Human Factors in End-user Development of Marketing-IS: A Behavioral User Profiling Approach

AbstractMarketing-IS research has recently focused on the development of personalization systems that are based on the modeling of consumer behavior and consumer heterogeneity regarding their distinct needs and preferences. However, personalization approaches in the design and development stage of Marketing-IS have not been widely studied in the End-User Development (EUD) research area. The lack of such research studies results in the development of Marketing-IS tools that neglect the differences in the end-user behavior, and artifacts of low performance and reusability. Attempting to figure out how end-users can participate in the design and construction of Marketing-IS in an efficient way, research suggests the ‘construction’ of end- users behavioral profiles based on human factors. Recent evidence reveal that human factors such as gender and expertise level can influence and even determine the end-users’, behavior, and consequently performance, while end-users interact with EUD environments. This paper presents a methodological approach in which we identify different behavioral user-profiles, named ‘user-categories’ based on behavioural attributes derived by the human factors of gender and expertise level. The resulting user- categories can be applied in the modeling mechanism of adaptive EUD system environments. Such an approach is projected to implicitly assist the end-users in the enhancement of their performance during the development task of Marketing-I

Using Agile Practice for Student Software Projects

Agile methodology as a relatively new approach to software engineering is becoming more popular in both industry and academia. Learning agile software development methodologies will unquestionably increase the capabilities and competences of our students as entry-level software engineers. However, how agile methods and techniques should be taught at the undergraduate level in additional to traditional approaches is still being debated. This study was conducted on a studentprogramming project, with sample size of 23 students from the Informatics Engineering course. The Scrum methodology was adopted and 28 user stories and 4 sprints were created. The results indicate a significant impact on students’ skill improvement and let them to have the first contact with real projects and clients. Besides that, the students agree that the adoption of the Scrum methodology helped them to improve the participation and collaboration. However, some issues were also detected in terms of communication and tasks planning. Therefore, we proposed some polities that could help and boost the software development process inside a classroom

Teaching methods are erroneous: approaches which lead to erroneous end-user computing

If spreadsheets are not erroneous then who, or what, is? Research has found that end-users are. If end-users are erroneous then why are they? Research has found that responsibility lies with human beings' fast and slow thinking modes and the inappropriate way they use them. If we are aware of this peculiarity of human thinking, then why do we not teach students how to train their brains? This is the main problem, this is the weakest link in the process: teaching. We have to make teachers realize that end-users are erroneous because of the erroneous teaching approaches to end-user computing. The proportion of fast and slow thinking modes is not constant, and teachers are mistaken when they apply the same proportion in both the teaching and end-user roles. Teachers should believe in the incremental nature of science and have high self-efficacy to make students understand and appreciate science. This is not currently the case in ICT and CS, and it is high time fundamental changes were introduced.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures & table

Anticipating User Needs: Insights from Design Fiction on Conversational Agents for Computational Thinking

Computational thinking, and by extension, computer programming, is notoriously challenging to learn. Conversational agents and generative artificial intelligence (genAI) have the potential to facilitate this learning process by offering personalized guidance, interactive learning experiences, and code generation. However, current genAI-based chatbots focus on professional developers and may not adequately consider educational needs. Involving educators in conceiving educational tools is critical for ensuring usefulness and usability. We enlisted \numParticipants{} instructors to engage in design fiction sessions in which we elicited abilities such a conversational agent supported by genAI should display. Participants envisioned a conversational agent that guides students stepwise through exercises, tuning its method of guidance with an awareness of the educational background, skills and deficits, and learning preferences. The insights obtained in this paper can guide future implementations of tutoring conversational agents oriented toward teaching computational thinking and computer programming.Comment: 17 pages, three figures, accepted at Conversations 2023 but not yet published in workshop proceeding

Automatic verification and validation wizard in web-centred end-user software engineering

This paper addresses one of the major web end-user software engineering (WEUSE) challenges, namely, how to verify and validate software products built using a life cycle enacted by end-user programmers. Few end-user development support tools implement an engineering life cycle adapted to the needs of end users. End users do not have the programming knowledge, training or experience to perform devel- opment tasks requiring creativity. Elsewhere we published a life cycle adapted to this challenge. With the support of a wizard, end-user programmers follow this life cycle and develop rich internet applica- tions (RIA) to meet specific end-user requirements. However, end-user programmers regard verification and validation activities as being secondary or unnecessary for opportunistic programming tasks. Hence, although the solutions that they develop may satisfy specific requirements, it is impossible to guarantee the quality or the reusability of this software either for this user or for other developments by future end-user programmers. The challenge, then, is to find means of adopting a verification and validation workflow and adding verification and validation activities to the existing WEUSE life cycle. This should not involve users having to make substantial changes to the type of work that they do or to their priori- ties. In this paper, we set out a verification and validation life cycle supported by a wizard that walks the user through test case-based component, integration and acceptance testing. This wizard is well-aligned with WEUSE’s characteristic informality, ambiguity and opportunisticity. Users applying this verification and validation process manage to find bugs and errors that they would otherwise be unable to identify. They also receive instructions for error correction. This assures that their composite applications are of better quality and can be reliably reused. We also report a user study in which users develop web soft- ware with and without a wizard to drive verification and validation. The aim of this user study is to confirm the applicability and effectiveness of our wizard in the verification and validation of a RIAEuropean Union (UE) GA FP7-216048European Union (UE) GA FP7-285248European Union (UE) GA FP7-258862Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-R (POLOLAS)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED