Self-Refactoring: mejoras automáticas de usabilidad para aplicaciones web

La usabilidad en las aplicaciones web es un aspecto fundamental, pero en muchos casos relegado por diferentes motivos como la falta de personal experimentado, o los altos costos. Si bien las grandes compañías suelen estar preparadas para dedicar los recursos necesarios a mejorar la usabilidad de sus aplicaciones, las pequeñas y medianas suelen utilizarlos en otros aspectos. Para ayudar a bajar estos costos, han surgido herramientas que definición y ejecución remota de pruebas de usabilidad, o recolección de estadísticas de forma automatizada, pero igualmente se requiere de expertos que diseñen las pruebas, interpreten los reportes o visualizaciones en busca de problemas, y diseñen soluciones a los mismos, que los desarrolladores deberán implementar. En este trabajo se propone un enfoque para hallar problemas de usabilidad automáticamente en aplicaciones web, basados en el análisis de eventos de interacción de usuarios finales. Para cada uno de estos problemas de usabilidad encontrados, existe además una solución que puede sugerirse para resolver el problema. En algunos casos, es incluso posible aplicar estas soluciones automáticamente. En este enfoque, los problemas de usabilidad se definen como “usability smells” y las soluciones como “usability refactorings”, ambos términos adaptados de la jerga del refactoring de código. Los usability smells, en este contexto, son problemas que afectan la interacción por parte de los usuarios finales, mientras que los usability refactorings son transformaciones que aplican soluciones documentadas para resolver esos problemas. Como prueba de concepto se implementó Kobold: una herramienta capaz de realizar todo lo que se propone en este trabajo. La herramienta funciona como un servicio (SaaS – Software as a Service), y no requiere de casi ningún esfuerzo de instalación. Al incorporar Kobold en una aplicación web, se comienza a capturar la interacción de los usuarios, y los reportes de problemas se muestran apenas un número suficiente de usuarios se topa con los mismos. Como los usability smells son problemas bien descritos, pueden ser interpretados por cualquier desarrollador, aunque no tenga experiencia en usabilidad. De la misma forma, los refactorings que se sugieren como solución pueden ser aplicados automáticamente y en producción, gracias a la implementación de refactorings del lado del cliente, que permiten alterar la aplicación sin modificar su código. De esta manera, Kobold se presenta como una herramienta que puede resultar de utilidad tanto para desarrolladores como para expertos en usabilidad. En resumen, lo que se quiere obtener con Kobold es, como mínimo, una herramienta confiable que con un mínimo esfuerzo de configuración pueda rápidamente comenzar a brindar asesoramiento sobre usabilidad en aplicaciones que ya se encuentran corriendo en producción, y que pueda ser configurada para detectar diferentes tipos de problemas. La audiencia para esta herramienta sería de desarrolladores con experiencia en usabilidad, que quisieran tener un panorama rápido de las interacciones reales que realiza la masa de usuario, y probablemente reparar rápidamente algunos de estos problemas del lado del cliente. Más aun, esto allanaría el camino para conseguir un objetivo más ambicioso: un mecanismo confiable que permita la auto-reparación de aplicaciones web, que incluso los desarrolladores sin experiencia en usabilidad puedan utilizar para corregir los usability smells en sus aplicaciones. El trabajo presentado incluye validaciones empíricas que comprueban la factibilidad del enfoque y su implementación en todas las etapas: captura de eventos de interacción, detección de usability smells y aplicación de usability refactorings.Facultad de Informátic

Bridging test and model-driven approaches in web engineering

In the last years there has been a growing interest in agile methods and their integration into the so called "unified" approaches. In the field of Web Engineering, agile approaches such as test-driven development are appealing because of the very nature of Web applications, while model-driven approaches provide a less error-prone code derivation; however the integration of both approaches is not easy. In this paper, we present a method-independent approach to combine the agile, iterative and incremental style of test-driven development with the more formal, transformation-based model-driven Web engineering approaches. We focus not only in the development process but also in the evolution of the application, and show how tests can be transformed together with model refactoring. As a proof of concept we show an illustrative example using WebRatio, the WebML design tool.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 5648).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Capture and evolution of web requirements using WebSpec

Developing Web applications is a complex and time consuming process that involves different kind of people, ranging from customers to developers. Requirement artefacts play an important role as they are used by these people to perform their daily activities. However, state of the art in requirement management for Web applications disregards valuable features that tend to improve the development process, such as quick validation during elicitation, automatic requirement validation on the final application and useful change management support. To tackle these problems we introduce WebSpec, a requirement artefact for specifying interaction and navigation features in Web applications. We show its use through the development of an example application in the social networking area, and its implementation as an Eclipse plugin.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 6385).Facultad de Informátic

Capture and evolution of web requirements using WebSpec

Developing Web applications is a complex and time consuming process that involves different kind of people, ranging from customers to developers. Requirement artefacts play an important role as they are used by these people to perform their daily activities. However, state of the art in requirement management for Web applications disregards valuable features that tend to improve the development process, such as quick validation during elicitation, automatic requirement validation on the final application and useful change management support. To tackle these problems we introduce WebSpec, a requirement artefact for specifying interaction and navigation features in Web applications. We show its use through the development of an example application in the social networking area, and its implementation as an Eclipse plugin.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 6385).Facultad de Informátic

