Dr. Gustavo López Herrera

Dr. Gustavo López Herrera

Descripción: 

Soy docente e investigador en los campos de Interacción Humano-Computador e ingeniería de software. En el área de Interacción Humano-Computador, mis intereses se centran en: computación ubicua, internet de las cosas y User Experience . En el área de ingeniería de software, mis intereses incluyen: mejoramiento de procesos y marcos de trabajo ágiles. Tengo una maestría en Ciencias de la Computación e Informática del Programa de Posgrado en Computación e Informática de la Universidad de Costa Rica. Además, soy Certified Scrum Master y Certified Scrum Product Owner ambas certificaciones emitidas por el Scrum Alliance.

Es estudiante: 
No

Formación académica

Universitaria:

Finalizados:

  • Maestría Académica, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2015.
  • Bachillerato, Universidad de Costa Rica, 2012.

Certificaciones: 

  • Certified Scrum Master
  • Certified Scrum Product Owner

Idiomas:

  • Español (Lengua materna)
  • Ingles (Dominio completo TOEIC: 990/990; TOEFL: 104/120)
  • Chino mandarín simplificado (Nivel básico)

Experiencia laboral

  • Docente, investigador. Feb 2012 - actualidad.
    • Proyecto de investigación: Fortalecimiento de la capacidad de desarrollo, adopción y mantenimiento de software del Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad.
    • Actividad de investigación: Apoyo a procesos de investigación y divulgación de proyectos del CITIC.
    • Proyecto de investigación: Diseño y desarrollo de interfaces no tradicionales con fines educativos y terapéuticos.
    • Proyecto de investigación: Mejoramiento de los procesos de aseguramiento de la calidad de software en una unidad de proyectos de la UCR.
    • Proyecto de investigación: Desarrollo de objetos aumentados y validación de una metodología de diseño de objetos  aumentados.
    • Proyecto de investigación: Adecuación de las prácticas básicas de aseguramiento de la calidad y mejora del proceso de  software de la unidad de desarrollo de software de la UCR.
  • Cursos impartidos
    • Temas Especiales de Teoría de la Computación: Introducción a la Investigación Aplicada, Posgrado en Computación e Informática, UCR, Mar 2017 - Jun 2017.
    • Diseño de la Interfaz Humano-Computador, Posgrado en Computación e Informática, UCR, Ago 2016 - Dic 2016.
    • Principios de Informática, Escuela de Ciencias de la Computación e Informática, UCR, Abril 2013 - Jul 2013.
  • Profesor Asistente, Julio 2009 - Diciembre 2011

Proyectos

Publicaciones

Defining `Architecture' for Software Engineering -- A Review of Terminology

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Advances in Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering: Proceedings of the AHFE 2017 International Conference on Human Factors, Software, and Systems Engineering, July 17-21, 2017, The Westin Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, California, USA

Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers

Descripción:

Software development methods are usually not applied by the book. Companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders' requests. To implement efficient and effective development processes, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid methods. A common combination contains a rich management framework to organize and steer projects complemented with a number of smaller practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, based on 732 data points collected through an international survey, we study the software development process use in practice. Our results show that 76.8% of the companies implement hybrid methods. Company size as well as the strategy in devising and evolving hybrid methods affect the suitability of the chosen process to reach company or project goals. Our findings show that companies that combine planned improvement programs with process evolution can increase their process' suitability by up to 5%

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice

Teaching Scrum Using Gamification

Descripción:

Teaching Scrum is a complex task in an academic setting. However, it is even more complex when it is taught in an industrial setting. This paper presents our experiences in the implementation of two different Scrum training workshop for workers. We have evaluated and improved these workshops over the past two years. More than 450 trainees with little or no background on Scrum receive the workshop. Furthermore, we present the implementation of three educational devices that automate activities in the context of this workshop. The automation aims to liberate some operative charge from the trainer to allow them to focus on the learning points and explanations of the activities rather than keeping track of the results of the participants.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient ‪Intelligence UCAmI 2019‬

Scheduling of events through notifications in mobile devices

Descripción:

