Theory,Practice and Policy: An Inquiry into the Uptake of HCI Practices in the Software Industry of a Developing Country

With almost four decades of existence as a community, human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has yet to diffuse into a large range of software industries globally. A review of existing literature suggests that the diffusion of HCI practices in software organizations lacks theoretical guidance. Although many studies have tried to facilitate HCI uptake by the software industry, there are scarce studies that consider HCI practices as innovations that software organizations could or should adopt. Furthermore, there appears to be a lack of structure in the facilitation of HCI methodological development within the specialized emerging regions field such as Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to address this gap, an exploratory investigation regarding the state of uptake of HCI practices in Nigeria is conducted. The aim of this article is to improve our understanding regarding the state of HCI uptake in developing countries and the challenges prevailing. The findings show that HCI practice still remains within its infancy stage in most software companies. Universities are also lacking the required knowledge transfer of HCI to the students, and in effect themselves contributing to the lack of HCI skills in industry. Furthermore, government policies are in need of refinement and end-users’ involvement in software development is not prioritized.     

A Systematic Mapping Study of HCI Practice Research

ABSTRACT

Human–computer interaction (HCI) practice has emerged as a research domain in the HCI field and is growing. The need to transfer HCI practices to the industry began significantly with the works of Nielsen on usability engineering. To date, methods and techniques for designing, evaluating, and implementing interactive systems for human use have continued to emerge. It is, therefore, justified to conduct a systematic mapping study to determine the landscape of HCI practice research. A Systematic Mapping Study method was used to map 142 studies according to research type, topic, and contribution. These were then analyzed to determine an overview of HCI practice research. The objective was to analyze studies on HCI practice and present prominent issues that characterize the HCI practice research landscape. Second, to identify pressing challenges regarding HCI practices in software/systems development companies. The results show that HCI practice research has steadily increased since 2012. The majority of the studies explored focused on evaluation research that largely contributed to the evaluation methods or processes. Most of the studies were on design tools and techniques, design methods and contexts, design work and organizational culture, and collaboration and team communication. Interviews, case studies, and survey methods have been prominently used as research methods. HCI techniques are mostly used during the initial phase of development and during evaluation. HCI practice challenges in companies are mostly process-related and on performance of usability and user experience activities. The major challenge seems to be to find a way to collect and incorporate user feedback in a timely manner, especially in agile processes. There are areas identified in this study as needing more research.     

Human computer interaction methods for electronic flight bag envisionment and design

This paper reports on the application of a range of human computer interaction (HCI) methods to the re-design of an electronic flight bag (EFB), as part of a commercial software development project. Specifically, it focusses on the use of participatory design methods, for resolving EFB usability problems. The purpose of this case study is to: (a) Show how participatory design methods can be effectively combined with ethnographic techniques and more formal methods in HCI, for the development of human-friendly EFB systems, (b) Illuminate the specific EFB usability issues encountered in this research and related HCI solutions, (c) Generate an awareness of the challenges faced by HCI practitioners adapting HCI methods to meet commercial project constraints. The HCI methodology outlined in this case study may be of interest to practitioners tasked with process and technology envisionment and/or working with limited resources.Joan Cahill has worked as an (HCI) consultant to Aircraft Management Technologies     

Categorization of risk factors for distributed agile projects

ContextOrganizations combine agile approach and Distributed Software Development (DSD) in order to develop better quality software solutions in lesser time and cost. It helps to reap the benefits of both agile and distributed development but pose significant challenges and risks. Relatively scanty evidence of research on the risks prevailing in distributed agile development (DAD) has motivated this study.ObjectiveThis paper aims at creating a comprehensive set of risk factors that affect the performance of distributed agile development projects and identifies the risk management methods which are frequently used in practice for controlling those risks.MethodThe study is an exploration of practitioners’ experience using constant comparison method for analyzing in-depth interviews of thirteen practitioners and work documents of twenty-eight projects from thirteen different information technology (IT) organizations. The field experience was supported by extensive research literature on risk management in traditional, agile and distributed development.ResultsAnalysis of qualitative data from interviews and project work documents resulted into categorization of forty-five DAD risk factors grouped under five core risk categories. The risk categories were mapped to Leavitt’s model of organizational change for facilitating the implementation of results in real world. The risk factors could be attributed to the conflicting properties of DSD and agile development. Besides that, some new risk factors have been experienced by practitioners and need further exploration as their understanding will help the practitioners to act on time.ConclusionOrganizations are adopting DAD for developing solutions that caters to the changing business needs, while utilizing the global talent. Conflicting properties of DSD and agile approach pose several risks for DAD. This study gives a comprehensive categorization of the risks faced by the practitioners in managing DAD projects and presents frequently used methods to reduce their impact. The work fills the yawning research void in this field.     

