Domain Specific Language Evaluation: OutSystems’ Business Process Technology

Domain Specific Languages (DSL) are created with the intent of making problem solving easier via abstractions and notations that are closer to the domain users’ way of thinking. However, in order to fulfil this intent the language must be considered usable by its target audience, which requires using a principled approach, contrary to an ad-hoc philosophy. Unfortunately, language engineers are not always concerned by usability. Usability techniques developed by Human Computer Interaction (HCI) experts are generally focused solely on application interfaces that were not designed to be directly applied to languages. However, previous studies have shown that languages are in essence interfaces between users and the computational system, so applying HCI techniques is not incorrect. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no simple evaluation process that allows developers to validate their languages, both syntactically and semantically. The OutSystems Platform is a development environment composed of several domain specific languages. It is used to quickly build and validate web and mobile applications. The languages allow users to build interfaces and data models, define custom business logic and construct process models. Howbeit, the DSL for process modelling (Business Process Technology (BPT)), does not have the desired adoption rate and is often used for solving problems out of the intended domain it was originally designed for. This is problematic, given that the language has an associated maintenance cost. The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: create a succinct and easy process for evaluating visual programming languages, and apply the proposed process to BPT in order to identify any usability issues that may be present in the BPT language. The process we developed includes adapted HCI evaluation techniques (such as the Systems Usability Score, Task Load Index and others). After identifying the main problems with the BPT language, the language was updated with a new syntax. We performed a comparison analyses between the original and new syntaxes, which showed that the new version is more transparent and has a significantly higher usability rating.Domain Specific Languages (DSL) são criadas com a intenção de tornar mais fácil a resolução de problemas através de abstrações e notações que são mais próximas da maneira de pensar dos utilizadores do domínio. Isso, no entanto, só é verdade se a linguagem for considerada utilizável pelo seu público-alvo, que requer o uso de uma abordagem baseada em princípios, ao contrário de uma filosofia ad-hoc. Infelizmente, a usabilidade não é um dos aspetos técnicos com que os engenheiros de linguagens mais se preocupam. Técnicas de usabilidade desenvolvidas por especialistas em Human Computer Interaction (HCI) são geralmente focadas exclusivamente em interfaces de aplicações e não foram desenvolvidas para serem diretamente aplicadas a linguagens de programação. No entanto, estudos prévios mostraram que as linguagens de programação são, na sua essência, interfaces entre os utilizadores e o sistema computacional, assim sendo a aplicação de técnicas HCI não é considerada incorreta. No entanto, no decorrer da nossa pesquisa, não foi encontrado nenhum processo de avaliação simples que permita aos engenheiros validar as suas linguagens tanto sintatica como semanticamente. A OutSystems Platform é um ambiente de desenvolvimento composto por várias DSL. Este é usado para construir rapidamente aplicações web e móveis. As linguagens permitem aos utilizadores construir interfaces e modelos de dados, definir lógica de negócios personalizada, e construir modelos de processos. Todavia, a DSL para modelar processos (Business Process Technology (BPT)), não tem a taxa de adoção desejada e é utilizada em problemas fora do domínio pretendido. Isto é devido ao custo de manutenção associado. Esta tese tem dois objetivos: criar um processo sucinto e fácil para avaliar linguagens de programação, e usar esse mesmo processo para identificar quaisquer problemas que possam estar presentes na linguagem BPT. Para conseguir isto, foi desenvolvido um processo simples de acompanhar que inclui técnicas HCI. Uma vez identificados os principais problemas com o BPT, foram feitas alterações à linguagem. Finalmente, foi realizada uma comparação entre a sintaxe original e a nova. Estas mostraram que a nova versão é mais transparente e tem uma classificação de usabilidade significativamente maior

Towards Automatic Capturing of Manual Data Processing Provenance

Often data processing is not implemented by a work ow system or an integration application but is performed manually by humans along the lines of a more or less specified procedure. Collecting provenance information during manual data processing can not be automated. Further, manual collection of provenance information is error prone and time consuming. Therefore, we propose to infer provenance information based on the read and write access of users. The derived provenance information is complete, but has a low precision. Therefore, we propose further to introducing organizational guidelines in order to improve the precision of the inferred provenance information