It is very common to interact with notifications every day with our mobile devices. Notifications have advantages and disadvantages. They bring information for the user, but they are also interruptions. In this study, the authors provide a solution for scheduling events through notifications. They created an application using the Google Calendar platform and the Swift programming language to respond to events through notifications. Then, the participants evaluated the application through the usability scale of the system (SUS), and the results were positive. The authors received excellent comments and feedback from the participants in the evaluation.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2019 IV Jornadas Costarricenses de Investigación en Computación e Informática (JoCICI)

Evaluating the Nao Robot in the Role of Personal Assistant: The Effect of Gender in Robot Performance Evaluation

Descripción:

By using techniques such as the Wizard of Oz (WoZ) and video capture, this paper evaluated the performance of the Nao Robot in the role of a personal assistant, which was valuated alongside the impact of the assigned gender (male/female) in the perceived performance of the robot assistant. Within a sample size of 39 computer sciences students, this study assessed criteria such as: perceived enjoyment, intention to use, perceived sociability, trust, intelligence, animacy, anthropomorphism, and sympathy, utilizing testing tools such as Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Godspeed Questionnaire (GSQ). These methods identified a significant effect of the gender assigned to the robot in variables such as intelligence and sympathy.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Proceedings

Standardized Questionnaires for User Experience Evaluation: A Systematic Literature Review

Descripción:

Standardized questionnaires are one of the methods used to evaluate User Experience (UX). Standardized questionnaires are composed of an invariable group of questions that users answer themselves after using a product or system. They are considered reliable and economical to apply. The standardized questionnaires most recognized for UX evaluation are AttrakDiff, UEQ, and meCUE. Although the structure, format, and content of each of the questionnaires are known in detail, there is no systematic literature review (SLR) that categorizes the uses of these questionnaires in primary studies. This SLR presents the eligibility protocol and the results obtained by reviewing 946 papers from four digital databases, of which 553 primary studies were analyzed in detail. Different characteristics of use were obtained, such as which questionnaire is used more extensively, in which geographical context, and the size of the sample used in each study, among others.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient ‪Intelligence UCAmI 2019‬

Smart Meeting Room Management System Based on Real-Time Occupancy

Descripción:

This paper proposes the creation of a smart meeting room through the incorporation of a PIR sensor and an AWS IoT button that allows the booking system to reflect a more precise availability of meeting rooms according to the actual occupancy status. The Internet of Things (IoT) devices are controlled using a Wi-Fi module that allows them to connect to the REST web service and to integrate with the open source Meeting Room Booking System (MRBS). In order to evaluate the system a storyboard evaluation was conducted with 47 participants. All participants filled out the User Experience Questionnaires (UEQ), described the product using three words and expressed their opinion through open comments. Finally, 19 participants took part in a real-life simulation of the smart meeting room and evaluated the system using the UEQ questionnaire. Based on the positive acceptance reflected in the evaluations, results show that the proposed system is considered very attractive and useful by the participants.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2019 IV Jornadas Costarricenses de Investigación en Computación e Informática (JoCICI)

User Experience Comparison of Intelligent Personal Assistants: Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri and Cortana

Descripción:

Natural user interfaces are becoming popular. One of the most common natural user interfaces nowadays are voice activated interfaces, particularly smart personal assistants such as Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana, and Siri. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of these four smart personal assistants in two dimensions: the correctness of their answers and how natural the responses feel to users. Ninety-two participants conducted the evaluation. Results show that Alexa and Google Assistant are significantly better than Siri and Cortana. However, there is no statistically significant difference between Alexa and Google Assistant.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient ‪Intelligence UCAmI 2019‬

UX Evaluation with Standardized Questionnaires in Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence: A Systematic Literature Review

Descripción:

