Business processes refactoring to improve usability in E-commerce applications

Refactoring is a technique that applies step-by-step transformations intended to improve the quality of software while preserving its behavior. It represents an essential activity in today's software lifecycle and a powerful tool against software decay. Software decay, however, is not only about code becoming legacy, but it is also about systems becoming less usable compared to competitor solutions adopting new designs and new technologies. If we narrow the focus on e-commerce systems, the role of usability becomes essential: higher usability is in fact a requirement to win the market competition and to retain customers from turning to other choices. One reason why an e-commerce application can start suffering from poor usability is because of its business processes (BPs) becoming difficult to access, complicated to execute, and, overall, offering a poor user experience. In this paper we argue that refactoring can be a key solution for this kind of usability issues. In particular, we propose a catalog of refactorings as a means to systematically identify and address lack of usability in the BPs of an e-commerce application, and to seize opportunities for usability improvement. To make the presentation concrete and to provide evidence of the benefits that applying our refactorings can bring, we present a number of examples with reference to well-known e-commerce websites.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

E-commerce aplicando ISO/EAC 25010:2011 y la rentabilidad en "Productos Lácteos Los Alpes E. I. R. L." Cajamarca, 2020

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo determinar el impacto del e-commerce aplicando la ISO/EAC 25010:2011 en la rentabilidad de “Los Alpes E.I.R.L.” – Cajamarca, 2020. La metodología de investigación fue cuantitativa, de diseño no experimental y longitudinal donde se evaluaron datos de 12 meses. Los resultados evidenciaron una distribución normal de los indicadores: utilidad bruta y ventas netas. Para el desarrollo del e-commerce se utilizó la metodología Open Up, así mismo para evaluar la ISO 25010 se utilizó la metodología GQM y se eligieron las características de usabilidad y seguridad. Para la evaluación de la rentabilidad se utilizaron fichas de datos que contenían información de utilidad bruta y ventas netas, a partir de este punto se aplicó la fórmula de ROS y se evaluó la rentabilidad de las ventas. Se realizó la prueba de normalidad con Shapiro Wilk haciendo uso del software SPSS, concluyendo que se acepta la hipótesis nula, al no existir una diferencia significativa en la rentabilidad de la empresa. Finalmente, como resultado para el primer periodo de evaluación de rentabilidad se obtuvo un 53% y luego de aplicar el e-commerce se obtuvo un 59% en la rentabilidad de la empresa

Kobold: web usability as a service

While Web applications have become pervasive in today’s business, social interaction and information exchange, their usability is often deficient, even being a key factor for a website success. Usability problems repeat across websites, and many of them have been catalogued, but usability evaluation and repair still remains expensive. There are efforts from both the academy and industry to automate usability testing or to provide automatic statistics, but they rarely offer concrete solutions. These solutions appear as guidelines or patterns that developers can follow manually. This paper presents Kobold, a tool that detects usability problems from real user interaction (UI) events and repairs them automatically when possible, at least suggesting concrete solutions. By using the refactoring technique and its associated concept of bad smell, Kobold mines UI events to detect usability smells and applies usability refactorings on the client to correct them. The purpose of Kobold is to deliver usability advice and solutions as a service (SaaS) for developers, allowing them to respond to feedback of the real use of their applications and improve usability incrementally, even when there are no usability experts on the team. Kobold is available at: http://autorefactoring.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar. A screencast is available at https://youtu.be/c-myYPMUh0