Teaching design of complex interactive systems:Learning by Interacting

In this paper we document our experiences in developing and teaching design classes. The courses we teach, and that we still try to improve and try to keep up with state of the art design approaches, originaly developed in close cooperation with colleagues like Michael Tauber and Steve Guest. Only in a way of cooperation we will be able to improve and to produce state of the art education. Teaching interactive systems design in our situation means teaching various groups of university students, as well as groups of experienced practitioners, in most cases stemming from a variety of disciplines like software engineering, electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, and AI. Our current design classes are organised in such a way that students are forming a design team with subteams for different specialist design methods like task analysis, formal modeling, prototyping, usability evaluation, and requirements analysis. The team collaborates in an iterative manner, starting from an initial statement from a real client and ending with the presentation of a complete design (including design rationales, working prototype that is evaluated, but also including organisational re-design and possible video scenarios

Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge

MIMIK (Method and Instruments for Modeling Integrated Knowledge) is a set of tools used to formalize and represent knowledge within organizations. It furthermore supports knowledge creation and sharing within communities of interest or communities of practice. In this paper we show that MIMIK is based on a model theory approach and builds on other existing methods and techniques. We also explain how to use the method and its instruments in order to model strategic objectives, processes, knowledge, and roles found within an organization, as well as relations existing between these elements. Indeed MIMIK provides eight types of models in order to describe what is commonly called know-how, know-why and know-what; it uses matrices in order to formally and semantically link strategic objectives, knowledge and actors. We close this paper with a presentation of a prototype we built in order to demonstrate a technical architecture allowing for knowledge creation, formalization and sharing.knowledge modelling; process modelling; public administration; methodology; knowledge sharing; RSS

Rethinking Map Legends with Visualization

This design paper presents new guidance for creating map legends in a dynamic environment. Our contribution is a set of guidelines for legend design in a visualization context and a series of illustrative themes through which they may be expressed. These are demonstrated in an applications context through interactive software prototypes. The guidelines are derived from cartographic literature and in liaison with EDINA who provide digital mapping services for UK tertiary education. They enhance approaches to legend design that have evolved for static media with visualization by considering: selection, layout, symbols, position, dynamism and design and process. Broad visualization legend themes include: The Ground Truth Legend, The Legend as Statistical Graphic and The Map is the Legend. Together, these concepts enable us to augment legends with dynamic properties that address specific needs, rethink their nature and role and contribute to a wider re-evaluation of maps as artifacts of usage rather than statements of fact. EDINA has acquired funding to enhance their clients with visualization legends that use these concepts as a consequence of this work. The guidance applies to the design of a wide range of legends and keys used in cartography and information visualization

Visualization Literacy and Decision-making in Healthcare

The ability of workers in the healthcare industry to analyze, interpret and communicate with health data is critical to decision-making and impacts both health and business outcomes. Optimal decision-making requires having real-time access to information that provides useful insights and that lends itself to collaborative decision-making. Data visualizations have the potential to facilitate decision-making in healthcare when presented as a dashboard. However, dashboards have shown varying results in both effectiveness and adoption. Data or graphical literacy challenges experienced by health team members could complicate strategic decision-making through an inability to correctly interpret or summarize the information presented in a dashboard. One assumption is that visualization literacy and its impact on how people process health data visualizations play a part in the effective interpretation of information to support decision-making. To determine the impact of visualization literacy on the process of decision-making in a healthcare setting, we first developed and deployed a dashboard designed to provide important information for decision-makers on a clinical trial management team. We engaged Project Managers and Medical Managers in the project as key decision-makers on the team. The dashboard was integrated into the normal workflow of a clinical trial management team and designated as the tool used in the workflow to report on the trial status within the organization. Next, we administered a series of assessments to the key decision-makers. The assessments were designed to evaluate numeracy, visualization literacy, and the impact of both on the decision-making ability of participants. Decision-making was assessed using a common workflow scenario supported by visualizations from the deployed dashboard. Additionally, we were interested in exploring indicators related to job satisfaction that was collected during the project period through a formal engagement survey. We performed a general linear model to assess the relationship between the assessments and decision-making. Results of our project show a significant and clear relationship between visualization literacy and decision-making ability and an insignificant relationship between numeracy and decision-making ability. Job satisfaction scores for the participant group obtained through the engagement survey suggest favorable results. However, areas of opportunity for improvement illuminated through the survey included better tools and additional resources to support the execution of tasks, a better workload balance, and improvements in collaboration across departments and functions. The results of this project contribute to the informatics discipline by demonstrating that information obtained from data visualizations produced through the aggregation of multiple sources of data can be effective decision-support tools if they are designed with user skills and abilities in mind. The results of the project suggest an opportunity to develop more useful and usable tools to improve job satisfaction as well as organizational business objectives related to workforce staffing, job competencies, and learning and development initiatives