Standardized questionnaires are well-known, reliable, and inexpensive instruments to evaluate user experience (UX). Although the structure, content, and application procedure of the three most recognized questionnaires (AttrakDiff, UEQ, and meCUE) are known, there is no systematic literature review (SLR) that classifies how these questionnaires have been used in primary studies reported academically. This SLR seeks to answer five research questions (RQs), starting with identifying the uses of each questionnaire over the years and by geographic region (RQ1) and the median number of participants per study (how many participants is considered enough when evaluating UX?) (RQ2). This work also aims to establish whether these questionnaires are combined with other evaluation instruments and with which complementary instruments are they used more frequently (RQ3). In addition, this review intends to determine how the three questionnaires have been applied in the fields of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence (RQ4) and also in studies that incorporate nontraditional interfaces, such as haptic, gesture, or speech interfaces, to name a few (RQ5). Methods. A systematic literature review was conducted starting from 946 studies retrieved from four digital databases. The main inclusion criteria being the study describes a primary study reported academically, where the standardized questionnaire is used as a UX evaluation instrument in its original and complete form. In the first phase, 189 studies were discarded by screening the title, abstract, and keyword list. In the second phase, 757 studies were full-text reviewed, and 209 were discarded due to the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The 548 resulting studies were analyzed in detail. Results. AttrakDiff is the questionnaire that counts the most uses since 2006, when the first studies appeared. However, since 2017, UEQ has far surpassed AttrakDiff in uses per year. The contribution of meCUE is still minimal. Europe is the region with the most extended use, followed by Asia. Within Europe, Germany greatly exceeds the rest of countries (RQ1). The median number of participants per study is 20, considering the aggregated data from the three questionnaires. However, this median rises to 30 participants in journal studies while it stays in 20 in conference studies (RQ2). Almost 4 in 10 studies apply the questionnaire as the only evaluation instrument. The remaining studies used between one and five complementary instruments, among which the System Usability Scale (SUS) stands out (RQ3). About 1 in 4 studies analyzed belong to ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence fields, in which UEQ increases the percentage of uses when compared to its general percentage, particularly in topics such as IoT and wearable interfaces. However, AttrakDiff remains the predominant questionnaire for studies in smart cities and homes and in-vehicle information systems (RQ4). Around 1 in 3 studies include nontraditional interfaces, being virtual reality and gesture interfaces the most numerous. Percentages of UEQ and meCUE uses in these studies are higher than their respective global percentages, particularly in studies using virtual reality and eye tracking interfaces. AttrakDiff maintains its overall percentage in studies with tangible and gesture interfaces and exceeds it in studies with nontraditional visual interfaces, such as displays in windshields or motorcycle helmets (RQ5).

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Advances in Human-Computer Interaction

A Mobile Application for Improving the Delivery Process of Notifications

Descripción:

t present, there are systems in charge of classifying and sending notifications to smart devices at different times. However, there are not many studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of these systems in real world settings. We propose a method that classifies and prioritizes notifications by analyzing only the content of the notification and the sender of the message. We also developed a system implementing this method. User diaries were used to analyze the behavior of the system in real world situations, and the results showed that the implemented system significantly reduces interruptions to users. Additionally, the user experience of the system was evaluated through the standardized questionnaire UEQ (User Experience Questionnaire). The results obtained were positive in most of the scales of this instrument, above the average according to UEQ benchmarks. However, aspects such as stimulation and creativity can be improved in the future to motivate users to use the system.

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Technical Debt is Not Only about Code and We Need to Be Aware about It

Descripción:

Context: It is common for a software project to incur technical debt (TD) during its development. It can impact several artifacts produced throughout the software development process. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out management actions to find a balance between the benefits of incurring it and the effects of its presence. However, so far, much of the attention has been given only to discussions relating TD to coding issues. This is a worrying scenario because other types of debt can also have impactful, or even worse, consequences on projects. Aims: This study elaborates on the need to consider other issues of the development process and not just the source-code when investigating the TD phenomenon. Method: We analyze responses from 653 practitioners concerning TD causes, effects, prevention, reasons for non-prevention, repayment, and reasons for non-repayment and investigate whether these TD management elements are related to coding or to other software development issues. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the big picture we draw. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, TD management, and the organization are also common. Lastly, we present a hump diagram that, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. Conclusion: The results shed light on other concerns beyond code that the research community and practitioners need to be aware of.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: XX Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality

