A methodology for comparing design processes

Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge; Design and Innovation, Open UniversityWe gain insights into design processes by recognising similarities to other processes, often in radically different industries. The crucial determinants of what happens are characteristics shared with some other design processes. But there is no way to draw on comparisons beyond one's own experience. We are developing a programme of comparative design research that aims to map the similarities and differences between design processes, and develop a deeper understanding of how and why design is done differently in different industries, and how effective practices can be transferred between industries. In this paper we outline a methodology for creating analyses of design processes that facilitates both cross-process comparisons and the integration of different analytical perspectives on design. The analyst draws on a catalogue of previous design process descriptions for useful concepts, to map processes as a network of participants and activities and the relationships between them, and describe the causal relationships between the properties of the participants, activities and relationships.EPSR

A triangulation approach for design research

Triangulation has been adopted in social science in the study of the same phenomenon through applying and combining several data sources, research methods, investigators, and theoretical schemes. From a post-positivism view point, this paper presents a triangulation approach in design research from two perspectives, data sources and research methods. Data triangulation was achieved through collecting data from multiple sources including company design documents, student design projects, and company design projects. Different research methods, e.g. interview, content analysis, protocol analysis, and questionnaire, were used to conduct data collection and analysis into a particular aspect of design, the nature of coupling design artefact and process knowledge. It was found that triangulation can provide an effective means for design research

Towards Guidelines for Preventing Critical Requirements Engineering Problems

Context] Problems in Requirements Engineering (RE) can lead to serious consequences during the software development lifecycle. [Goal] The goal of this paper is to propose empirically-based guidelines that can be used by different types of organisations according to their size (small, medium or large) and process model (agile or plan-driven) to help them in preventing such problems. [Method] We analysed data from a survey on RE problems answered by 228 organisations in 10 different countries. [Results] We identified the most critical RE problems, their causes and mitigation actions, organizing this information by clusters of size and process model. Finally, we analysed the causes and mitigation actions of the critical problems of each cluster to get further insights into how to prevent them. [Conclusions] Based on our results, we suggest preliminary guidelines for preventing critical RE problems in response to context characteristics of the companies.Comment: Proceedings of the 42th Euromicro Conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications, 201

Tracing the Scenarios in Scenario-Based Product Design: a study to support scenario generation

Scenario-based design originates from the human-computer interaction and\ud software engineering disciplines, and continues to be adapted for product development. Product development differs from software development in the former’s more varied context of use, broader characteristics of users and more tangible solutions. The possible use of scenarios in product design is therefore broader and more challenging. Existing design methods that involve scenarios can be employed in many different stages of the product design process. However, there is no proficient overview that discusses a\ud scenario-based product design process in its full extent. The purposes of creating scenarios and the evolution of scenarios from their original design data are often not obvious, although the results from using scenarios are clearly visible. Therefore, this paper proposes to classify possible scenario uses with their purpose, characteristics and supporting design methods. The classification makes explicit different types of scenarios and their relation to one another. Furthermore, novel scenario uses can be referred or added to the classification to develop it in parallel with the scenario-based design\ud practice. Eventually, a scenario-based product design process could take inspiration for creating scenarios from the classification because it provides detailed characteristics of the scenario

Requirements analysis for decision-support system design: evidence from the automotive industry

The purpose of this paper is to outline the requirements analysis that was carried out to support the development of a system that allows engineers to view real-time data integrated from multiple silos such as Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Warranty systems, in a single and visual environment. The outcome of this study provides a clear understanding of how engineers working in different phases of the product-lifecycle could utilise such information to improve the decision making process and as a result design better products. This study uses data collected via in-depth semi-structured interviews and workshops that includes people working in various roles within the automotive sector. In order to demonstrate the applicability this approach, SysML diagrams are also provided

Using software development progress data to understand threats to project outcomes

Peer reviewe

Detecting Coordination Problems in Collaborative Software Development Environments

Software development is rarely an individual effort and generally involves teams of developers collaborating to generate good reliable code. Among the software code there exist technical dependencies that arise from software components using services from other components. The different ways of assigning the design, development, and testing of these software modules to people can cause various coordination problems among them. We claim\ud that the collaboration of the developers, designers and testers must be related to and governed by the technical task structure. These collaboration practices are handled in what we call Socio-Technical Patterns.\ud The TESNA project (Technical Social Network Analysis) we report on in this paper addresses this issue. We propose a method and a tool that a project manager can use in order to detect the socio-technical coordination problems. We test the method and tool in a case study of a small and innovative software product company

Evaluation of mobile health education applications for health professionals and patients

Paper presented at 8th International conference on e-Health (EH 2016), 1-3 July 2016, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. ABSTRACT Mobile applications for health education are commonly utilized to support patients and health professionals. A critical evaluation framework is required to ensure the usability and reliability of mobile health education applications in order to facilitate the saving of time and effort for the various user groups; thus, the aim of this paper is to describe a framework for evaluating mobile applications for health education. The intended outcome of this framework is to meet the needs and requirements of the different user categories and to improve the development of mobile health education applications with software engineering approaches, by creating new and more effective techniques to evaluate such software. This paper first highlights the importance of mobile health education apps, then explains the need to establish an evaluation framework for these apps. The paper provides a description of the evaluation framework, along with some specific evaluation metrics: an efficient hybrid of selected heuristic evaluation (HE) and usability evaluation (UE) factors to enable the determination of the usefulness and usability of health education mobile apps. Finally, an explanation of the initial results for the framework was obtained using a Medscape mobile app. The proposed framework - An Evaluation Framework for Mobile Health Education Apps – is a hybrid of five metrics selected from a larger set in heuristic and usability evaluation, filtered based on interviews from patients and health professionals. These five metrics correspond to specific facets of usability identified through a requirements analysis of typical users of mobile health apps. These metrics were decomposed into 21 specific questionnaire questions, which are available on request from first author

A framework for the definition of metrics for actor-dependency models

Actor-dependency models are a formalism aimed at providing intentional descriptions of processes as a network of dependency relationships among actors. This kind of models is currently widely used in the early phase of requirements engineering as well as in other contexts such as organizational analysis and business process reengineering. In this paper, we are interested in the definition of a framework for the formulation of metrics over these models. These metrics are used to analyse the models with respect to some properties that are interesting for the system being modelled, such as security, efficiency or accuracy. The metrics are defined in terms of the actors and dependencies of the model. We distinguish three different kinds of metrics that are formally defined, and then we apply the framework at two different layers of a meeting scheduler system.Postprint (published version

Computer-Aided System for Wind Turbine Data Analysis

Context: The current work on wind turbine failure detection focuses on researching suitable signal processing algorithms and developing efficient diagnosis algorithms. The laboratory research would involve large and complex data, and it can be a daunting task. Aims: To develop a Computer-Aided system for assisting experts to conduct an efficient laboratory research on wind turbine data analysis. System is expected to provide data visualization, data manipulation, massive data processing and wind turbine failure detection. Method: 50G off-line SCADA data and 4 confident diagnosis algorithms were used in this project. Apart from the instructions from supervisor, this project also gained help from two experts from Engineering Department. Java and Microsoft SQL database were used to develop the system. Results: Data visualization provided 6 different charting solutions and together with robust user interactions. 4 failure diagnosis solutions and data manipulations were provided in the system. In addition, dedicated database server and Matlab API with Java RMI were used to resolve the massive data processing problem. Conclusions: Almost all of the deliverables were completed. Friendly GUI and useful functionalities make user feel more comfortable. The final product does enable experts to conduct an efficient laboratory research. The end of this project also gave some potential extensions of the system