DREAMER : a Design Rationale Environment for Argumentation, Modeling and Engineering Requirements

International audienceRequirements engineering for interactive systems remains a cumbersome task still under-supported by notations, development processes and tools. Indeed, in the field of HCI, the most common practice is to perform user testing to assess the compatibility between the designed system and its intended user. Other approaches such as scenario-based design promote a design process based on the analysis of the actual use of a technology in and activities. Some of them also support a critical element in the development of interactive systems: creativity]. However, these approaches do not provide any support for a) the definition of a set of requirements that have to be fulfilled by the system under design and b) as a consequence for assessing which of these requirements are actually embedded in the system and which ones have been discarded (traceability and coverage aspects). This paper proposes a tool-supported notation for addressing these problems of traceability and coverage of both requirements and design options during the development process of interactive systems. These elements are additionally integrated within a more global approach aiming at providing notations and tools for supporting a rationalized design of interactive systems following a model-based approach. Our approach combines and extends previous work on rational design and requirements engineering. The current contribution, DREAMER, makes possible to relate design options with both functional and non functional requirements. The approach is illustrated by real size case study from large civil aircraft cockpit applications

Bridging the Gap between a Behavioural Formal Description Technique and User Interface description language: Enhancing ICO with a Graphical User Interface markup language

International audienceIn the last years, User Interface Description Languages (UIDLs) appeared as a suitable solution for developing interactive systems. In order to implement reliable and efficient applications, we propose to employ a formal description technique called ICO (Interactive Cooperative Object) that has been developed to cope with complex behaviours of interactive systems including event-based and multimodal interactions. So far, ICO is able to describe most of the parts of an interactive system, from functional core concerns to fine grain interaction techniques, but, even if it addresses parts of the rendering, it still not has means to describe the effective rendering of such interactive system. This paper presents a solution to overcome this gap using markup languages. A first technique is based on the Java technology called JavaFX and a second technique is based on the emergent UsiXML language for describing user interface components for multi-target platforms. The proposed approach offers a bridge between markup language based descriptions of the user interface components and a robust technique for describing behaviour using ICO modelling. Furthermore, this paper highlights how it is possible to take advantage from both behavioural and markup language description techniques to propose a new model-based approach for prototyping interactive systems. The proposed approach is fully illustrated by a case study using an interactive application embedded into interactive aircraft cockpits

Définition d'un langage et d'une méthode pour la description et la spécification d'IHM post-W.I.M.P. pour les cockpits interactifs

Avec l'apparition de nouvelles technologies comme l'iPad, etc., nous rencontrons dans les logiciels grand public des interfaces de plus en plus riches et innovantes. Ces innovations portent à la fois sur la gestion des entrées (e. g. écrans multi-touch) et sur la gestion des sorties (e.g. affichage). Ces interfaces sont catégorisées de type post-WIMP et permettent d'accroitre la bande passante entre l'utilisateur et le système qu'il manipule. Plus précisément elles permettent à l'utilisateur de fournir plus rapidement des commandes au système et au système de présenter plus d'informations à l'utilisateur lui permettant par là-même de superviser des systèmes de complexité accrue. L'adoption par le grand public et le niveau de maturité de ces technos permet d'envisager leur intégration dans les systèmes critiques (comme les cockpits ou de façon plus générale les systèmes de commande et contrôle). Toutefois les aspects logiciels liés à ces technologies sont loin d'être maîtrisés comme le démontrent les nombreux dysfonctionnements rencontrés par leurs utilisateurs. Alors que ces derniers peuvent être tolérés pour des applications de jeux ou de divertissement elles ne sont pas acceptables dans le domaine des systèmes critiques présentés précédemment. La problématique de cette thèse porte précisément sur le développement de méthodes, langages, techniques et outils pour la conception et le développement de systèmes interactifs innovants et fiables. La contribution de cette thèse porte sur l'extension d'une notation formelle : ICO (Objets Coopératifs Interactifs) pour décrire de manières exhaustive et non ambiguë les techniques d'interactions multi-touch et la démonstrabilité de son application dans le cadre des applications multi-touch civils. Nous proposons en plus de cette notation, une méthode pour la conception et la validation de systèmes interactifs offrants des interactions multi-touch à leurs utilisateurs. Le fonctionnement de ces systèmes interactifs est basé sur une architecture générique permettant une structuration des modèles allant de la partie matérielle des périphériques d'entrées jusqu' à la partie applicative pour la commande et le contrôle de ces systèmes. Cet ensemble de contribution est appliqué sur un ensemble d'étude de ca dont la plus significative est une application de gestion météo pour un avion civil.With the advent of new technologies such as the iPad, general public software feature richer and more innovative interfaces. These innovations are both on the input layer (e.g. multi-touch screens) and on the output layer (e.g. display). These interfaces are categorized as post-W.I.M.P. type and allow to increase the bandwidth between the user and the system he manipulates. Specifically it allows the user to more quickly deliver commands to the system and the system to present more information to the user enabling him managing increasingly complex systems. The large use in the general public and the level of maturity of these technologies allows to consider their integration in critical systems (such as cockpits or more generally control and command systems). However, the software issues related to these technologies are far from being resolved judging by the many problems encountered by users. While the latter may be tolerated for gaming applications and entertainment, it is not acceptable in the field of critical systems described above. The problem of this thesis focuses specifically on the development of methods, languages, techniques and tools for the design and development of innovative and reliable interactive systems. The contribution of this thesis is the extension of a formal notation: ICO (Interactive Cooperative Object) to describe in a complete and unambiguous way multi-touch interaction techniques and is applied in the context of multi-touch applications for civilians aircrafts. We provide in addition to this notation, a method for the design and validation of interactive systems featuring multi-touch interactions. The mechanisms of these interactive systems are based on a generic architecture structuring models from the hardware part of the input devices up to the application part for the control and monitoring of these systems. This set of contribution is applied on a set of case studies, the most significant being an application for weather management in civilian aircrafts