Extracting and analyzing time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos

Recent years have witnessed the increasing emphasis on human aspects in software engineering research and practices. Our survey of existing studies on human aspects in software engineering shows that screen-captured videos have been widely used to record developers’ behavior and study software engineering practices. The screen-captured videos provide direct information about which software tools the developers interact with and which content they access or generate during the task. Such Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) data can help researchers and practitioners understand and improve software engineering practices from human perspective. However, extracting time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos requires manual transcribing and coding of videos, which is tedious and error-prone. In this paper we report a formative study to understand the challenges in manually transcribing screen-captured videos into time-series HCI data. We then present a computer-vision based video scraping technique to automatically extract time-series HCI data from screen-captured videos. We also present a case study of our scvRipper tool that implements the video scraping technique using 29-hours of task videos of 20 developers in two development tasks. The case study not only evaluates the runtime performance and robustness of the tool, but also performs a detailed quantitative analysis of the tool’s ability to extract time-series HCI data from screen-captured task videos. We also study the developer’s micro-level behavior patterns in software development from the quantitative analysis.     

Identifying some important success factors in adopting agile software development practices

Agile software development (ASD) is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially advocated by a group of 17 software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. In this paper, we advance the state-of-the-art of the research in this area by conducting a survey-based ex-post-facto study for identifying factors from the perspective of the ASD practitioners that will influence the success of projects that adopt ASD practices. In this paper, we describe a hypothetical success factors framework we developed to address our research question, the hypotheses we conjectured, the research methodology, the data analysis techniques we used to validate the hypotheses, and the results we obtained from data analysis. The study was conducted using an unprecedentedly large-scale survey-based methodology, consisting of respondents who practice ASD and who had experience practicing plan-driven software development in the past. The study indicates that nine of the 14 hypothesized factors have statistically significant relationship with “Success”. The important success factors that were found are: customer satisfaction, customer collaboration, customer commitment, decision time, corporate culture, control, personal characteristics, societal culture, and training and learning.     

Security and human computer interfaces

Computer users are exposed to technology mainly through user interfaces. Most users' perceptions are based on their experience with these interfaces. HCI (human computer interaction) is concerned with these interfaces and how they can be improved. Considerable research has been conducted and major advances have been made in the area of HCI. Information security is becoming increasingly important and more complex as business is conducted electronically. However, state-of-the-art security-related product development has ignored general aspects of HCI. The objective of this paper is to promote and enable security awareness of end-users in their interaction with computer systems. It thus aims to consolidate and integrate the two fields of information security and HCI. HCI as a research discipline is a well developed field of study, and the authors are of the opinion that the use of security technologies can be significantly enhanced by employing proven HCI concepts in the design of these technologies. In order to achieve this, various criteria for a successful HCI in a security-specific environment will be examined. Part of the Windows XP Internet Connection Firewall will be used as a case study and analysed according to these criteria, and recommendations will be made.     

《人机交互》课程的教学探讨与实践

随着人们对人机交互技术的重视程度的提高,越来越多的学科专业将《人机交互》课程列为专业的必修课或选修课。在总结近些年的《人机交互》课程教学实践中的经验教训的基础上,依据《人机交互》课程的特点,从教学内容、教学方法与手段、实践教学等方面,对该课程的教学进行初步的探讨与实践,并就如何提高课程教学质量提出一些可操作性强的建议。     

IwC Special Issue “Feminism and HCI: New Perspectives” Special Issue Editors’ Introduction

As a word and as a set of theories and practices, feminism is a poorly understood concept. However, feminist perspectives have a lot in common with user- and value-centered design processes such as those espoused within the field of Human Computer Interaction. Examples include consideration of alternative viewpoints, considerations of agency (who get to say/do what and under what circumstances) and the development of reflective and reflexive methods for understanding how, when, where and why people do what they do. In the “Feminism and HCI: New Perspectives” special issue, we have invited researchers and practitioners to reflect on the ways in which feminist thinking, theory, and practice can and does have an impact on the field of Human Computer Interaction. This introductory editorial offers more background to our view that there is great value to understanding the actual and potential impact of feminist thinking on HCI, followed by a précis of each paper. We close with some observations regarding common themes, points of contention and possibilities for future work.     

