Towards the integration of the GDPR in the Unified Software Development Process

33rd International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, celebrado en 2021 en Pittsburgh, USAThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the core of digital privacy legislation across Europe (EU), and it applies to processing carried out by organisations operating within and outside the EU that offer goods or services to individuals in the EU, including software products. Nevertheless, software teams are generally unaware of the legal requirements for personal data protection and its application throughout the software life cycle. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive guidance to integrate compliance with GDPR requirements within the Unified Software Development Process (UP) across the entire lifetime.Work funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science (RTI2018- 095255-B-I00) and the R&D programme of Madrid (P2018/TCS-4314)

Experimentation for Chatbot Usability Evaluation: A Secondary Study

Interest in chatbot development is on the rise. As a usability evaluation is an essential step in chatbot development, the number of experimental studies on chatbot usability has grown as well. As a result, we think a systematic mapping study is opportune.We analyzed more than 700 sources and retrieved 28 primary studies. By aggregating the research questions and examining the characteristics and metrics used to evaluate the usability of chatbots in experiments, it is possible to identify the state of the art in chatbot usability experimentation. We conducted a systematic mapping study to identify the research questions, characteristics, and metrics used to evaluate the usability of chatbots in experiments. Most experiments adopted a within-subjects design. On the other hand, few experiments provided raw data, and only one of the identi ed papers was part of a family of experiments. Effectiveness, ef ciency, and satisfaction are usability characteristics used to identify how well users can learn and use chatbots to achieve their goals and how satis ed users are during the interaction. Generally, the experimental results revealed that chatbots have several advantages (e.g., they provide a real-time response and they improve ease of use) and some shortcomings (e.g., natural language processing, which is rated as the weakness most in need of improvement). This research offers an overview of chatbot usability experimentation. The increasing interest in this area is very recent, as works did not start to be published until 2018. Chatbot usability experiments should be more replicable to improve the reliability and transparency of the experimental results.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Research Grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00, in part by the MASSIVE Project under Grant RTI2018-095255-B-I00, and in part by the Madrid Region Research and Development Program (Project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314)

A systematic mapping study on integration proposals of the personas technique in agile methodologies

Agile development processes are increasing their consideration of usability by integrating various user‐centered design techniques throughout development. One such technique is Personas, which proposes the creation of fictitious users with real preferences to drive application design. Since applying this technique conflicts with the time constraints of agile development, Personas has been adapted over the years. Our objective is to determine the adoption level and type of integration, as well as to propose improvements to the Personas technique for agile development. A systematic mapping study was performed, retrieving 28 articles grouped by agile methodology type. We found some common integration strategies regardless of the specific agile approach, along with some frequent problems, mainly related to Persona modelling and context representation. Based on these limitations, we propose an adaptation to the technique in order to reduce the creation time for a preliminary persona. The number of publications dealing with Personas and agile development is increasing, which reveals a growing interest in the application of this technique to develop usable agile softwareThis research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities research grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00, MASSIVE project (RTI2018-095255-B-I00) and by EIT-Health, grant number 19091 (POSITIVE project). This research was also supported by the Madrid Region R&D programme (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314

Using the SOCIO Chatbot for UML Modeling: A Second Family of Experiments on Usability in Academic Settings

After improving the SOCIO chatbot prototype model, we wanted to know how/if its usability has changed. An evidence-based empirical evaluation of the usability of SOCIO V1 (updated version) requires an extensive verification of the experimental results. A family of experiments is a method of verification whereby we can check if the experimental results are reproducible. Through comparison with the updated control tool Creately, we aimed to gain a better understanding of the usability of the collaborative modeling chatbot and how it could be improved based on experimental evidence of changes in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, and quality. A total of 87 students from three countries were recruited. We conducted a family of three experiments to compare the usability of SOCIO V1 and updated Creately in academic settings. Students appeared to be more satisfied with SOCIO V1, and SOCIO V1 scored better on completeness. There were no significant differences between the two tools regarding efficiency and quality. This study provides evidence on how to employ a family of experiments to improve chatbot usability and enrich knowledge on chatbot usability experimentation.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities Research Grant under Grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00; in part by the Foundations for Augmented Trustworthy Low-Code Software Development (FINESSE) Project under Grant PID2021-122270OB-I00; in part by the Madrid Region Research and Development Program (FORmal Models and Technologies for Emerging Applications (FORTE) Project) under Grant P2018/TCS-4314; and in part by the Fundamentos Para la Ingeniería Automatizada de Chatbots (SATORI)-Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) Project under Grant TED2021-129381B-C21

