Results from an ethnographically-informed study in the context of test driven development

Background: Test-driven development (TDD) is an iterative software development technique where unit tests are defined before production code. Previous studies fail to analyze the values, beliefs, and assumptions that inform and shape TDD. Aim: We designed and conducted a qualitative study to understand the values, beliefs, and assumptions of TDD. In particular, we sought to understand how novice and professional software developers, arranged in pairs (a driver and a pointer), perceive and apply TDD. Method: 14 novice software developers, i.e., graduate students in Computer Science at the University of Basilicata, and six professional software developers (with one to 10 years work experience) participated in our ethnographicallyinformed study. We asked the participants to implement a new feature for an existing software written in Java. We immersed ourselves in the context of the study, and collected data by means of contemporaneous field notes, audio recordings, and other artifacts. Results: A number of insights emerge from our analysis of the collected data, the main ones being: (i) refactoring (one of the phases of TDD) is not performed as often as the process requires and it is considered less important than other phases, (ii) the most important phase is implementation, (iii) unit tests are almost never up-to-date, (iv) participants first build a sort of mental model of the source code to be implemented and only then write test cases on the basis of this model; and (v) apart from minor differences, professional developers and students applied TDD in a similar fashion. Conclusions: Developers write quick-and-dirty production code to pass the tests and ignore refactoring.Copyright is held by the owner/auther(s)

The Nature of evidence in empirical software engineering

In this paper, we argue that the gap between empirical software engineering and software engineering practice might be lessened if more attention were paid to two important aspects of evidence. The first is that evidence from case or field studies of actual software engineering practice is essential in order to understand and inform that practice. The second is that the nature of evidence should fit the purpose to which the evidence is going to be put. One type of evidence is not per se better than another. For example, the evidence required to persuade a manager to change an aspect of practice might be totally different in nature from that required to deepen the academic community's understanding of such practice

Capturing Practices of Knowledge Work for Information Systems Design

Despite abundant tools and systems claiming support for knowledge work, many have failed to be accepted by users. Designing information systems (ISs) for knowledge work is a challenging task, but results on how knowledge work is actually performed is scarce and so are instruments that help to translate results into artefacts useful for IS design. This paper takes the perspective of work practices and proposes an approach to collaboratively study and analyze practices of knowledge work. The approach uses stereotypes of users, called personas, in order to inform IS design activities. The persona concept is enriched with respect to behaviour concerning practices of knowledge work. Furthermore, a procedure for selecting primary personas out of a set of personas is suggested based on cluster analysis. The approach is illustrated with the case of a collaborative ethnographically-informed study of seven organizations in four European countries. The proposed approach is the more suitable, the more innovative, big and diverse the project, the planned product, the developers and the target group are. User-centered design activities benefit from personas by reduced effort for involving end-users and a continuous focus on characteristics of critical users and their way of performing practices of knowledge work

Indicating Knowledge Development: An Empirical Investigation from the Perspective of Knowledge Maturing

To remain competitive, organizations need to continuously develop their knowledge. While knowledge work is performed similarly in organizations across different sectors, the measurement and assessment of its results currently lacks standardized approaches. This paper sets out to identify indicators that are suitable for making knowledge development transparent to support monitoring of knowledge work. Therefore, a multi-phase mixed methods approach was chosen. In a series of three studies, an activity-focused perspective towards knowledge work was adopted, where knowledge is viewed as passing through a phased maturing process. An initial set of indicators was identified in an ethnographically-informed study and subsequently refined in an online survey. In the interview study, data was collected from 121 European organizations of different sizes, sectors and knowledge-intensity. Feedback from respondents provided evidence for the suitability of items for indicating knowledge maturing and revealed a structure of five factors that were labeled, interpreted and discussed

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

“An ethnographic seduction”: how qualitative research and Agent-based models can benefit each other

We provide a general analytical framework for empirically informed agent-based simulations. This methodology provides present-day agent-based models with a sound and proper insight as to the behavior of social agents — an insight that statistical data often fall short of providing at least at a micro level and for hidden and sensitive populations. In the other direction, simulations can provide qualitative researchers in sociology, anthropology and other fields with valuable tools for: (a) testing the consistency and pushing the boundaries, of specific theoretical frameworks; (b) replicating and generalizing results; (c) providing a platform for cross-disciplinary validation of results

See no evil? Ethics in an interventionist ICTD

This paper considers some of the ethical questions that arise in conducting interventionist ICTD research, and examines the ethical advice and guidance that is readily available to researchers. Recent years have seen a growing interest from technology researchers in applying their skills to address the needs and aspirations of people in developing regions. In contrast to much previous research in Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) which has sought to study and understand processes surrounding technologies, technology researchers are interested in finding ways to change the forms of these technologies in order to promote desirable social aims. These more interventionist research encounters raise distinctive ethical challenges. This paper explores the discussions that have been presented in the major ICTD journals and conferences and major development studies journals as well as examining codes of conduct from related fields of research. Exploration of this literature shows that the quantity, quality and detail of advice that directly addresses the challenges of interventionist ICTD is actually very limited. This paper argues that the there is an urgent need for the ICTD research community to investigate and debate this subject

Nonlinear Dynamics In Musical Interactions

This thesis examines nonlinear dynamical processes in musical tools, identifying certain roles that they play in creative interactions with existing tools, and investigates the roles they might play in digital tools. Nonlinear dynamical processes are fundamental in the everyday physical world. They lie at the core of many acoustic instruments, playing a particularly significant role in bowed and blown instruments. Two major studies are presented that approach these issues from different perspectives. Firstly a set of comparative studies explore the ways in which musicians engage with systems that do and do not incorporate nonlinear dynamical processes. Secondly, interviews with a range of musicians engaged in contemporary musical practices — particularly free improvisation — are used to investigate the role of nonlinear dynamical processes in instrumental interactions in relation to unpredictability and creative exploration. Evidence is presented demonstrating that nonlinear dynamical processes can be drawn on as resources for exploration over long time periods. An approach to creative interaction that explicitly draws on the properties of nonlinear dynamical processes is uncovered and connected to material-oriented notions of creative processes. Nonlinear dynamics are shown to facilitate a productive ‘‘sweet spot’’ between unpredictability and complexity on the one hand, and detailed, sensitive, deterministic control, coupled with the potential to repeat and develop particular actions on the other. The importance of timing in interactions with nonlinear dynamical processes is highlighted as being significant in creating explorable interactions, particularly close to critical thresholds. A distinction is raised between instantaneous unpredictabilities that emerge from the interaction with the tool (interactional ), and unpredictabilities that result from the unexpected implications of the conjunction of otherwise anticipated elements (combinatorial). While the usefulness of the latter in creative interactions is frequently acknowledged in HCI research, the former is often excluded, or seen as a hinderance or obstruction. Engagements with nonlinear dynamical processes in existing musical instruments and practices provide clear evidence of the utility of both nonlinear dynamics, and interactional surprises more generally, suggesting that they can be of use in other domains where creative exploration is a concern

Educational Technology: The influence of theory

In this paper we explore the role of theories in current practice in educational technology. We review a range of writings from the past 30 years on the nature of learning technology research. We discuss influences on learning technologies from the related fields of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). We identify two groups of theories which have been used. The first group are related to principled decisions about the design of learning materials. The second group influence the ways in which we frame our research on learning. Research in learning technologies in the future will need to draw on both groups of theories. In this paper, we draw on our own experiences as educational technologists and the purpose of the paper is to encourage other educational technologists to join with us in reflecting on their own use of theories