Producing Printability: Articulation Work and Alignment in 3D Printing

Three-dimensional printing is widely celebrated as enabling open design and manufacturing practice. With easy-to-use techniques such as automated modeling, fabrication machines ostensibly help designers turn ideas into fully fledged objects. Prior HCI literature focuses on improving printing through optimization and by developing printer and material capabilities. This paper expands such considerations by asking, how do 3D printing practitioners understand and create “printability?” And how might HCI better support the work that holds together printing workflows and changing ecosystems of materials and techniques? We conducted studies in two sites of open design: a technology firm in Silicon Valley, California and a makerspace in Stockholm, Sweden. Deploying workshops and interviews, we examine how practitioners negotiate the print experience, revealing a contingent process held together by trial and error exploration and careful interventions. These insights point to the value of tools and processes to support articulation work, what Strauss and colleagues have called the acts of fitting together people, tasks, and their ordering to accomplish an overarching project. We show that despite the sought-after efficiencies of such manufacturing, 3D printing entails articulation work, particularly acts of alignment, exposing messy modes of production carried out by a varied cast of practitioners, machines, and materials.     

The situational factors that affect the software development process: Towards a comprehensive reference framework

Context

An optimal software development process is regarded as being dependent on the situational characteristics of individual software development settings. Such characteristics include the nature of the application(s) under development, team size, requirements volatility and personnel experience. However, no comprehensive reference framework of the situational factors affecting the software development process is presently available.

Objective

The absence of such a comprehensive reference framework of the situational factors affecting the software development process is problematic not just because it inhibits our ability to optimise the software development process, but perhaps more importantly, because it potentially undermines our capacity to ascertain the key constraints and characteristics of a software development setting.

Method

To address this deficiency, we have consolidated a substantial body of related research into an initial reference framework of the situational factors affecting the software development process. To support the data consolidation, we have applied rigorous data coding techniques from Grounded Theory and we believe that the resulting framework represents an important contribution to the software engineering field of knowledge.

Results

The resulting reference framework of situational factors consists of eight classifications and 44 factors that inform the software process. We believe that the situational factor reference framework presented herein represents a sound initial reference framework for the key situational elements affecting the software process definition.

Conclusion

In addition to providing a useful reference listing for the research community and for committees engaged in the development of standards, the reference framework also provides support for practitioners who are challenged with defining and maintaining software development processes. Furthermore, this framework can be used to develop a profile of the situational characteristics of a software development setting, which in turn provides a sound foundation for software development process definition and optimisation.     

A different way of seeing: Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology and human–computer interaction

Traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) allowed researchers and practitioners to share and rely on the ‘five E’s’ of usability, the principle that interactive systems should be designed to be effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn. A recent trend in HCI, however, is that academic researchers as well as practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in user experiences, i.e., understanding and designing for relationships between users and artifacts that are for instance affective, engaging, fun, playable, sociable, creative, involving, meaningful, exciting, ambiguous, and curious. In this paper, it is argued that built into this shift in perspective there is a concurrent shift in accountability that is drawing attention to a number of ethical, moral, social, cultural, and political issues that have been traditionally de-emphasized in a field of research guided by usability concerns. Not surprisingly, this shift in accountability has also received scarce attention in HCI. To be able to find any answers to the question of what makes a good user experience, the field of HCI needs to develop a philosophy of technology. One building block for such a philosophy of technology in HCI is presented. Albert Borgmann argues that we need to be cautious and rethink the relationship as well as the often-assumed correspondence between what we consider useful and what we think of as good in technology. This junction—that some technologies may be both useful and good, while some technologies that are useful for some purposes might also be harmful, less good, in a broader context—is at the heart of Borgmann’s understanding of technology. Borgmann’s notion of the device paradigm is a valuable contribution to HCI as it points out that we are increasingly experiencing the world with, through, and by information technologies and that most of these technologies tend to be designed to provide commodities that effortlessly grant our wishes without demanding anything in return, such as patience, skills, or effort. This paper argues that Borgmann’s work is relevant and makes a valuable contribution to HCI in at least two ways: first, as a different way of seeing that raises important social, cultural, ethical, and moral issues from which contemporary HCI cannot escape; and second, as providing guidance as to how specific values might be incorporated into the design of interactive systems that foster engagement with reality.     