Technical and Nontechnical Prioritization Schema for Technical Debt: Voice of TD-Experienced Practitioners

Descripción:

Technical debt (TD) can be injected at any stage of software development, spreading across other phases and causing various problems. This article presents a model for conceptualizing TD causes, effects, payment practices, and reasons for payment avoidance, with a prioritization schema for technical and nontechnical roles.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: IEEE Software

Pitfalls and Solutions for Technical Debt Management in Agile Software Projects

Descripción:

This article presents technical debt (TD) impediments, decision factors, enabling practices, and actions diagrams for TD management in agile software projects. By analyzing diagrams, professionals can avoid the pitfalls, and increase their capacity, for better TD management.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: IEEE Software

What Makes Agile Software Development Agile

Descripción:

Together with many success stories, promises such as the increase in production speed and the improvement in stakeholders' collaboration have contributed to making agile a transformation in the software industry in which many companies want to take part. However, driven either by a natural and expected evolution or by contextual factors that challenge the adoption of agile methods as prescribed by their creator(s), software processes in practice mutate into hybrids over time. Are these still agile In this article, we investigate the question: what makes a software development method agile We present an empirical study grounded in a large-scale international survey that aims to identify software development methods and practices that improve or tame agility. Based on 556 data points, we analyze the perceived degree of agility in the implementation of standard project disciplines and its relation to used development methods and practices. Our findings suggest that only a small number of participants operate their projects in a purely traditional or agile manner (under 15%). That said, most project disciplines and most practices show a clear trend towards increasing degrees of agility. Compared to the methods used to develop software, the selection of practices has a stronger effect on the degree of agility of a given discipline. Finally, there are no methods or practices that explicitly guarantee or prevent agility. We conclude that agility cannot be defined solely at the process level. Additional factors need to be taken into account when trying to implement or improve agility in a software company. Finally, we discuss the field of software process-related research in the light of our findings and present a roadmap for future research.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

Common Causes and Effects of Technical Debt in Costa Rica: InsighTD Survey Replication

Descripción:

Technical debt is a concept used to describe technical decisions that can benefit companies in the short term but can produce costs and software quality issues in the long term. Technical debt management can help enterprise profitability, sustainability, and the software industry's credibility. This paper presents a replication of the InsighTD survey (a globally distributed family of industrial surveys on causes and effects of TD), focusing on Costa Rica and comparing other regional countries. In total, 145 practitioners from the Costa Rican IT industry participated. Results show that the leading cause of technical debt is not technical (not only in Costa Rica but also in the region). On the other hand, the main effects reported are delivery delay and general dissatisfaction of the parties involved. A comparative study of InsighTD survey results in various countries is also included.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2021 XLVII Latin American Computing Conference (CLEI)

How Experience Impacts Practitioners' Perception of Causes and Effects of Technical Debt

Descripción:

Context: The technical debt (TD) metaphor helps to conceptualize the pending issues and trade-offs made during software development. Knowing TD causes can support in defining preventive actions and having information about effects aids in the prioritization of TD payment. Goal: To investigate the impact of the experience level on how practitioners perceive the most likely causes that lead to TD and the effects of TD that have the highest impacts on software projects. Method: We approach this topic by surveying 227 practitioners. Results: While experienced software developers focus on human factors as TD causes and external quality attributes as TD effects, low experienced developers seem to concentrate on technical issues as causes and internal quality issues and increased project effort as effects. Missing any of these types of causes could lead a team to miss the identification of important TD, or miss opportunities to preempt TD. On the other hand, missing important effects could hamper effective planning or erode the effectiveness of decisions about prioritizing TD items. Conclusion: Having software development teams composed of practitioners with a homogeneous experience level can erode the team's ability to effectively manage TD.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2021 IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)

Prevalence, common causes and effects of technical debt: Results from a family of surveys with the IT industry

Descripción:

