Collaborative design of software applications: the role of users

Abstract

Drawing on a 1-year application design, implementation and evaluation experience, this paper examines how engaging users in the early design phases of a software application is tightly bound to the success of that application in use. Through the comparison between two different approaches to collaborative application design (namely, user-centered vs participatory), we reveal how sensitivity to the role that users may play during that collaborative practice rebounds to a good level of user satisfaction during the evaluation process. Our paper also contributes to conversations and reflections on the differences between those two design approaches, while providing evidences that the participatory approach may better sensitize designers to issues of users' satisfaction. We finally offer our study as a resource and a methodology for recognizing and understanding the role of active users during a process of development of a software application.

A participatory framework proposal for guiding researchers through an educational mobile app development

“…Our contribution lies in the fact that the development of educational solutions should engage the end-users as much as possible. As User Experience designers have been doing all over the years (Hartson and Pyla 2019;Mirri, Roccetti, and Salomoni 2018;Norman 2013), we support the idea that educational researchers should find ways to actively involve the educational solutions' end-users (students, teachers, parents ...), instead of grounding educational solutions' approaches only in literature reviews or their research rationales. Arising from this, we also support the idea that educational researchers, developers and end-users must work together from the solution design concept to its deployment.…”

“…Arising from this, we also support the idea that educational researchers, developers and end-users must work together from the solution design concept to its deployment. This could represent an opportunity to enhance the solutions' development based on systematic processes of co-reflection and adjustments, according to the end-users' needs, expectations and ideas (Hartson and Pyla 2019;Mirri, Roccetti, and Salomoni 2018;Norman 2013). Furthermore, we support the idea that this co-design approach could represent an opportunity to develop and share new and grounded scientific knowledge.…”

“…For that, we defined several interactions and iterations with different participants, namely, students, teachers and experts from different knowledge fields. Nowadays, end-users' (and other stakeholders') participation within technological solutions design is broadly accepted and implemented (Hamzah 2018;Hartson and Pyla 2019;Mirri, Roccetti, and Salomoni 2018;Robertson and Simonsen 2012). As Simonsen and Hertzum (2012, p. 10) suggested, participatory design 'has a lot to offer', for instance, by helping educational researchers and developers to clarify needs and goals, define suitable learning approaches and design learning environments tailored to the students' needs.…”

Uma Abordagem Baseada em Perfil e Recomendação para Relatar Problemas de Infraestrutura no contexto de Smart Campus

“…Nesses intelligent environments, o papel dos usuários está se tornando cada vez mais relevante [Mirri et al 2018], passando de beneficiários passivos de serviços para participantes ativos [Prandi et al 2018], exploradores de dados e colaboradores, também por meio de suas atividades em mídia social [Tse et al 2016]. Esteé o contexto em que o conceito de dados hiperlocais surgiu como crucial para capacitar uma comunidade.…”

Designing human-centric software artifacts with future users: a case study

“…In particular, in the last decades, the role of users has become increasingly relevant in the participative software design processes, with the use of specific methodologies, such as: (i) User-Centered Design (UCD) [4][5][6], and (ii) co-design [7][8][9], for example. These methods differ in how users are involved in the design process; the main difference being that the UCD methodology takes into consideration users' needs under the form of requirements to be passed down to designers and developers [10,11], while, at the other end of the spectrum, in a co-design process users play an active role in all the software project phases, even initially, by proposing ideas and providing suggestions under different forms [2,12].…”