Relevant information in TDD experiment reporting

Experiments are a commonly used method of research in software engineering (SE). Researchers report their experiments following detailed guidelines. However, researchers do not, in the field of test-driven development (TDD) at least, specify how they operationalized the response variables and, particularly, the measurement process. This article has three aims: (i) identify the response variable operationalization components in TDD experiments that study external quality; (ii) study their influence on the experimental results; (iii) determine if the experiment reports describe the measurement process components that have an impact on the results. We used two-part sequential mixed methods research. The first part of the research adopts a quantitative approach applying a statistical analysis of the impact of the operationalization components on the experimental results. The second part follows on with a qualitative approach applying a systematic mapping study (SMS). The test suites, intervention types and measurers have an influence on the measurements and results of the statistical analysis of TDD experiments in SE. The test suites have a major impact on both the measurements and the results of the experiments. The intervention type has less impact on the results than on the measurements. While the measurers have an impact on the measurements, this is not transferred to the experimental results. On the other hand, the results of our SMS confirm that TDD experiments do not usually report either the test suites, the test case generation method, or the details of how external quality was measured. A measurement protocol should be used to assure that the measurements made by different measurers are similar. It is necessary to report the test cases, the experimental task and the intervention type in order to be able to reproduce the measurements and statistical analyses, as well as to replicate experiments and build dependable families of experimentsThis research was funded by grant PID2022-137846NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, by “ERDF A way of making Europe” and the FINESSE project, Spain (PID2021-122270OB- I00). This research was also supported by the Madrid Region R&D program, Spain (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314) and the SATORI-UAM project (TED2021- 129381B-C21

Applying a Usability Technique in the LibreOffice Writer Project

As a result of the growth of non-developer users of OSS applications, usability has over the last ten years begun to attract the interest of the OSScommunity. The OSS community has some special characteristics which are an obstacle to the direct adoption of many usability techniques as specified in the HCIfield. The aim of this research is to adapt and evaluate the feasibility of applying the Personas usability technique to one OSS project from the viewpoint of the development team. The applied research method was a case study of the following OSS project LibreOffice-Writer. We formalized the application procedure of the adapted usability technique. We found that either there were no procedures for adopting usability technique in OSS or theywere not fully systematized. Additionally, we identified the adverse conditions that are an obstacle to their adoption in OSS and propose the special adaptations required to overcome the obstacles. To avoid some of the adverse conditions, we created web artefacts (e.g.wiki) that are very popular in the OSS field. Additionally, we found that there are obstacles to the application of the technique. Despite these obstacles, it is feasible to apply the adapted Personas technique in OSS projectWork funded by FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation –Research State Agency: project MASSIVE, RTI2018-095255-B-I00, the R&D programme of Madrid (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314), and project PGC2018-097265-B-I00, funded by: FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation –Research State Agency. Also, this research was funded by the Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology andInnovation (SENESCYT) of the Government of Ecuador aspart of an academic scholarship grantedfor postgraduate training, and Quevedo State Technical University through doctoral scholarships for university professors. Finally, this research received funding from the University of Atacama “DIUDA 22316” projec