Context: The technical debt (TD) metaphor describes actions made during various stages of software development that lead to a more costly future regarding system maintenance and evolution. According to recent studies, on average 25% of development effort is spent, i.e. wasted, on TD caused issues in software development organizations. However, further research is needed to investigate the relations between various software development activities and TD. Objective: The objective of this study is twofold. First, to get empirical insight on the understanding and the use of the TD concept in the IT industry. Second, to contribute towards precise conceptualization of the TD concept through analysis of causes and effects. Method: In order to address the research objective a family of surveys was designed as a part of an international initiative that congregates researchers from 12 countries—InsighTD. At country level, national teams ran survey replications with industry practitioners from the respective countries. Results: In total 653 valid responses were collected from 6 countries. Regarding the prevalence of the TD concept 22% of practitioners have only theoretical knowledge about it, and 47% have some practical experiences with TD identification or management. Further analysis indicated that senior practitioners who work in larger organizations, larger teams, and on larger systems are more likely to be experienced with TD management. Time pressure or deadlinewas the single most cited cause of TD. Regarding the effects of TD: delivery delay, low maintainability, and rework were the most cited. Conclusion: InsighTD is the first family of surveys on technical debt in software engineering. It provided a methodological framework that allowed multiple replication teams to conduct research activities and to contribute to a single dataset. Future work will focus on more specific aspects of TD management.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Systems and Software

User Experience in Communication and Collaboration Platforms: A Comparative Study Including Discord, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom

Descripción:

Due to the measures imposed to prevent the spread of the virus during the COVID-19 pandemic, how education and work communications are carried have changed. An increase in video conferencing and meeting applications is noticeable. In this research paper, we describe the results of a user experience evaluation of three widely used platforms: Discord, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Through the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) application, it was determined that Discord is better in aspects not related to tasks and provides an above-average UX. On the other hand, zoom excels when it comes to tasks, but in conjunction with Microsoft Teams, it delivers below-average UX.

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

A conceptual framework for smart device-based notifications

Descripción:

The amount of information available for a person at a given time is growing at a disproportioned rate. Moreover, smart devices are becoming more and more popular. To avoid that human’s attention becomes a bottleneck and improve the number of notifications delivered to users, we believe that smart devices could serve as notifications mechanisms. This paper summarizes and concludes the efforts of a research project focusing on the use of smart devices as notification mechanisms. The goal of the framework is to assist researchers and developers in the conceptualization of smart device-based notifications. Furthermore, this paper presents the results of three evaluations. First, it describes the results of a survey on the need for novel notification mechanisms and the utility of smart devices as notification delivery mechanisms. Second, the results of a quantitative assessment on the impact of notifications delivered through smart devices compared with notifications delivered through smartphones. Results show that smart devices are useful to deliver valuable information and the quantitative assessment discovered that there is no significant difference between smart devices and smartphones delivering notifications. Finally, the applicability of the framework was evaluated and considered useful by software developers.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing

Conversational Design Patterns for a UX Evaluation Instrument Implemented by Voice

Descripción:

In recent years there has been an increase of voice interfaces, driven by developments in Artificial Intelligence and the expansion of commercial devices that use them, such as smart assistants present on phones or smart speakers. One field that could take advantage of the potential of voice interaction is in the self-administered surveys data collection, such as standardized UX evaluation questionnaires. This work proposes a set of conversational design patterns for standardized UX evaluation questionnaires that use semantic difference scales as a means of collecting quantitative information on user experience, as is the case of AttrakDiff and UEQ (User Experience Questionnaire). The presented design patterns seek to establish a natural conversation created in accordance with the user, the conservation of context between subsequent questions, the minimization of statements and with statement repair mechanisms not completely understood by the user or voice agent, as eliciting explanation of a concept or repetition.

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Comparing Written and Voice Captured Responses of the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ)

Descripción:

Standardized questionnaires are widely used instruments to evaluate UX and their capture mechanism has been implemented in written form, either on paper or in digital format. This study aims to determine if the UX evaluations obtained in the standardized UEQ questionnaire (User Experience Questionnaire) are equivalent if the response capture mechanism is implemented using the traditional written form (digitally) or if a conversational voice interface is used. Having a UX evaluation questionnaire whose capture mechanism is implemented by voice could provide an alternative to collect user responses, preserving the advantages present in standardized questionnaires (quantitative results, statistically validated, self-reported by users) and adding the ease of use and growing adoption of conversational voice interfaces. The results of the case study described in this paper show that, with an adequate number of participants, there are no significant differences in the results of the six scales that make up UEQ when using either of the two response capture mechanisms.