Tycho: Facilitation Support for Groupware User Tests

Running user tests for groupware requires tracking the progress of multiple users performing co-dependent tasks, while facilitating and observing their coordinated actions. This requirement negatively impacts the main objective of user testing, which is detecting usability flaws. User testing of groupware becomes more challenging when run remotely. Even if there are tools for remote user testing that can get the job done for a single user, they are not prepared for collaborative scenarios. In this paper we argue that tool support for the facilitation of user tests of groupware is missing. Consequently, we propose a method for user tests with tool assistance that makes it possible to automate task synchronization, especially for different workflows that must be run concurrently. We evaluated our proposal by comparing it to a manually facilitated approach during on-site coordinated user tests. The results indicate that, while the task of designing and running user tests with tool support takes more time, it allows the testers to better focus on detecting usability problems.Fil: Grigera, Julián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Gardey, Juan Cruz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; ArgentinaFil: Fernandez, Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentina. Provincia de Buenos Aires. Gobernación. Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas; ArgentinaFil: Garrido, Alejandra. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Informática. Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada; Argentin

A Tool for Detecting Bad Usability Smells in an Automatic Way

The refactoring technique helps developers to improve not only source code quality, but also other aspects like usability. The problems refactoring helps to solve in the specific field of web usability are considered to be issues that make common tasks complicated for end users. Finding such problems, known in the jargon as bad smells, is often challenging for developers, especially for those who do not have experience in usability. In an attempt to leverage this task, we introduce a tool that automatically finds bad usability smells in web applications. Since bad smells are catalogued in the literature together with their suggested refactorings, it is easier for developers to find appropriate solutions.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNSA,volume 8541).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Kobold: web usability as a service

While Web applications have become pervasive in today’s business, social interaction and information exchange, their usability is often deficient, even being a key factor for a website success. Usability problems repeat across websites, and many of them have been catalogued, but usability evaluation and repair still remains expensive. There are efforts from both the academy and industry to automate usability testing or to provide automatic statistics, but they rarely offer concrete solutions.These solutions appear as guidelines or patterns that developers can follow manually. This paper presents Kobold, a tool that detects usability problems from real user interaction (UI) events and repairs them automatically when possible, at least suggesting concrete solutions. By using the refactoring technique and its associated concept of bad smell, Kobold mines UI events to detect usability smells and applies usability refactorings on the client to correct them. The purpose of Kobold is to deliver usability advice and solutions as a service (SaaS) for developers, allowing them to respond to feedback of the real use of their applications and improve usability incrementally, even when there are no usability experts on the team. Kobold is available at: http://autorefactoring.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar. A screencast is available at https://youtu.be/c-myYPMUh0QLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Kobold: web usability as a service

While Web applications have become pervasive in today’s business, social interaction and information exchange, their usability is often deficient, even being a key factor for a website success. Usability problems repeat across websites, and many of them have been catalogued, but usability evaluation and repair still remains expensive. There are efforts from both the academy and industry to automate usability testing or to provide automatic statistics, but they rarely offer concrete solutions. These solutions appear as guidelines or patterns that developers can follow manually. This paper presents Kobold, a tool that detects usability problems from real user interaction (UI) events and repairs them automatically when possible, at least suggesting concrete solutions. By using the refactoring technique and its associated concept of bad smell, Kobold mines UI events to detect usability smells and applies usability refactorings on the client to correct them. The purpose of Kobold is to deliver usability advice and solutions as a service (SaaS) for developers, allowing them to respond to feedback of the real use of their applications and improve usability incrementally, even when there are no usability experts on the team. Kobold is available at: http://autorefactoring.lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar. A screencast is available at https://youtu.be/c-myYPMUh0

From requirements to web applications in an agile model-driven approach

Web applications are hard to build not only because of technical reasons but also because they involve many different kinds of stakeholders. Involving customers in the development process is a must, not only while eliciting requirements but also considering that requirements change fast and they must be validated continuously. However, while model-driven approaches represent a step forward to reduce development time and work at a higher level of abstraction, most of them practically ignore stakeholders' involvement. Agile approaches tend to solve this problem, though they generally focus on programming rather than modeling. In this paper we present an extension to an approach that combines the best of both worlds, allowing a formal and high-level design style with constant involvement of customers, mainly in the definition of navigation, interaction and interface features. We extended it by adding transformation features that allow mapping requirement models into content and navigation ones. We provide a proof of concept in the context of the WebML design method and an empiric validation of the approach's advantages.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 7387).Facultad de InformáticaLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

From requirements to web applications in an agile model-driven approach

Web applications are hard to build not only because of technical reasons but also because they involve many different kinds of stakeholders. Involving customers in the development process is a must, not only while eliciting requirements but also considering that requirements change fast and they must be validated continuously. However, while model-driven approaches represent a step forward to reduce development time and work at a higher level of abstraction, most of them practically ignore stakeholders' involvement. Agile approaches tend to solve this problem, though they generally focus on programming rather than modeling. In this paper we present an extension to an approach that combines the best of both worlds, allowing a formal and high-level design style with constant involvement of customers, mainly in the definition of navigation, interaction and interface features. We extended it by adding transformation features that allow mapping requirement models into content and navigation ones. We provide a proof of concept in the context of the WebML design method and an empiric validation of the approach's advantages.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 7387).Facultad de InformáticaLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad