry from others worldwide. It can also become a fundamental tool for the analysis performed by classic car certification companies in their tasks.Com carros clássicos a serem avaliados em centenas de milhares, ou em alguns casos mi- lhões, de euros, é muito importante que os seus processos de restauro estejam de acordo com as normas nacionais e internacionais. A certificação da autenticidade de carros res- taurados desempenha um papel importante neste contexto. Também é necessário manter os seus proprietários informados sobre o processo remotamente, especialmente visto que estes carros são frequentemente enviados para o estrangeiro para serem reparados. Esta pesquisa trata de avaliar como o monitoramento do progresso dos processos de restauração de carros clássicos pode ser útil para as partes envolvidas: gerentes de oficinas, órgãos de certificação e proprietários de carros clássicos. Para isso, desenvolvemos uma plataforma de monitoramento de processos que combina dados recolhidos por sensores com dados fornecidos pelos gerentes da oficina através duma GUI consciente dos pro- cessos. O processo subjacente está em conformidade com as práticas expressas na Carta de Turim da FIVA e as evidencias generadas podem ser anexadas às suas tarefas, para facilitar a certificação. No fim do processo, um ficheiro PDF gerado automaticamente que contém um resumo do processo e as suas evidências pode ser transferido. Por último, mas não menos importante, uma plataforma foi desenvolvida onde sessões de videoconferên- cia com câmaras remotamente controladas podem ser realizadas para permitir que os proprietários dos carros testemunhem e registem marcos importantes durante o processo de restauro/preservação. Este trabalho permite às oficinas que utilizem o nosso sistema mostrarem a sua qua- lidade e que as boas práticas identificadas pela FIVA são seguidas. Por este motivo, tem suscitado grande interesse pelas diversas partes envolvidas, incluindo diversas oficinas de automóveis clássicos nacionais. Se o nosso sistema ganhar popularidade, poderá não apenas distinguir as melhores oficinas, mas também diferenciar a indústria nacional das restantes mundialmente. Também pode se tornar uma ferramenta fundamental para a análise realizada pelas empresas de certificação de carros clássicos nas suas tarefas

Supporting Multiple Stakeholders in Agile Development

Agile software development practices require several stakeholders with different kinds of expertise to collaborate while specifying requirements, designing and modeling software, and verifying whether developers have implemented requirements correctly. We studied 112 requirements engineering (RE) tools from academia and the features of 13 actively maintained behavior-driven development (BDD) tools, which support various stakeholders in specifying and verifying the application behavior. Overall, we found that there is a growing tool specialization targeted towards a specific type of stakeholders. Particularly with BDD tools, we found no adequate support for non-technical stakeholders —- they are required to use an integrated development environment (IDE) —- which is not adapted to suit their expertise. We argue that employing separate tools for requirements specification, modeling, implementation, and verification is counter-productive for agile development. Such an approach makes it difficult to manage associated artifacts and support rapid implementation and feedback loops. To avoid dispersion of requirements and other software-related artifacts among separate tools, establish traceability between requirements and the application source code, and streamline a collaborative software development workflow, we propose to adapt an IDE as an agile development platform. With our approach, we provide in-IDE graphical interfaces to support non-technical stakeholders in creating and maintaining requirements concurrently with the implementation. With such graphical interfaces, we also guide non-technical stakeholders through the object-oriented design process and support them in verifying the modeled behavior. This approach has two advantages: (i) compared with employing separate tools, creating and maintaining requirements directly within a development platform eliminates the necessity to recover trace links, and (ii) various natively created artifacts can be composed into stakeholder-specific interactive live in-IDE documentation. These advantages have a direct impact on how various stakeholders collaborate with each other, and allow for rapid feedback, which is much desired in agile practices. We exemplify our approach using the Glamorous Toolkit IDE. Moreover, the discussed building blocks can be implemented in any IDE with a rich-enough graphical engine and reflective capabilities

"A model-driven approach for designing multi-platform user interface dialogues": dialogues specification

Human-computer interaction becomes sophisticated, multimodal and multi device and needs to be well-designed with the aim of facilitating application correction (i.e. to correcting errors/bugs in the application) or extension (i.e. adding new functionalities or modifying existing tasks). This thesis is focused on building a methodology of designing and specifying User Interface (UI) behaviour. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is used to describe in detail the conceptual model and to define all its objects. The methodology flux diagram is provided with the specification of the consistency and the completeness properties of the transformation model. To support the methodology, we implement a graphic Dialog Editor in which Models are organized in three levels (abstract, concrete and final) according to Cameleon Reference Framework (CFR) and, whose process respects the Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach. Furthermore, the use of Dialog Editor is illustrated through a simple exam...Les interfaces Homme-Machine deviennent de plus en plus complexes. Leur conception nécessite des nouveaux outils et/ou méthodes. En exploitant l'aproche orienté-modèle, cette thèse repond à ce besoin en proposant une méthodologie de conception des dialogues multi-plateform

Supporting multiple stakeholders in agile development

Agile software development practices require several stakeholders with different kinds of expertise to collaborate while specifying requirements, designing, and modelling software, and verifying whether developers have implemented requirements correctly. We studied 112 requirements engineering (RE) tools from academia and the features of 13 actively maintained behavior-driven development (BDD) tools, which support various stakeholders in specifying and verifying the application behavior. Overall, we found that there is a growing tool specialization targeted towards a specific type of stakeholders. Particularly with BDD tools, we found no adequate support for non-technical stakeholders-- they are required to use an integrated development environment (IDE)-- which is not adapted to suit their expertise. We argue that employing separate tools for requirements specification, modelling, implementation, and verification is counterproductive for agile development. Such an approach makes it difficult to manage associated artifacts and support rapid implementation and feedback loops. To avoid dispersion of requirements and other software-related artifacts among separate tools, establish traceability between requirements and the application source code, and streamline a collaborative software development workflow, we propose to adapt an IDE as an agile development platform. With our approach, we provide in-IDE graphical interfaces to support non-technical stakeholders in creating and maintaining requirements concurrently with the implementation. With such graphical interfaces, we also guide non-technical stakeholders through the object-oriented design process and support them in verifying the modelled behavior. This approach has two advantages: (i) compared with employing separate tools, creating, and maintaining requirements directly within a development platform eliminates the necessity to recover trace links, and (ii) various natively created artifacts can be composed into stakeholder-specific interactive live in-IDE documentation. These advantages have a direct impact on how various stakeholders collaborate with each other, and allow for rapid feedback, which is much desired in agile practices. We exemplify our approach using the Glamorous Toolkit IDE. Moreover, the discussed building blocks can be implemented in any IDE with a rich-enough graphical engine and reflective capabilities