Inconsistency management for multiple-view software developmentenvironments

Developers need tool support to help manage the wide range of inconsistencies that occur during software development. Such tools need to provide developers with ways to define, detect, record, present, interact with, monitor and resolve complex inconsistencies between different views of software artifacts, different developers and different phases of software development. This paper describes our experience with building complex multiple-view software development tools that support diverse inconsistency management facilities. We describe software architectures that we have developed and user interface techniques that are used in our multiple-view development tools, and we discuss the effectiveness of our approaches compared to other architectural and HCI techniques     

Mobility as involvement: on the role of involvement in the design of mobile support systems for industrial application

Traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) allowed researchers and practitioners to share and rely on the ‘five E’s’ of usability, the principle that interactive systems should be designed to be effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn. A recent trend in HCI, however, is that academic researchers as well as practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in user experiences, i.e., understanding and designing for relationships between users and artifacts that are for instance affective, engaging, fun, playable, sociable, creative, involving, meaningful, exciting, ambiguous, and curious. In this paper, it is argued that built into this shift in perspective there is a concurrent shift in accountability that is drawing attention to a number of ethical, moral, social, cultural, and political issues that have been traditionally de-emphasized in a field of research guided by usability concerns. Not surprisingly, this shift in accountability has also received scarce attention in HCI. To be able to find any answers to the question of what makes a good user experience, the field of HCI needs to develop a philosophy of technology. One building block for such a philosophy of technology in HCI is presented. Albert Borgmann argues that we need to be cautious and rethink the relationship as well as the often-assumed correspondence between what we consider useful and what we think of as good in technology. This junction—that some technologies may be both useful and good, while some technologies that are useful for some purposes might also be harmful, less good, in a broader context—is at the heart of Borgmann’s understanding of technology. Borgmann’s notion of the device paradigm is a valuable contribution to HCI as it points out that we are increasingly experiencing the world with, through, and by information technologies and that most of these technologies tend to be designed to provide commodities that effortlessly grant our wishes without demanding anything in return, such as patience, skills, or effort. This paper argues that Borgmann’s work is relevant and makes a valuable contribution to HCI in at least two ways: first, as a different way of seeing that raises important social, cultural, ethical, and moral issues from which contemporary HCI cannot escape; and second, as providing guidance as to how specific values might be incorporated into the design of interactive systems that foster engagement with reality.     

Factors that motivate software engineering teams: A four country empirical study

Motivation, although difficult to quantify, is considered to be the single largest factor in developer productivity; there are also suggestions that low motivation is an important factor in software development project failure. We investigate factors that motivate software engineering teams using survey data collected from software engineering practitioners based in Australia, Chile, USA and Vietnam. We also investigate the relationship between team motivation and project outcome, identifying whether the country in which software engineering practitioners are based affects this relationship. Analysis of 333 questionnaires indicates that failed projects are associated with low team motivation. We found a set of six common team motivational factors that appear to be culturally independent (project manager has good communication with project staff, project risks reassessed, controlled and managed during the project, customer has confidence in the project manager and the development team, the working environment is good, the team works well together, and the software engineer had a pleasant experience). We also found unique groupings of team motivational factors for each of the countries investigated. This indicates that there are cultural differences that project managers need to consider when working in a global environment.     

Interaction criticism: An introduction to the practice

Though interaction designers critique interfaces as a regular part of their research and practice, the field of HCI lacks a proper discipline of interaction criticism. By interaction criticism I mean rigorous interpretive interrogations of the complex relationships between (a) the interface, including its material and perceptual qualities as well as its broader situatedness in visual languages and culture and (b) the user experience, including the meanings, behaviors, perceptions, affects, insights, and social sensibilities that arise in the context of interaction and its outcomes. Interaction criticism is a knowledge practice that enables design practitioners to engage with the aesthetics of interaction, helping practitioners cultivate more sensitive and insightful critical reactions to designs and exemplars. Benefits of such an engagement can include informing a particular design process, critiquing and innovating on design processes and methods more generally, developing original theory beneficial to interaction design, and exposing more robustly the long-term and even unintended consequences of designs. In this article I offer a synthesis of practices of criticism derived from analytic philosophy of aesthetics and critical theory, including the introduction of five core claims from this literature; I outline four perspectives that constitute a big-picture view of interaction criticism; and I offer a case study, demonstrating interaction criticism through each of these four perspectives.     

