Abstract-A software product's acceptance depends on the user experience that it provides to its users. The software product must meet the user needs, and one way to understand those needs is through creation of Personas. The Personas technique allows describing the users' characteristics, goals and skills. The Empathy Map (EM) method can be used to describe personas. The EM's goal is to create a degree of empathy with the user so the product developing team starts to understand more deeply the users and become more aware of their real needs. To assess the EM effects on the creation of personas, we conducted a feasibility study with 20 subjects. Initially, the subjects learned how to describe personas in textual form. After that, they applied the EM to create personas. After using the EM, the subjects answered a questionnaire about their perceptions regarding the EM's ease of use and its usefulness. The results showed that majority of subjects considered EM useful and easy to create personas. Furthermore, this majority also said that they would use the EM for the creation of personas again.

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The development of systems with different features becomes increasingly challenging, given the actual context, implying on the search for new approaches for requirements elicitation. One of these approaches is design thinking (DT), a process of encouraging innovation used by designers, which presents itself as fundamental in the success of new products. This scenario motivates the importance of knowing DT concepts and their techniques, which can support requirements elicitation. In this context, the authors present DTA4RE (DT assistant for requirements elicitation), a tool that suggests DT techniques for requirements elicitation, which can be used by both students and professionals who would like to adopt DT in their projects. The DTA4RE is composed of a set of 27 techniques that could be suggested to the user through a recommendation questionnaire as well as an open repository with material to support the application of these techniques. Results from the authors’ two empirical studies with software engineering undergraduate and graduate students and industry professionals indicate that DTA4RE has helped in the selection of and in the learning of DT techniques when considering real problems. Most participants considered the questions from the recommendation questionnaire easy to answer, and the techniques suggested by the tool useful.

One of the most researched topics in Education 4.0 is the use of robotics in education. In this paper, we performed a case study related to skills developed for Education 4.0 through robotics activities, without involving competition. Students followed the process suggested by LEGO Education Maker and answered a self-assessment questionnaire about their developed skills and participated in a focus group. The teacher also reported her perceptions about the developed skills. We performed a qualitative analysis and the results indicated that robotics activities helped students to develop some skills, but it is still necessary to propose new approaches that will support students more in robotics activities.