Commercial off-the-shelf software can save development time and money if you can find a package that meets your customer’s needs. The authors propose a model for matching COTS product features with user requirements.

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Software development remains mentally challenging despite the continual advancement of training, techniques, and tools. Because completely automating software development is currently impossible, it makes sense to seriously consider how tools can improve the mental activities of developers apart from automating them away. Such mental assistance can be called “cognitive support”. Understanding and developing cognitive support in software engineering tools is an important research issue but, unfortunately, at the moment our theoretical foundations for it are inadequately developed. Furthermore, much of the relevant research has occurred outside of the software engineering community, and is therefore not easily available to the researchers who typically develop software engineering tools. Tool evaluation, comparison, and development are consequently impaired. The present work introduces a theoretical framework intended to seed further systematic study of cognitive support in the field of software engineering tools. This theoretical framework, called RODS, imports ideas and methods from a field of cognitive science called “distributed cognition”. The crucial concept in RODS is that cognitive support can be understood and explained in terms of the computational advantages that are conferred when cognition is redistributed between software developer and their tools and environment. The name RODS, in fact, comes from the

cornelia.boldyreff,david.nutter,stephen.rank¡ We describe a software artefact repository that provides its contents with some awareness of their own creation. “Active ” artefacts are distinguished from their passive counterparts by their enriched meta-data model which reflects the work-flow process that created them, the actors responsible, the actions taken to change the artefact, and various other pieces of organisational knowledge. This enriched view of an artefact is intended to support re-use of both software and the expertise gained when creating the software. Unlike other organisational knowledge systems, the meta-data is intrinsically part of the artefact and may be populated automatically from sources including existing data-format specific information, user supplied data and records of communication. Such a system is of increased importance in the world of “virtual teams ” where transmission of vital organisational knowledge, at best difficult, is further constrained by the lack of direct contact between engineers and differing development cultures. 1

The development of Web applications requires a variety of tasks some of them involving aesthetic and cognitive aspects. As a consequence, there is a need of appropriate models and methodologies which allow the heterogeneus members of hypermedia projects to effectively communicate and guide them during the development process. In this chapter we describe some hypermedia models and methodologies proposed for the development of hypermedia applications.

An Ontological Sketch Model (OSM) is a structured but informal representation of the ontology --- the essential underlying structure --- of a system, forming a basis for usability assessment. Our primary aim is to develop an approach that is usable and that yields useful results. We present a preliminary ontology for the OSM, based on descriptions of the entities in the domain of application, actions that the user can perform, and relationships (such as "constrains" and "affects") between entities. Initial studies into the usefulness and usability of OSMs indicate that the approach is promising, but that further work is needed on developing more comprehensive training materials. Introduction Usability is a central concern in the design of interactive systems. However, the most extensively used approaches to incorporating user concerns in the design lifecycle (e.g. use of guidelines (Smith & Mosier, 1986) or heuristic evaluation (Nielsen, 1994)) are informal and heavily reliant on cra...

Many of the difficulties users experience when working with interactive systems arise from misfits between the user’s conceptualisation of the domain and device with which they are working and the conceptualisation implemented within those systems. We report an analytical technique called CASSM (Concept-based Analysis for Surface and Structural Misfits) in which such misfits can be formally represented to assist in understanding, describing and reasoning about them. CASSM draws on the framework of Cognitive Dimensions (CDs) in which many types of misfit were classified and presented descriptively, with illustrative examples. CASSM allows precise definitions of many of the CDs, expressed in terms of entities, attributes, actions and relationships. These definitions have been implemented in Cassata, a tool for automated analysis of misfits, which we introduce and describe in some detail.

Abstract: This paper presents a proven and reusable methodology (MiLE) for performing a costeffective usability evaluation of an e-learning web application. MiLE is a scenario-driven inspection technique which is based on the concepts of user profile, user goal, scenario, and usability attribute. Mitigating the drawbacks and merging the respective benefits of state-of-the-art methods for usability evaluation, MiLE is intended to be a helpful tool for project managers, instructional designers, and evaluators to carry out a learner-centered validation which can anticipate and analytically justify the usability breakdowns, thus providing organized indications for a focused redesign. Examples of the results that can be obtained using MiLE are showed through a real case study evaluation of a large e-learning corporate platform. 1.

This paper argues that an integrated approach to developing computer-based information systems will provide significant benefits to IS/IT professionals, end-users and improve the realization of the business benefits of IT investments. Having made this claim, the paper's central thesis -- that philosophical and conceputal issues must be addressed to provide such integration -- is presented. The philosophical issues identified are then addressed, resulting in a dialectic method for theory development. Using this method as a starting point, the literatures of information systems and several reference disciplines are drawn upon to construct a candidate integrated theory. The relationship between theory are practice is then briefly examined and the practical implications of the theory are considered.

This paper discusses a specification technique that is based on a traditional (entity-relationship) database model to model the architecture of complex interactive systems, in particular multimodal and multi-user user interfaces. User interface components and other software components ...