Using recommendations to help novices to reuse design knowledge

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21530-8_35. Copyright @ Springer 2011.The use of pattern languages is not so straightforward since its users have to identify the patterns they need, browsing the language and understanding both the benefits and trade-offs of each pattern as well as the relations and interactions it has with other patterns. Novice designers might benefit from tools that assist them in this learning task. In this paper we describe a recommendation tool embedded in a visual environment for pattern-based design which aims at suggesting patterns to help novice designers to produce better designs and understand the language.Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovatio

An IoT Model for Coping with Trade-offs in Designing Smart Environments

The Internet of Things (IoT) world is composed by a huge number of different so called “smart devices” and every year new and different models are released on the mass market. Most of those devices are intended to be used by professional people or by companies. Thanks to the constant growth of the “smart objects”, end users and people with low or no-knowledge of the IT-world get in touch with these pieces of technology. Those people are expected to use the smart devices “out of the box” and in a very simple and easy way so, the human-device interaction needs to be as easiest as possible. Despite of this need, end users are commonly faced with thousand of different technological standards which are hard to evaluate without a solid IT background. Thus, the comparison to understand which IoT device performs better in a particular situation become complicated. In this paper we propose a comparison of two different IoT solutions using an IoT model. The model assesses the different technical specifications of the devices and then extracts a “score” for each technological aspect. The end user can use the score to better understand the points of strength and the weaknesses of the devices. Copyright © 2018 for the individual papers by the papers' authors

Software environments for supporting End-User Development

Our work on End-User Development primarily focuses on the needs of a specific community of users, namely professionals in diverse areas outside of computer science, such as engineers, physicians, geologists and physicist, who are not professional programmers. We refer to them as domain experts. We developed a participatory design methodology, called SSW (Software Shaping Workshop) methodology, aimed at designing software environments that support domain experts to become co-designers of their tools. The different stakeholders can contribute their own views on the problem to design, development and maintenance of an application, using their own languages and notations. We also proposed a model of the Interaction and Co-Evolution processes (ICE model) occurring between users and system. It extends a previous model of Human-Computer Interaction by considering an important phenomenon occurring during the use of interactive systems, called co-evolution of users and systems

End-user development tools for the smart home: A systematic literature review

This paper presents a systematic literature review in the Internet of Things and Ambient Intelligence areas. The goal was to identify the best software tools that allow end users, namely people without competencies in computer programming, to manage and configure the behaviors of a smart home. The review selected 48 papers out of 1049 papers found through automatic and manual search. From these papers, 11 tools have been identified and analyzed by means of eight technical characteristics. Finally, among the eleven tools, six tools have been chosen for a qualitative comparison on the basis of seven design principles for smart home control proposed in a literature paper

Supporting Interaction and Co-evolution of Users and Systems

Interactive systems supporting people activities, even those designed for a specific application domain, should be very flexible, i.e., they should be easily adaptable to specific needs of the user communities. They should even allow users to personalize the system to better fit with their evolving needs. This paper presents an original model of the interaction and coevolution processes occurring between humans and interactive systems and discusses an approach to design systems that supports such processes. The approach is based on the “artisan’s workshop” metaphor and foresees the participatory design of an interactive system as a network of workshops customized to different user communities and connected one another by communication paths. Such paths allow end users and members of the design team to trigger and actuate the co-evolution. The feasibility of the methodology is illustrated through a case study in the medical domain

Advanced Visual Systems Supporting Unwitting EUD

The ever increasing use of interactive software systems and the evolution of the World Wide Web into the so-called Web 2.0 determines the rise of new roles for users, who evolve from information consumers to information producers. The distinction between users and designers becomes fuzzy. Users are increasingly involved in the design and development of the tools they use, thus users and developers are not anymore two mutually exclusive groups of people. In this paper types of users that are between pure end users and software developers are analyzed. Some users take a very active role in shaping software tools to their needs, but they do it without being aware of programming, they are unwitting programmers who need appropriate development techniques and environments. A meta-design participatory approach for supporting unwitting end-user development through advanced visual systems is briefly discussed

Exploring Archaeological Parks by Playing Games on Mobile Devices

Explore! is an m-learning system that combining e-learning and mobile computing allows middle school students to interact with learning materials in different ways while playing a game in an archaeological park. Design is based on user-centred and participatory approaches. The evaluation of Explore! through systematic field studies has shown that it is able to transform the visit to archaeological parks into a more complete and culturally rich experience. Thanks to the generality of the software infrastructure, games to be played in different parks can be easily created; to this aim, an Authoring Tool to be used by history experts and/or teachers has been developed

End-User Development for Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Literature Review

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence has become more and more relevant in our society. Creating AI systems is almost always the prerogative of IT and AI experts. However, users may need to create intelligent solutions tailored to their specific needs. In this way, AI systems can be enhanced if new approaches are devised to allow non-technical users to be directly involved in the definition and personalization of AI technologies. End-User Development (EUD) can provide a solution to these problems, allowing people to create, customize, or adapt AI-based systems to their own needs. This paper presents a systematic literature review that aims to shed the light on the current landscape of EUD for AI systems, i.e., how users, even without skills in AI and/or programming, can customize the AI behavior to their needs. This study also discusses the current challenges of EUD for AI, the potential benefits, and the future implications of integrating EUD into the overall AI development process.Comment: This version did not undergo peer-review. A corrected version is published by Springer Nature in the Proceedings of 9th International Syposium on End-User Development (ISEUD 2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34433-6_

A Tool for Improving Privacy in Software Development

Privacy is considered a necessary requirement for software development. It is necessary to understand how certain software vulnerabilities can create problems for organizations and individuals. In this context, privacy-oriented software development plays a primary role to reduce some problems that can arise simply from individuals’ interactions software applications, even when the data being processed is not directly linked to identifiable. The loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability at some point in the data processing, such as data theft by external attackers or the unauthorized access or use of data by employees., represent some types of cybersecurity-related privacy events. Therefore, this research work discusses the formalization of 5 key privacy elements (Privacy by Design Principles, Privacy Design Strategies, Privacy Pattern, Vulnerabilities and Context) in software development and presents a privacy tool that supports developers’ decisions to integrate privacy and security requirements in all software development phases

Human Factors in Software Development Processes: Measuring System Quality

Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction look at the development process from different perspectives. They apparently use very different approaches, are inspired by different principles and address different needs. But, they definitively have the same goal: develop high quality software in the most effective way. The second edition of the workshop puts particular attention on efforts of the two communities in enhancing system quality. The research question discussed is: who, what, where, when, why, and how should we evaluate?