Using trust assumptions with security requirements

Assumptions are frequently made during requirements analysis of a system about the trustworthiness of its various components (including human components). These trust assumptions, whether implicit or explicit, affect the scope of the analysis, derivation of security requirements, and in some cases how functionality is realized. This paper presents trust assumptions in the context of analysis of security requirements. A running example shows how trust assumptions can be used by a requirements engineer to help define and limit the scope of analysis and to document the decisions made during the process. The paper concludes with a case study examining the impact of trust assumptions on software that uses the secure electronic transaction specification.

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Methods for quantitative usability requirements: a case study on the development of the user interface of a mobile phone

Quantitative usability requirements are a critical but challenging, and hence an often neglected aspect of a usability engineering process. A case study is described where quantitative usability requirements played a key role in the development of a new user interface of a mobile phone. Within the practical constraints of the project, existing methods for determining usability requirements and evaluating the extent to which these are met, could not be applied as such, therefore tailored methods had to be developed. These methods and their applications are discussed.

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Scientific models and ethical issues in hybrid bionic systems research

Research on hybrid bionic systems (HBSs) is still in its infancy but promising results have already been achieved in laboratories. Experiments on humans and animals show that artificial devices can be controlled by neural signals. These results suggest that HBS technologies can be employed to restore sensorimotor functionalities in disabled and elderly people. At the same time, HBS research raises ethical concerns related to possible exogenous and endogenous limitations to human autonomy and freedom. The analysis of these concerns requires reflecting on the availability of scientific models accounting for key aspects of sensorimotor coordination and plastic adaptation mechanisms in the brain.

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Understanding and capturing people’s privacy policies in a mobile social networking application

A number of mobile applications have emerged that allow users to locate one another. However, people have expressed concerns about the privacy implications associated with this class of software, suggesting that broad adoption may only happen to the extent that these concerns are adequately addressed. In this article, we report on our work on PeopleFinder, an application that enables cell phone and laptop users to selectively share their locations with others (e.g. friends, family, and colleagues). The objective of our work has been to better understand people’s attitudes and behaviors towards privacy as they interact with such an application, and to explore technologies that empower users to more effectively and efficiently specify their privacy preferences (or “policies”). These technologies include user interfaces for specifying rules and auditing disclosures, as well as machine learning techniques to refine user policies based on their feedback. We present evaluations of these technologies in the context of one laboratory study and three field studies.

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Addressing privacy requirements in system design: the PriS method

A major challenge in the field of software engineering is to make users trust the software that they use in their every day activities for professional or recreational reasons. Trusting software depends on various elements, one of which is the protection of user privacy. Protecting privacy is about complying with user’s desires when it comes to handling personal information. Users’ privacy can also be defined as the right to determine when, how and to what extend information about them is communicated to others. Current research stresses the need for addressing privacy issues during the system design rather than during the system implementation phase. To this end, this paper describes PriS, a security requirements engineering method, which incorporates privacy requirements early in the system development process. PriS considers privacy requirements as organisational goals that need to be satisfied and adopts the use of privacy-process patterns as a way to: (1) describe the effect of privacy requirements on business processes; and (2) facilitate the identification of the system architecture that best supports the privacy-related business processes. In this way, PriS provides a holistic approach from ‘high-level’ goals to ‘privacy-compliant’ IT systems. The PriS way-of-working is formally defined thus, enabling the development of automated tools for assisting its application.

Is emotion relevant to requirements engineering?

This viewpoint argues that the introduction of most computer-based system to an organization transforms the organization and changes the work patterns of the system’s users in the organization. These changes interact with the users’ values and beliefs and trigger emotional responses which are sometimes directed against the software system and its proponents. A requirements engineer must be aware of these emotions.

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How relative absolute can be: SUMI and the impact of the nature of the task in measuring perceived software usability

This paper addresses the possibility of measuring perceived usability in an absolute way. It studies the impact of the nature of the tasks performed in perceived software usability evaluation, using for this purpose the subjective evaluation of an application’s performance via the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI). The paper reports on the post-hoc analysis of data from a productivity study for testing the effect of changes in the graphical user interface (GUI) of a market leading drafting application. Even though one would expect similar evaluations of an application’s usability for same releases, the analysis reveals that the output of this subjective appreciation is context sensitive and therefore mediated by the research design. Our study unmasked a significant interaction between the nature of the tasks used for the usability evaluation and how users evaluate the performance of this application. This interaction challenges the concept of absolute benchmarking in subjective usability evaluation, as some software evaluation methods aspire to provide, since subjective measurement of software quality will be affected most likely by the nature of the testing materials used for the evaluation.

