A systematic mapping study of HCI practice research

Human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has emerged as a research domain in the HCI field and is growing. The need to transfer HCI practices to the industry began significantly with the works of Nielsen on usability engineering. To date, methods and techniques for designing, evaluating, and implementing interactive systems for human use have continued to emerge. It is, therefore, justified to conduct a systematic mapping study to determine the landscape of HCI practice research. A Systematic Mapping Study method was used to map 142 studies according to research type, topic, and contribution. These were then analyzed to determine an overview of HCI practice research. The objective was to analyze studies on HCI practice and present prominent issues that characterize the HCI practice research landscape. Second, to identify pressing challenges regarding HCI practices in software/systems development companies. The results show that HCI practice research has steadily increased since 2012. The majority of the studies explored focused on evaluation research that largely contributed to the evaluation methods or processes. Most of the studies were on design tools and techniques, design methods and contexts, design work and organizational culture, and collaboration and team communication. Interviews, case studies, and survey methods have been prominently used as research methods. HCI techniques are mostly used during the initial phase of development and during evaluation. HCI practice challenges in companies are mostly process-related and on performance of usability and user experience activities. The major challenge seems to be to find a way to collect and incorporate user feedback in a timely manner, especially in agile processes. There are areas identified in this study as needing more research

Teams in agile software development: Design principles and examination of human factors

In response to new customer requirements, market dynamics, mergers, and technological innovation, modern software development organizations are adopting agile software development (ASD). Yet, the simple adoption of agile methods such as Scrum or eXtreme programming does not automatically result in a very agile team. While we understand the introduction and adoption of ASD from a methodical perspective, we have yet to explore design principles that guide methodical extensions of ASD, and we need to learn more about the human factors that influence software development teams. This thesis presents four studies. Studies 1 and 2 investigate the methodical extension of ASD by identifying design principles from secondary data. Study 1 extends ASD with processes and practices from user-centered design. Study 2 investigates early activities that precede development activities. The thesis also investigates human factors of agile software development in studies 3 and 4. Study 3 compares teams along their extents of agility in order to identify influential factors using a multicase study design. Study 4 tests the effects of emotional contagion in virtual software development teams using a large dataset from an open source software repository. Thus, this thesis makes two primary contributions. First, it develops design principles for methodical extensions of ASD; second, it contributes to the human factors that influence software development teams. Managers also receive guidance on the improvement of ASD in their organization

How a Human-Centered Approach Impacts Software Development

Abstract. Usability has become a critical quality factor in software systems, and it requires the adoption of a human-centered approach to software development. The inclusion of humans and their social context into the issues to consider throughout development deeply influences software development at large. Waterfall approaches are not feasible, since they are based on eliminating uncertainty from software development. On the contrary, the uncertainty of dealing with human beings, and their social or work context, makes necessary the introduction of uncertainty-based approaches into software development. HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) has a long tradition of dealing with such uncertainty during development, but most current software development practices in industry are not rooted in a human-centered approach. This paper revises the current roots of software development practices, illustrating how their limitations in dealing with uncertainty may be tackled with the adoption of well-known HCI practices