Development of a user interface for the evaluation of conservation climates

La usabilidad es un atributo de calidad perseguido por interfaces de usuario en las más diversas áreas. Sin embargo, son insuficientes las referencias acerca de evaluaciones de usabilidad en interfaces asociadas al patrimonio cultural. En instancias previas de esta investigación, se desarrolló un procedimiento útil para evaluar y optimizar el clima de conservación, y así extender la vida útil de colecciones en bibliotecas. El objetivo de esta nueva etapa es desarrollar una interfaz de usuario que permita utilizar aquel procedimiento ya validado, por parte de usuarios no expertos. La metodología consta de cuatro etapas: una revisión bibliográfica sistemática, definición de los usuarios y de las tareas que espera resolver con la interfaz, desarrollo de un prototipo de interfaz, y realización de pruebas tempranas de usabilidad con usuarios reales.Usability is a quality attribute pursued by user interfaces in the most diverse areas. However, references to usability evaluations in interfaces associated with cultural heritage are insufficient. In previous instances of this research, a useful procedure was developed to evaluate and optimize the conservation climate, and thus extend the life of collections in libraries. The objective of this new stage is to develop a user interface that allows using that procedure, already validated, by non-expert users. The methodology consists of four stages: a systematic bibliographic review, definition of the user stories and the tasks they expect to solve with the interface, development of an interface prototype, and conducting of early usability tests with real users.Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanism

Kobold: web usability as a service

While Web applications have become pervasive in today’s business, social interaction and information exchange, their usability is often deficient, even being a key factor for a website success. Usability problems repeat across websites, and many of them have been catalogued, but usability evaluation and repair still remains expensive. There are efforts from both the academy and industry to automate usability testing or to provide automatic statistics, but they rarely offer concrete solutions.These solutions appear as guidelines or patterns that developers can follow manually. This paper presents Kobold, a tool that detects usability problems from real user interaction (UI) events and repairs them automatically when possible, at least suggesting concrete solutions. By using the refactoring technique and its associated concept of bad smell, Kobold mines UI events to detect usability smells and applies usability refactorings on the client to correct them. The purpose of Kobold is to deliver usability advice and solutions as a service (SaaS) for developers, allowing them to respond to feedback of the real use of their applications and improve usability incrementally, even when there are no usability experts on the team. Kobold is available at: http://autorefactoring.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar. A screencast is available at https://youtu.be/c-myYPMUh0QLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Model of characteristics of the family of e-commerce programs

El comercio electrónico es hoy una realidad creciente en la Web, ya que estudios de campo recientes realizados en este, confirman el creciente uso de los mismos para hacer compras. En este contexto, es imprescindible analizar los sitios de comercio electrónico como miembros de una familia de programas, la manera de aprovechar los beneficios de trabajar con ella, en vez de cada miembro en particular. Los objetivos de este trabajo son, en primer lugar, definir rigurosamente el concepto de comercio electrónico. En segundo lugar, profundizar el concepto de familia de programas y enunciar los beneficios de trabajar con ella. Y por último, centrarse en caracterizar específicamente a la familia de programas de comercio electrónico mediante el uso de un modelo de características obligatorias y opcionales aplicado en 4 sitios de comercio electrónico (2 de alcance internacional y 2 de alcance nacional), de lo cual se desprenden comparaciones que marcan grandes diferencias entre las funcionalidades que presentan los sitios de alcance internacional en comparación con los de alcance nacional.Electronic commerce is today a growing reality on the Web, since recent field studies carried out on it confirm the growing use of the same to make purchases. In this context, it is essential to analyze e-commerce sites as members of a family of programs, how to take advantage of the benefits of working with it, rather than each member in particular. The objectives of this work are, first, to rigorously define the concept of electronic commerce. Second, deepen the concept of family of programs and state the benefits of working with it. And finally, focus on specifically characterizing the family of e-commerce programs by using a model of mandatory and optional features applied in 4 e-commerce sites (2 international and 2 national), from which they show comparisons that mark great differences between the functionalities that the sites of international scope present in comparison with those of national scope