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The 2007 IEEE CEC simulated car racing competition

This paper describes the simulated car racing competition that was arranged as part of the 2007 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation. Both the game that was used as the domain for the competition, the controllers submitted as entries to the competition and its results are presented. With this paper, we hope to provide some insight into the efficacy of various computational intelligence methods on a well-defined game task, as well as an example of one way of running a competition. In the process, we provide a set of reference results for those who wish to use the simplerace game to benchmark their own algorithms. The paper is co-authored by the organizers and participants of the competition.

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Supporting scenario evolution

Scenarios have been shown to be very helpful in identifying and communicating requirements for computer-based systems (CBSs). However, they appear not to be applicable to the rest of the CBS development process. Making scenarios more useful for the entire software development lifecycle requires integrating scenarios to other representations used during CBS development. This integration is achieved with tracing technology. Having integrated scenarios into the entire software development lifecycle creates the necessity to maintain scenarios through the inevitable changes that they and other documents undergo and to subject them to configuration management. We have prototyped automated support for full-lifecycle scenario management and have applied it to some non-trivial systems.This paper is an amalgamation and extension of the conference papers numbered 8, 9, 10, and 11 in the bibliography of this paper.

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Adaptation and application of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms for rule reduction and parameter tuning of fuzzy rule-based systems

Recently, multi-objective evolutionary algorithms have been applied to improve the difficult tradeoff between interpretability and accuracy of fuzzy rule-based systems. It is known that both requirements are usually contradictory, however, these kinds of algorithms can obtain a set of solutions with different trade-offs. This contribution analyzes different application alternatives in order to attain the desired accuracy/interpr-etability balance by maintaining the improved accuracy that a tuning of membership functions could give but trying to obtain more compact models. In this way, we propose the use of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms as a tool to get almost one improved solution with respect to a classic single objective approach (a solution that could dominate the one obtained by such algorithm in terms of the system error and number of rules). To do that, this work presents and analyzes the application of six different multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to obtain simpler and still accurate linguistic fuzzy models by performing rule selection and a tuning of the membership functions. The results on two different scenarios show that the use of expert knowledge in the algorithm design process significantly improves the search ability of these algorithms and that they are able to improve both objectives together, obtaining more accurate and at the same time simpler models with respect to the single objective based approach.

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The case against a positivist philosophy of requirements engineering

Requirements engineering is a field with a heavy practical emphasis and for the most part is quite rightly unconcerned with philosophical reflection. However, there have been exceptions. Philosophical arguments are important because they can be used to powerful effect, facilitating explicit debate on views that may previously have been implicit, and shaping the direction of thought and research within the field. Several cases from both requirements engineering and software engineering have given prominence to the philosophy of positivism. This paper will outline arguments against such a view.

ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Connecting the family with awareness systems

Awareness systems have attracted significant research interest for their potential to support interpersonal relationships. Investigations of awareness systems for the domestic environment have suggested that such systems can help individuals stay in touch with dear friends or family and provide affective benefits to their users. Our research provides empirical evidence to refine and substantiate such suggestions. We report our experience with designing and evaluating the ASTRA awareness system, for connecting households and mobile family members. We introduce the concept of connectedness and its measurement through the Affective Benefits and Costs of communication questionnaire (ABC-Q). We inform results that testify the benefits of sharing experiences at the moment they happen without interrupting potential receivers. Finally, we document the role that lightweight, picture-based communication can play in the range of communication media available.

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Legal safeguards for privacy and data protection in ambient intelligence

To get the maximum benefit from ambient intelligence (AmI), we need to anticipate and react to possible drawbacks and threats emerging from the new technologies in order to devise appropriate safeguards. The SWAMI project took a precautionary approach in its exploration of the privacy risks in AmI and sought ways to reduce them. It constructed four “dark scenarios” showing possible negative implications of AmI, notably for privacy protection. Legal analysis of the depicted futures showed the shortcomings of the current legal framework in being able to provide adequate privacy protection in the AmI environment. In this paper, the authors, building upon their involvement in SWAMI research as well as the further advancement of EU privacy analysis, identify various outstanding issues regarding the legal framework that still need to be resolved in order to deal with AmI in an equitable and efficacious way. This article points out some of the lacunae in the legal framework and postulates several privacy-specific safeguards aimed at overcoming them.