Investigating and promoting UX practice in industry: An experimental study

The efforts of addressing user experience (UX) in product development keep growing, as demonstrated by the proliferation of workshops and conferences bringing together academics and practitioners, who aim at creating interactive software able to satisfy their users. This special issue focuses on “Interplay between User Experience Evaluation and Software Development”, stating that the gap between human-computer interaction and software engineering with regard to usability has somewhat been narrowed. Unfortunately, our experience shows that software development organizations perform few usability engineering activities or none at all. Several authors acknowledge that, in order to understand the reasons of the limited impact of usability engineering and UX methods, and to try to modify this situation, it is fundamental to thoroughly analyze current software development practices, involving practitioners and possibly working from inside the companies. This article contributes to this research line by reporting an experimental study conducted with software companies. The study has confirmed that still too many companies either neglect usability and UX, or do not properly consider them. Interesting problems emerged. This article gives suggestions on how they may be properly addressed, since their solution is the starting point for reducing the gap between research and practice of usability and UX. It also provides further evidence on the value of the research method, called Cooperative Method Development, based on the collaboration of researchers and practitioners in carrying out empirical research; it has been used in a step of the performed study and has revealed to be instrumental for showing practitioners why to improve their development processes and how to do so.     

Exploring Design Guidelines of Using User-Centered Design in Gamification Development: A Delphi Study

Gamification has become an increasingly important trend in the field of human–computer interaction (HCI) design. Applying the idea of user-centered design (UCD) in gamification is drawing more and more attention as the gamification design theoretical frameworks referencing UCD have been proposed. However, questions like “How should a gamification project be developed with specific UCD methods?” and “What design guidelines could be applied in the practice of using UCD in gamification project?” remain unanswered. We hereby conducted a Delphi study to explore design guidelines for using UCD in gamification development with knowledge from practice. The Delphi panel recruited for this study included 20 experienced gamification designers, who produced 28 initial guideline items in the pre-Delphi round. After three rounds of addition, modification, and deletion, 35 design guidelines were ultimately identified. Among these, 31 were found process-oriented and in line with the classic UCD processes and the rest four were about collecting feedback from the design user participants. The author discovered that some of the design guidelines showed consistency with existing theoretical frameworks or design principles about gamification and UCD, and meanwhile, some appeared to be different from the known gamification design knowledge. The research results extended and complemented current gamification design field by providing maneuverable guides and a better overall understanding of how to conduct a gamification project with UCD for gamification researchers and practitioners. In addition, by using the Delphi method in the field of gamification, this study provided a reference to future research in HCI design which needed to draw lessons from practical knowledge.     

Design-inclusive UX research: design as a part of doing user experience research

Since the third wave in human–computer interaction (HCI), research on user experience (UX) has gained momentum within the HCI community. The focus has shifted from systematic usability requirements and measures towards guidance on designing for experiences. This is a big change, since design has traditionally not played a large role in HCI research. Yet, the literature addressing this shift in focus is very limited. We believe that the field of UX research can learn from a field where design and experiential aspects have always been important: design research. In this article, we discuss why design is needed in UX research and how research that includes design as a part of research can support and advance UX design practice. We do this by investigating types of design-inclusive UX research and by learning from real-life cases of UX-related design research. We report the results of an interview study with 41 researchers in three academic research units where design research meets UX research. Based on our interview findings, and building on existing literature, we describe the different roles design can play in research projects. We also report how design research results can inform designing for experience methodologically or by providing new knowledge on UX. The results are presented in a structured palette that can help UX researchers reflect and focus more on design in their research projects, thereby tackling experience design challenges in their own research.     

Survey of public access information retrieval systems

A London HCI Centre (LHC) project to produce a user interface development environment for screen-based, nondirect manipulation, public use computer systems is described. A survey of available public access computer systems was undertaken to characterize and critically assess the usability of current designs. That part of the survey relating to four particular information retrieval systems is presented. Some serious weaknesses in the user interfaces to these systems are highlighted along with recommendations for improvements. The paper concludes with a general discussion of the major areas of weakness and how human factors guidelines can be used to improve usability.