Modelo de características de la familia de programas de comercio electrónico

El comercio electrónico es hoy una realidad creciente en la Web, ya que estudiosde campo recientes realizados en este, confirman el creciente uso de los mismospara hacer compras. En este contexto, es imprescindible analizar los sitios decomercio electrónico como miembros de una familia de programas, la manera deaprovechar los beneficios de trabajar con ella, en vez de cada miembro enparticular. Los objetivos de este trabajo son, en primer lugar, definir rigurosamenteel concepto de comercio electrónico. En segundo lugar, profundizar el concepto defamilia de programas y enunciar los beneficios de trabajar con ella. Y por último,centrarse en caracterizar específicamente a la familia de programas de comercioelectrónico mediante el uso de un modelo de características obligatorias yopcionales aplicado en 4 sitios de comercio electrónico (2 de alcance internacionaly 2 de alcance nacional), de lo cual se desprenden comparaciones que marcangrandes diferencias entre las funcionalidades que presentan los sitios de alcanceinternacional en comparación con los de alcance nacional

Refactorings para mejorar procesos de negocio en aplicaciones web

El objetivo principal perseguido en esta tesis consiste en proponer un catálogo de refactorings para mejorar aspectos como usabilidad, eficiencia y eficacia de los procesos de negocio de las aplicaciones web. Mientras otras publicaciones identifican posibilidades de mejorías en los modelos de las aplicaciones web, esta tesis se focaliza en identificar problemas relacionados exclusivamente con la ejecución de los procesos de negocio y sugerir cambios para optimizar la experiencia del usuario mientras este navega por los procesos embebidos en las aplicaciones.With time, web applications changed and evolved from simple websites to complex applications that allow users to perform a wide variety of tasks and operations online. All this progress is possible due to the fact that, nowadays, web applications support Business Processes. The integration of business processes and the associated increase in complexity of web applications generally lead to underestimate its usability which affects directly the users who have to execute these business processes daily. Focused in improve the execution and the usability of business processes, a catalog of refactorings was created with suggestions of changes classified by the affected web application model. The proposed refactorings aim to improve the user experience while executing these business processes embeded in most of web application and consequently its usability.Facultad de Informátic

Usability Improvement Through A/B Testing and Refactoring

Usability evaluation is an essential task in web application development. There have been several attempts to integrate user-centered design with agile methods, but it is hard to synchronize their practices. User testing is very valuable to learn from feedback of actual use, but it remains expensive to find and solve usability problems. Furthermore, the high cost of usability evaluation forces small/medium-sized companies to trust the first solution applied, without actually testing the success of the solution or considering a possible regression in usability, as could be highlighted by an iterative testing method. In this article we advocate for a usability improvement cycle oriented by user feedback, and compatible with an agile development process. We propose an iterative method supported by a toolkit that allows usability experts to design user tests, run them remotely, analyze results, and assess alternative solutions to usability problems similarly to A/B testing. Each solution is created by applying client-side web refactorings, i.e., changes to the web pages in the client which are meant to improve usability. The main benefit of our approach is that it reduces the overall cost of user testing and particularly, A/B testing, by applying refactorings to create alternative solutions without modifying the application’s server code. By making it affordable for usability experts to apply the method in parallel with the development cycle, we aim to encourage them to incorporate user feedback and try different ideas to discover the best performing solution in terms of the metrics of interest.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Automatic detection of usability smells in web applications

Usability assessment of web applications continues to be an expensive and often neglected practice. While large companies are able to spare resources for studying and improving usability in their products, smaller businesses often divert theirs in other aspects. To help these cases, researches have devised automatic approaches for user interaction analysis, and there are commercial services that offer automated usability statistics at relatively low fees. However, most existing approaches still fall short in specifying the usability problems concretely enough to identify and suggest solutions. In this work we describe usability smells of user interaction, i.e., hints of usability problems on running web applications, and the process in which they can be identified by analyzing user interaction events. We also describe USF, the tool that implements the process in a fully automated way with minimum setup effort. USF analyses user interaction events on-the-fly, discovers usability smells and reports them together with a concrete solution in terms of a usability refactoring, providing usability advice for deployed web applications