Tipo de publicación: Book Chapter

Publicado en: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Designing a Context-Aware Smart Notifications System for Precision Agriculture

Descripción:

Smart farming solutions seek to help farmers in their daily activities. Their use has shown that it is beneficial for farmers to be aware of the distinct variables affecting the production. For this reason, having alerts and notifications in monitoring and control platforms is crucial. However, in some circumstances, farmers cannot attend to the messages delivered through traditional mechanisms, making it impossible for them to be informed at the right moment. In this paper, we present the design evaluation of an intelligent context-aware smart notifications system for precision agriculture. We consider using distinct notification mechanisms to improve the delivery of notifications to the farmers. We carry out an anticipated user experience evaluation to assess the system’s design and validate the use of the notification mechanisms in distinct scenarios. A total of 48 potential users from Spain and Costa Rica participated in the evaluation. The results show that our proposed system can be very helpful in supporting farmers to be aware of the state of crops. In addition, non-traditional notification mechanisms can potentially keep the farmers informed without affecting their daily activities. Costa Rican potential users value the system’s novelty more than Spanish users.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2022)

User - Smart Building Interactions: An Analysis of Privacy and Productivity Human Factors

Descripción:

Smart buildings are increasingly becoming more common and changing the way we interact with our home, workplace, and cities. Consequently, it is important to study how human factors play a role in smart building-based environments. This research focuses on the privacy and productivity of human factors, and presents the results of two complementary evaluations: a survey in which people’s privacy concerns were analyzed and an assessment that quantifies if smart building functionalities impacts people’s productivity.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2022)

Social Network Analysis for Automatic Ranking of Political Stakeholders: a Case Study

Descripción:

This article exposes the way in which the creation of a new method for calculating the popularity of stake holders in social networks can support political data analysis experts. The definition of a new formula for estimating popularity allowed us to have a new method that, together with other previously existing ones, allows us to build a multidimensional interpretation of reality. The construction of a method that would seem like a computational scientific curiosity has significant impacts for experts who carry out political analysis. The new ranking algorithm called BOPRank made it possible to identify political actors in a different way than known algorithms. While a wellknown algorithm showed popularity as a result of the work of campaign teams on social networks, the new algorithm reflected popularity obtained as a result of the reaction of the public on social networks.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: 2022 XVLIII Latin American Computer Conference (CLEI)

Identification and Management of Technical Debt: A systematic mapping study update

Descripción:

Technical debt is a concept used to describe the lack of good practices during software development, leading to several problems and costs. Identification and management strategies can help reduce these difficulties. In a previous study, Alves et al. (2016) analyzed the research landscape of such strategies from 2010 to 2014. This paper replicates and updates their study to explore the evolution of technical debt identification and management research landscape over a decade, including literature from 2010 until 2022. We analyzed 117 papers from the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, and Springer Link. Newly suggested strategies include automatically identifying admitted debt in comments, commits, and source code. Between 2015 and 2022, more empirical evaluations have been performed, and the general research focus has changed to a more holistic approach. Therefore, the research area evolved and reached a new level of maturity compared to previous results from Alves et al. (2016). Not only are code aspects considered for technical debt, but other aspects have also been investigated (e.g., models for the development process).