Integração de usabilidade no paradigma de IoT em telesaúde: Automatização ao serviço da usabilidade

Durante os últimos anos os países desenvolvidos têm sofrido um shift demográfico fomentado pelo aumento da população idosa e pela redução da taxa de natalidade. A proeminência destes fatores nas sociedades atuais despoletou desafios de natureza societal, técnica e económica em várias áreas de atuação. Nessas áreas, destaca-se a área de saúde pela sua sensibilidade e relevância para o quotidiano de utilizadores com necessidades especiais (pessoas idosas, deficientes motores, entre outros). Nesse sentido, para mitigar os desafios impostos nos sistemas de saúde, têm-se adotado tecnologias de informação e comunicação para o dimensionamento de soluções dedicadas, que visam satisfazer necessidades específicas – os ecossistemas AAL (Ambiente de Vida Assistida). Apesar do seu atual estado de desenvolvimento, enfrentam múltiplos desafios relacionados com a autonomia, robustez, segurança, integração, interação humano-computador, armazenamento de dados e usabilidade, que condicionam a sua aceitação junto dos principais intervenientes [1][2][3][4]. O foco do desenvolvimento desta tipologia de ecossistemas sobre o paradigma tecnológico fomentou o desenvolvimento de aplicações específicas centralizadas sobre a mitigação de lacunas técnico-científicas [5][6][7][8], e é apontado como um dos motivos para os seus atuais níveis de adesão. A maximização da sua introdução no mercado impõe que o seu dimensionamento se centralize sobre o utilizador final, em termos de design, requisitos funcionais e não funcionais; e contemple o contexto de integração e continuidade de cuidados inseridos num sistema complexo, por contabilização da diversidade multidimensional dos utilizadores, da natureza das tarefas, do contexto de utilização e das plataformas tecnológicas [5]. Neste contexto, a usabilidade e a utilidade percecionada adquirem um papel de destaque, devido à sua estreita relação com o público-alvo. A necessidade crescente a nível empresarial de minimização do tempo necessário à colocação de produtos no mercado tem motivado a colocação da usabilidade do produto dimensionado em segundo plano [9][10][11]. Fator que aliado à morosidade do processo de análise e ao número de dependências, existência de profissionais na área, de utilizadores finais disponíveis para testar os protótipos dimensionados, entre outras, inviabiliza um estudo extensivo da usabilidade do produto antes, durante e após o seu desenvolvimento. No sentido de mitigar as lacunas identificadas no processo em termos de tempo de execução e dependências explícitas, visar-se-á dotar equipas de desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta que analise o produto dimensionado em tempo real ao nível das linhas orientadoras definidas na literatura. Para quantificar as linhas orientadoras especificadas, impor-se-á a sua parametrização baseada na informação existente na literatura. Nesse sentido, a tese visa compilar os parâmetros necessários a quantificar as linhas orientadoras definidas na literatura: Jakob Nielsen, Gerhardt‐Powals, Shneiderman, Weinschenk e Barker, e Tognazzini. Através da parametrização definir-se-á a base para traduzir linhas orientadoras em lógica a utilizar no dimensionamento de uma ferramenta de análise de usabilidade em tempo real das interfaces. Ferramenta que conferirá aos intervenientes diretos no ciclo de desenvolvimento, os programadores, uma forma objetiva de analisar a usabilidade do produto dimensionado sem requerer a intervenção de entidades externas a título inicial.In the past few years there has been a significant growth of the elderly population in both developing and developed countries. This event provided new economic, technical and demographic challenges to current societies in several areas and services. Among them the healthcare services can be highlighted, due to its impact in people daily lives. As a natural response an effort has been made by both the scientific and industrial community to develop alternatives, which could mitigate the current healthcare services bottlenecks and provide means in aiding and improve the end-user life quality. Through a combination of information and communication technologies specialized ecosystems have been developed, however multiple challenges arose, which compromise their adoption and acceptance among the main stakeholders, such as their autonomy, robustness, security, integration, human-computer interactions, and usability. As consequence an effort has been made to deal with the technical related bottlenecks, which shifted the development process focus from the end-user to the ecosystem’s technological impairments. Despite there being user related issues, such as usability, which remains to be addressed. Therefore, this thesis focuses over the ecosystem’s usability through the analysis of the process used to check the ecosystem’s compliance level with the usability guidelines subset from Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich, from Ben Shneiderman, from Weinschenk and Barker and from Tognazzini; and the identification of the quantifiable parameters for each principle that could aid in the heuristics evaluation process by maximizing its objectivity improve its overall accuracy. Through this quantification the base ground is set up to translate the broad guidelines defined in the literature to business rules that can be used to create a tool to check an interface usability overall status in real time. Tool which will provide the main entities in the development cycle an objective approach to check the usability of the product/service created without the intervention of real users in the initial stage of the project