Adoption of the HTA Technique in the Open Source Software Development Process

This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60114-0_13The growth in the number of non-developer open source software (OSS) application users and the escalating use of these applications have led to the need and interest in developing usable OSS. OSS communities do not generally know how to apply usability techniques and are unclear about which techniques to use in each activity of the development process. The aim of our research is to adopt the HTA usability technique in the OpenOffice Writer OSS project and determine the feasibility of adapting the technique for application. To do this, we participated as volunteers in the project. We used the case study research method during technique application and participation in the community. As a result, we identified adverse conditions that were an obstacle to technique application and modified the technique to make it applicable to OSS projects. We can conclude from our experience that these changes were helpful for applying the technique, using web artifacts like forums and collaborative tools like Cacoo, although it was not easy to recruit OSS users to participate in usability technique applicationWork funded by the Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT) of the Government of Ecuador as part of an academic scholarship granted for postgraduate training, and Quevedo State Technical University through doctoral scholarships for university professors. Also, this research was funded by the FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation – Research State Agency: project MASSIVE, RTI2018-095255-BI00, the R&D programme of Madrid (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314), and project PGC2018- 097265-B-I00, also funded by: FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation – Research State Agency. Finally, this research received funding from the University of Atacama “DIUDA 22316” projec

Perceived usability of collaborative modeling tools

Context: Online collaborative creation of models is becoming commonplace. Collaborative modeling using chatbots and natural language may lower the barriers to modeling for users from different domains. Objective: We compare the perceived usability of two similarly online collaborative modeling tools, the SOCIO chatbot and the Creately web-based tool. Method: We conducted a crossover experiment with 66 participants. The evaluation instrument was based on the System Usability Scale (SUS). We performed a quantitative and qualitative exploration, employing inferential statistics and thematic analysis. Results: The results indicate that chatbots enabling natural language communication enhance communication and collaboration efficiency and improve the user experience. Conclusion: Chatbots need to improve guidance and help for novices, but they appear beneficial for enhancing user experienceThis research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities research grants PGC2018-097265-B-I00 and the FINESSE project (PID2021-122270OB-I00). This research was also supported by the Madrid Region R&D program (project FORTE, P2018/TCS-4314) and the SATORI-UAM project (TED2021-129381B-C21

Using the SOCIO chatbot for UML modelling: a family of experiments

Context: Recent developments in natural language processing have facilitated the adoption of chatbots in typically collaborative software engineering tasks (such as diagram modelling). Families of experiments can assess the performance of tools and processes and, at the same time, alleviate some of the typical shortcomings of individual experiments (e.g., inaccurate and potentially biased results due to a small number of participants). Objective: Compare the usability of a chatbot for collaborative modelling (i.e., SOCIO) and an online web tool (i.e., Creately). Method: We conducted a family of three experiments to evaluate the usability of SOCIO against the Creately online collaborative tool in academic settings. Results: The student participants were faster at building class diagrams using the chatbot than with the online collaborative tool and more satisfied with SOCIO. Besides, the class diagrams built using the chatbot tended to be more concise - albeit slightly less complete. Conclusion: Chatbots appear to be helpful for building class diagrams. In fact, our study has helped us to shed light on the future direction for experimentation in this field and lays the groundwork for researching the applicability of chatbots in diagrammingThis work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities research under Grant PGC2018-097265-B-I00, in part by MASSIVE under Grant RTI2018-095255-B-I00, and in part by the Madrid Region R&D programme under Grant FORTE, P2018/TCS-431

Impact of usability mechanisms: a family of experiments on efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction

Context: The usability software quality characteristic aims to improve system user performance. In a previous study, we found evidence of the impact of a set of usability features from the viewpoint of users in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. However, the impact level appears to depend on the usability feature and suggest priorities with respect to their implementation depending on how they promote user performance. Objectives: We use a family of three experiments to increase the precision and generalization of the results in the baseline experiment and provide findings regarding the impact on user performance of the Abort Operation, Progress Feedback and Preferences usability mechanisms. Method: We conduct two replications of the baseline experiment in academic settings. We analyse the data of 366 experimental subjects and apply aggregation (meta-analysis) procedures. Results: We find that the Abort Operation and Preferences usability mechanisms appear to improve system usability a great deal with respect to efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction. Conclusions: We find that the family of experiments further corroborates the results of the baseline experiment. Most of the results are statistically significant, and, because of the large number of experimental subjects, the evidence that we gathered in the replications is sufficient to outweigh other experimentsThis work was funded in part by the FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation-Research State Agency (MASSIVE) under Grants RTI2018- 095255-B-I00 and PGC2018-097265-B-I00, and in part by the R&D pro gramme of Madrid FORTE, under Grant P2018/TCS-431