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development

Investigating the Relationship between Technical Debt Management and Software Development Issues

Descripción:

Context: The presence of technical debt (TD) brings risks to software projects. Managers must continuously find a cost-benefit balance between the benefits of incurring in TD and the costs of its presence in a software project. Much attention has been given to TD related to coding issues, but other types of debt can also have impactful consequences on projects. Aims: This paper seeks to elaborate on the growing need to expand TD research to other areas of software development, by analyzing six elements related to TD management, namely: causes, effects, preventive practices, reasons for non-prevention, repayment practices, and reasons for non-repayment of TD. Method: We survey and analyze, quantitatively and qualitatively, the answers of 653 software industry practitioners on TD to investigate how the previously mentioned elements are related to coding and non-coding issues of the software development process. Results: Coding issues are commonly related to the investigated elements but, indeed, they are only part of the TD Management stage. Issues related to the project planning and management, human factors, knowledge, quality, process, requirements, verification, validation, and test, design, architecture, and the organization are also common sources of TD. We organize the results in a hump diagram and specialize it considering the point of view of practitioners that have used agile, hybrid, and traditional process models in their projects. Conclusion: The hump diagram, in combination with the detailed results, provides guidance on what to expect from the presence of TD and how to react to it considering several issues of software development. The results shed light on TD management of software elements, beyond source code related artifacts.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development

Software practitioners’ point of view on technical debt payment

Descripción:

Context: Technical debt (TD) payment refers to the activity of expending maintenance effort and resources to make up for the effects of previous technical compromises. Aims: To investigate if software practitioners have paid debt items off in their projects, the practices that have been used for paying off debt items, and the issues that hamper the implementation of these practices. Method: We analyze 653 responses collected by surveying practitioners from six countries about TD payment. Results: Practitioners have not paid off TD items in most cases. We identified 27 reasons for not paying off those items and 32 payment-related practices. Practices are mainly related to internal quality issues, while reasons for not paying TD off are mostly associated with planning and management issues. Lastly, we identified relationships between practices and between reasons, indicating that both can appear in combination. Conclusion: . We use different views to consolidate the set of information on TD payment, extending the conceptual model for TD and organizing the set of practices and reasons into a TD payment map. We believe that the model and the map can support practitioners in planning their TD payment strategy.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Journal of Systems and Software

Making Technical Debt Visible using Hybrid Sankey Diagrams: An Industrial Case Study

Descripción:

Context: Technical debt (TD) is a challenge for companies who develop software on which their critical operations depend. To properly manage TD, it is necessary to make it visible to the different stakeholders involved to support informed decisions. Objective: To validate a TD visualization approach based on hybrid Sankey diagrams that makes the TD visible by showing (a) technical and business aspects, and (b) the flow of value and TD impacts. This approach regards visualizations as boundary objects. Method: We performed a multi-case study in a large multi-industry state-owned company. The objective was to validate the effectiveness of such visualizations and to explore their possible uses in TD management. We first used a retrospective case study on a TD decision-making scenario and, later, visualization usage scenarios using focus groups to evaluate its usefulness. Results: The results suggest that the proposed approach: (a) provides a structured process for systematic TD visualization to help the decision-making process; (b) enables the communication at knowledge boundaries between stakeholders to make informed decisions; (c) uses flow representations that are important for assessing the impact in multiple functional areas; and (d) enables documentation and reuse. Conclusion: The study results suggest that TD decision-making events can benefit from using our TD visualizations based on hybrid Sankey diagrams as boundary objects to portray the impact of TD in business, services, and technical aspects.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering

Designing a Diagnosis Instrument to Determine e-Commerce Readiness for Micro and Small Enterprises in Rural Areas

Descripción:

Electronic commerce, as a new way of commercialization, is not only a business decision, since not all companies, nor all consumers in a region, are technologically prepared to adopt electronic commerce. To implement this type of trade, companies should carry out a diagnostic study, both to know if the technological resources are available internally, and to determine if the potential clients are also ready and willing to use the channel.

From this perspective, this work seeks to design an instrument that allows diagnosing the e-Commerce readiness of micro and small businesses, and their potential consumers in rural areas. An iterative process to create the diagnosis instruments was used.  It involved iterations of design and evaluation stages. Academic experts with extensive experience in instrument design carried out the first evaluation; the second iteration was evaluated in a pilot field study where 6 companies and 10 consumers from similar regions participated. Finally, in a case study in the canton of Río Cuarto de Alajuela, 29 companies and 261 consumers from the region participated in this study. The diagnosis highlights that most of these companies express that they are not technologically prepared to implement e-commerce, while most of the participating consumers indicated that they do feel technologically prepared to use these platforms.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: CLEI Electronic Journal