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Multimodal support to group dynamics

The complexity of group dynamics occurring in small group interactions often hinders the performance of teams. The availability of rich multimodal information about what is going on during the meeting makes it possible to explore the possibility of providing support to dysfunctional teams from facilitation to training sessions addressing both the individuals and the group as a whole. A necessary step in this direction is that of capturing and understanding group dynamics. In this paper, we discuss a particular scenario, in which meeting participants receive multimedia feedback on their relational behaviour, as a first step towards increasing self-awareness. We describe the background and the motivation for a coding scheme for annotating meeting recordings partially inspired by the Bales’ Interaction Process Analysis. This coding scheme was aimed at identifying suitable observable behavioural sequences. The study is complemented with an experimental investigation on the acceptability of such a service.

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Global and task effects in information-seeking among software engineers

Information-seeking strategies were explored in software engineers. A complex interaction of task and geographic differences was revealed. There is a general tendency across software engineers to favor non-social sources, such as documentation, for tasks where the goal is to seek factual information. More social sources are preferred when seeking information to diagnostic, problem-solving questions. Within this effect, some geographic variations assert themselves in a way that might partly be interpreted in terms of national cultural differences in Individualism vs. Collectivism. Implications of geographic differences in information-seeking for collaboration within global software development teams are discussed.

E-redesigning of society: towards experiential connectivity of generations in Lithuania

The paper reflects on the unique experience of social and technological development in Lithuania since the regaining of independence as a newly reshaped society constructing a distinctive competitive IST-based model at global level. This has presented Lithuanian pattern of how to integrate different experiences and relations between generations in implementing complex information society approaches. The resulting programme in general is linked to the Lisbon objectives of the European Union. The experience of transitional countries in Europe, each different but facing some common problems, may be useful to developing countries in Africa.

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Deployment and dynamic reconfiguration planning for distributed software systems

The quality of software systems are determined in part by their optimal configurations. Optimal configurations are desired when the software is being deployed and during its lifetime. However, initial deployment and subsequent dynamic reconfiguration of a software system is difficult because of the interplay of many interdependent factors, including cost, time, application state, and system resources. As the size and complexity of software systems increases, procedures (manual or automated) that assume a static software architecture and environment are becoming untenable. We have developed a novel technique for carrying out the deployment and reconfiguration planning processes that leverages recent advances in the field of temporal planning. We describe a tool called Planit, which manages the deployment and reconfiguration of a software system utilizing a temporal planner. Given a model of the structure of a software system, the network upon which the system should be hosted, and a goal configuration, Planit will use the temporal planner to devise possible deployments of the system. Given information about changes in the state of the system, network and a revised goal, Planit will use the temporal planner to devise possible reconfigurations of the system. We present the results of a case study in which Planit is applied to a system consisting of various components that communicate across an application-level overlay network. An earlier version of this paper was presented at ICTAI’03.

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Information systems design: through adaptivity to ubiquity

In a globalised economy the accessibility of services becomes increasingly important for businesses. This has led to a demand that information systems should be ubiquitous in the sense that they are available to all users under all circumstances, everywhere and at all times, and independent of the access devices and channels used. The authors believe the key to meeting that demand is existence of an omnipresent media of interaction and existence of information systems that within that media adapt themselves to context parameters at run-time. The World Wide Web is considered as that omnipresent media. Thus, the task is left to design adaptive information systems in a way that avoids unnecessary replication. In this article it will be shown how context parameters can be utilised to enable system adaptivity. The latter is supposed to increase usability and targets the quality of use, the content, and the functionality. We propose using an algebraic approach that aids in providing the leanest appropriate interface via user typing and story boarding. Our approach furthermore limits the content delivered to a user to the amount that can be dealt with in a usage scenario. The latter is based on defining hyphenation points within the content.

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User’s manual as a requirements specification: case studies

This paper argues that a users manual makes an excellent software requirements specification. It describes several experiences, including one in industry, of writing users manuals as requirements specifications. Finally, it discusses several lessons learned from the experiences.