SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

International Workshop on the Interplay between Usability Evaluation
and Software Development (I-USED 2008)
(Pisa, Italy, September 24th, 2008)
http://www.dsic.upv.es/workshops/i-used

In conjunction with the 2nd Conference on Human-Centred Software  
Engineering (HCSE 2008)
Pisa, Italy, September 25-26, 2008.



MOTIVATION

Software development is highly challenging. Despite many significant  
successes, several
software development projects fail completely or produce software with  
serious limitations,
including (1) lack of usefulness, i.e. the system does not adequately  
support the core
tasks of the user, (2) unsuitable designs of user interactions and  
interfaces, (3) lack
of productivity gains or even reduced productivity despite heavy  
investments in information.

Broadly speaking, two approaches have been taken to address these  
limitations. The first
approach is to employ evaluation activities in a software development  
project in order to
determine and improve the usability of the software, i.e. the  
effectiveness, efficiency
and satisfaction with which users achieve their goals. To help  
software developersí work
with usability within this approach, more than 20 years of research in  
Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI) has created and compared techniques for evaluating  
usability. The second
approach is based on the significant advances in techniques and  
methodologies for user
interface design that have been achieved in the last decades. In  
particular, researchers
in user interface design have worked on improving the usefulness of  
information technology
by focusing on a deeper understanding on how to extract and understand  
user needs.
Their results today constitute the areas of participatory design and  
user-centered design.
In addition, the Software Engineering (SE) community has recognized  
that usability does
not only affect the design of user interfaces but the software system  
development as a
whole. In particular, efforts are focused on explaining the  
implications of usability
for requirements gathering, software architecture design, and the  
selection of
software components.

However, the interplay between these two fields, and between the  
activities they advocate
to be undertaken in software development, have been limited.  
Integrating usability evaluation
at relevant points in software development (and in particular to the  
user interface design)
with successful and to-the-point results has proved difficult. In  
addition, research in
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Software Engineering (SE) has  
been done mainly
independently of each other with no in substantial exchange of results  
and sparse efforts to
combine the techniques of the two approaches. Larry Constantine, a  
prominent software
development researcher, and his colleagues express it this way:  
ìIntegrating usability into
the software development process is not easy or obviousî (Juristo et  
al. 2001, p. 21).


THEME AND GOALS

The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and  
practitioners from the HCI
and SE fields to determine the state-of-the-art in the interplay  
between usability evaluation
and software development and to generate ideas for new and improved  
relations between these
activities. The aim is to base the determination of the current state  
on empirical studies.
Presentations of new ideas on how to improve the interplay between HCI  
& SE to the design of
usable software systems should also be based on empirical studies.  
Within this focus, topics
of discussion include, but are not limited to:

- Which artifacts of software development are useful as the basis for  
usability evaluations?
- How do the specific artifacts obtained during software development  
influence the
techniques that are relevant for the usability evaluation?
- In which forms are the results of usability evaluations supplied  
back into software
development (including the UI design)?
- What are the characteristics of usability evaluation results that  
are needed in software
development?
- Do existing usability evaluation methods deliver the results that  
are needed in user
interface design?
- How can usability evaluation be integrated more directly in user  
interface design?
- How can usability evaluation methods be applied in emerging  
techniques for user
interface design?
- How can usability evaluation methods be integrated to novel  
approaches for software
development (e.g., model-driven development, web development, agile  
development).


PARTICIPANTS

Participants are accepted on the basis of their submitted papers. We  
aim at 15 with a maximum
of 20 participants. The intended audience is primarily software  
engineering and human-computer
interaction researchers who are working with the theme. The workshop  
should also be relevant for
practitioners who have experiences with and ideas for improving the  
interplay between HCI and SE.


RELEVANCE TO THE FIELD

The main contribution is the determination of state-of-the-art and the  
identification of areas
for improvement and further research. The HCI field includes a rich  
variety of techniques for
either usability evaluation or user interface design. But there are  
very few methodological
guidelines for the interplay between these key activities; and more  
important, there are few
guidelines on how to properly integrate these two activities in a  
software development process.


IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Deadline:        20th July 2008
Acceptance Notification:    15th August 2008
Camera-ready Deadline:      1st September 2008
Workshop:                   24th September 2008


SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Authors of papers must submit their papers by JULY 20. Papers should  
be submitted in PDF-format
to the workshop reviewing system at (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iused2008 
).
Participants will be notified before AUGUST 15 and subsequently the  
papers will be made
available to the workshop participants. Papers must describe empirical  
studies of the
interplay between usability evaluation and software development.

Two types of submissions are solicited: full papers with up to 6 pages  
describing substantial,
completed work, and position papers with 2 pages describing either  
results that can be
concisely reported or work in progress. Submissions must be clearly  
marked as one of
these two types.

Both types of papers should be formatted according to the ACM template  
for proceedings available
at (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates). All  
papers will be peer reviewed
by members of the program committee with regard to the relevance and  
originality of the work
and their ability to generate discussions among the participants of  
the workshop.

The workshop proceedings will be published on-line as part of the CEUR  
Workshop
proceedings series.


ACTIVITIED PLANNED AND OUTCOMES

Tentatively, the Workshop-programme (full day) is as follows:

- Introduction to workshop.
- A keynote speech by a recognized researcher in the field.
- Presentation of selected papers followed by limited discussion.
- The organization of the workshop participants around thematic groups.
- Reports from the groups and plenary discussion of main issues.
- Discussion of how to continue the work.

The outcome of the workshop is a collection of papers as well as a  
presentation and discussion
of the validity and significance of these papers. We plan to contact  
key HCI/SE journals
about their willingness to produce a special issue on the interplay  
between usability
evaluation and software development based on the best papers from the  
workshop.


WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS

Silvia Abrahao, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain.
Jan Stage, Aalborg University, Denmark.
Kasper Hornbæk, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Natalia Juristo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.
Effie L-C Law, ETH Zürich, Switzerland & University of Leicester, UK.


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Scott Ambler, IBM Rational
Nigel Bevan, Professional Usability Services, UK
Cristina Cachero, Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Tiziana Catarci, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Italy
Xavier Ferre, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Maria Francesca Costabile, Universita' di Bari, Italy
Morten Hertzum, Roskilde University, Denmark
Emilio Insfran, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Nuno Jardim Nunes, University of Madeira, Portugal
Maristella Matera, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Emilia Mendes, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Philippe Palanque, IRIT, France
Fabio Paternò, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Isidro Ramos, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain
Ahmed Seffah, Université Concordia, Montreal, Canada
Jean Vanderdonckt, Université catolique de Louvain, Belgium


SPONSORS

The workshop is mainly sponsored by the European COST Action n°294  
MAUSE (Towards the Maturation
of IT Usability Evaluation - www.cost294.org). Several members of this  
COST action are members
of the workshop Program Committee and guarantee a large geographical  
and topical coverage
of the workshop.


CONTACT

The Workshop co-chairs can be contacted by email at the address [log in to unmask]

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