Smart Home Interface Design: An Information Architecture Approach

Descripción:

The usage of IoT devices is rapidly growing. Many users may want to add them to their homes to automate certain tasks, help themselves with information, or monitor their environment continuously. Quick IoT development is taking place on privacy, protocols, and other areas. However, the user interface area is being left out of the efforts. Mobile applications and websites are focused on technical requirements only. Research is not focused on the interaction of the user with the application, so standards and/or tendencies may not be utilized. This investigation aims to implement a smart house application interface focused on the user instead of the technical requirements. To start, the card sorting technique is used to group IoT devices into meaningful groups for users. Then, an interface prototype of a smart house application is created with the feedback obtained from the card sorting activity. Finally, the prototype is evaluated by using a standardized questionnaire.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence

And How Enjoyable? Converting a User Experience Evaluation Questionnaire into a Voice Conversation

Descripción:

Voice interfaces have gained popularity, driven by the proliferation of intelligent assistants and the development of natural language processing. Given their progress, they could be used to implement self-reported instruments such as standardized user experience (UX) evaluation questionnaires, particularly in the response capture mechanism. This novel use of voice interfaces would make sense if the evaluations using the voice mechanism did not differ significantly from the evaluations carried out with the traditional written questionnaire. In addition, given different possible implementations of the voice mechanism, it must be analyzed whether the user experience is affected by the format of the instrument used. This paper compares two implementations of the User Experience Questionnaire in which the capture mechanism is implemented by voice. Results show that in both implementations the evaluations retain their validity, and that the use of conversational patterns improves the user experience and increases the quality of the answers, which present fewer inconsistencies.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2023)

Translation and Validation of the AttrakDiff User Experience Questionnaire to Spanish

Descripción:

The AttrakDiff questionnaire is a widely used instrument for measuring User Experience. However, a Spanish version of the questionnaire has yet to be validated. This represents a significant limitation, given the importance of the Spanish-speaking community. This study aims to translate and validate AttrakDiff to Spanish. Several techniques for translation were used, and the results were joined in a translation proposal. The translated version was evaluated in two scenarios. First, an evaluation with 200 + participants to assess the translation proposal. Second, an evaluation of three systems to perform a factorial analysis and determine the correlations between questions of the same dimension. The results of this study will contribute to the advancement of UX research and practice in the Spanish-speaking context and provide a valuable tool for practitioners and researchers who work with Spanish-speaking users.

Tipo de publicación: Conference Paper

Publicado en: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing & Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2023)

Usability assessment of a greenhouse context-aware alert system for small-scale farmers

Descripción:

In the dynamic landscape of modern agriculture, integrating technology holds immense potential to enhance efficiency and productivity for small-scale farmers. This study presents a user-centric evaluation of an intelligent context-aware alert system, tailored for small-scale greenhouse farming. We employed standardized questionnaires, including the NASA Task Load Index and the User Experience Questionnaire, to assess the system's perceived utility, mental workload, and overall user experience. Our findings reveal the high perceived utility of the system among farmers. Farmers participating in the assessment indicated a strong intention to utilize the system for crop monitoring. Moreover, the system demonstrated a moderate mental workload, suggesting ease of use and potential acceptance by users. Our evaluation highlighted an excellent user experience, with scores ranging from very good to extremely good across all dimensions. Furthermore, user preferences for alert mechanisms underscored the importance of adaptable notifications, with voice and text alerts favored for comprehensive information dissemination. Light and voice alerts were preferred during manual tasks. This study highlights the significance of user-centered design in agricultural technology, offering insights to enhance the usability and the adoption of alert systems in small-scale farming environments. The positive reception of the system's utility and the moderate mental workload suggest that such technology can be readily adopted by farmers, thereby improving monitoring and management practices in greenhouse farming. The preference for adaptable alert mechanisms further emphasizes the need for flexible and context-sensitive solutions in agricultural technology.

Tipo de publicación: Journal Article

Publicado en: Front. Comput. Sci.