Introducción: La pandemia por SARS-Cov-2 ha tenido un impacto negativo en múltiples aspectos de la vida humana, tanto en lo físico, psicológico, económico, social y cultural. Las afecciones de la calidad de vida están asociadas al confinamiento y la libertad de salir, de pasar tiempo con sus amigos o familiares, o de realizar actividades; por lo que se ven privados de la mayor parte de su interacción social. El objetivo de este presente artículo es brindar información sobre cómo afecta el confinamiento y aislamiento social por la pandemia a la calidad de vida y salud mental.

The complexity of a non-linear character that represents the act of teaching does not allow the teacher to resort to a single way of approaching the process of education in higher education. In other words, contemporary society filled with information technologies with a high degree of interactivity requires from teachers a greater understanding and search for different motivational forms and mechanisms for students. In this context, the work addresses the use of digital games as a tool for interaction between students and kinetic chemistry content, as an alternative methodology of the teaching and learning process. For this purpose, an interactive board (Edutable), logical management software and a mobile application were designed and built during the work. Then, based on the usability method, task success studies and positive usability experience were performed. The results of the evaluations showed that, in the users' perception, the board game complies with the playful and educational character, obtaining scores above 80% on the SUS (System Usability Scale), an evaluation model applied in the present work.

Conveying a positive User eXperience (UX) is essential for the success of any application, as it affects use a product. Nevertheless, novice software engineers may have difficulties in finding an appropriate solution for UX problems due to their lack of knowledge in interface design. User interface design patterns are well-working solutions to user problems that occur repeatedly which can help new developers solve interface problems. Although several studies investigated the effectiveness of applying design patterns in real development projects, few studies evaluate the difficulties that novice software engineers face when applying user interface design patterns for the first time. To understand how novice software engineers apply design patterns in the correction of UX problems, we carried out an empirical study with four small novice development teams redesigning mobile applications interfaces. We collected data on factors affecting the applicability of the employed design patterns, through questionnaires. Our results suggest that novice software engineers find this type of patterns useful but require means to find and select an adequate pattern to solve a problem.

Usabilidade é um dos atributos de qualidade de software que afetam a aceitação das aplicações desenvolvidas. No entanto, apesar do aumento do número de métodos de inspeção de usabilidade de aplicações Web, a maioria destes métodos só pode ser aplicada nas últimas etapas do processo de desenvolvimento, aumentando o custo de correção dos problemas identificados. Com o intuito de solucionar esta dificuldade, nesta pesquisa de mestrado foram propostas as tecnologias Design Usability Evaluation (DUE): (a) a técnica Web DUE, que é específica para inspeção de usabilidade de protótipos de baixa fidelidade (ou mockups) de aplicações Web; e (b) a ferramenta Mockup DUE que apoia sua aplicação. Além de apresentar como foram desenvolvidas estas tecnologias, este artigo apresenta a avaliação experimental das mesmas, sua evolução, e os resultados e benefícios decorrentes desta pesquisa.

Abstract-Usability is related to software quality, improving its ability to be understood, operated and attractive to users. We proposed the Design Usability Evaluation (DUE) technologies to allow identifying usability problems earlier in the development of Web applications, through the inspection of mockups. While we found that the DUE technique and tool were effective and efficient in the identification of usability problems, we saw the need to investigate their acceptance in practitioners' work environment. This paper reports the results from a study evaluating the acceptance of the DUE technologies from the point of view of software engineers. We asked questions based on the indicators from the Technology Acceptance Model and identified that a majority of the software engineers who participated in the study: (a) found the DUE technologies useful and easy to use for supporting the usability inspection process; and (b) would regularly use the DUE technologies for future inspections in their job. Nevertheless, the practitioners indicated that the technique should be refined in order to reduce the ambiguity and repetition of some of its items, while the tool should become more intuitive.