In this paper we describe how an executable model of interactive software can be exploited to allow programmers or specifiers to express properties that will be automatically checked on the components they create or reuse. The djnn framework relies on a theoretical model of interactive software in which applications are described in their totality as hierarchies of interactive components, with no additional code. This includes high level components, but also the graphics, behaviors, computations and data manipulations that constitute them. Because of this, the structure of the application tree provides significant insights in the nature and behavior of components. Pattern recognition systems can then be used to express and check simple properties, such as the external signature of a component, its internal flows of control, or even the continued visibility of a component on a display. This provides programmers with solutions for checking their components, ensuring non-regression, or working in a contract-oriented fashion with other UI development stakeholders.

In this work, we seek to understand the needs of interaction designers involved in industrial system engineering processes. While current research offers a set of methods and tools for them, we believe that more empirical user studies focusing on designers are needed, in particular to support how model-based activity analysis may inform their decisions. Our designers' need analysis is conducted through participatory design and contextual inquiry, and applied through a real use-case project: a distributed tactile tool for airborne maritime surveillance. Thanks to this study, we report on our insights on the usability problems and needs related in particular to scenario-based modeling, model-based design rationales and design-based model refinement.Interactive System Design; System Engineering Empirical Studies; Model-based Engineering; Participatory Design; Scenario-based Design; Design Rationales.

With increasingly complex systems, relying on systems engineering as an interdisciplinary method to manage engineering processes is essential for companies. However, too many projects still fail and industrial groups have argued that these failures may be related to the managerial techniques used. Indeed organizational processes are more or less specifically mentioned in System Engineering standards but in practice project managers tend to rely more on their own standards which sometime set forth practices not in line with those of the System Engineering domain, hence the reported discrepancies which very often lead to project failure. Thus to improve the companies' competitiveness when developing new products, cooperation between processes related to system development and project management is key to achieve performance and success. This paper presents arguments which tend to support this theory and details two ongoing projects that aim at integrating both domains.