Software engineering for 'social good': integrating action research, participatory design, and agile development

Ferrario, Maria Angela; Simm, Will; Newman, Peter; Forshaw, Stephen; Whittle, Jon

doi:10.1145/2591062.2591121

Cited by 64 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Additionally, when participants in Code for Ireland reflected on their processes, they identified issues with engaging newcomers and non-technically oriented participants. In these matters, lessons could be learned from the engagement aspects of academically-led co-creation and co-design approaches [7,8,32], innovation accelerators [33], and open source software communities [11].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

Knutas

Palacin

Maccani

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS)

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Civic grassroots have proven their ability to create useful and scalable software that addresses pressing social needs. Although software engineering plays a fundamental role in the process of creating civic technology, academic literature that analyses the software development processes of civic tech grassroots is scarce. This paper aims to advance the understanding of how civic grassroots tackle the different activities in their software development processes. In this study, we followed the formation of two projects in a civic tech group (Code for Ireland) seeking to understand how their development processes evolved over time, and how the group carried out their work in creating new technology. Our preliminary findings show that such groups are capable of setting up systematic software engineering processes that address software specification, development, validation, and evolution. While they were able to deliver software according to self-specified quality standards, the group has challenges in requirements specification, stakeholder engagement, and reorienting from development to product delivery. Software engineering methods and tools can effectively support the future of civic technologies and potentially improve their management, quality, and durability.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While extant literature seeks to understand the effect of technology on people [3,6] and to orchestrate civic engagement Figure 1. Palette of Public Participation in Civic Technology adapted from [4] [7,8], research in the context of software engineering practices in civic technologies remains under-explored [9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

Knutas

Palacin

Maccani

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society (ICSE-SEIS)

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“…We follow Speedplay [9], an interdisciplinary management approach for the rapid prototyping of digital tools with a social innovation remit. This paper concentrates on the Speedplay Build Step, where a prototype is built in collaboration with a core user group engaged as equal partners, through an agile process where we deliver working software from the outset and capture participant feedback on the system developed as build iterations progress.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tiree Energy Pulse

Simm

Ferrario

Friday

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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In many parts of the world, the electricity supply industry makes the task of dealing with unpredictable spikes and dips in production and demand invisible to consumers, maintaining a seemingly unlimited supply. A future increase in reliance on time-variable renewable sources of electricity may lead to greater fluctuations in supply. We engaged remote islanders as equal partners in a research project that investigated through technology-mediated enquiry the topic of synchronising energy consumption with supply, and together built a prototype renewable energy forecast display. A number of participants described a change in their practices, saving high energy tasks for times when local renewable energy was expected to be available, despite having no financial incentive to do so. The main contributions of this paper are in: 1) the results of co-development sessions exploring systems supporting synchronising consumption with supply and 2) the findings arising from the deployment of the prototype.

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“…Speedplay [10] is a software project management framework that integrates action research, participatory design and agile development, to approach relatively small projects targeting specific community needs. It is particularly targeted at multi-disciplinary projects seeking social innovation, where the community, researchers and engineers work actively together.…”

Section: Engineering For Vulnerable Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From the perspective of participant involvement [21], our approach qualifies as research-initiated, with shared decisions with the industry partner, and nursing homes actors being consulted and informed. This puts us halfway between traditional and more participatory approaches [10]. Incorporating a human-centered approach proved to be successful in identifying needs and materialising technology concepts, but limited in testing more forward thinking features.…”

Section: Issues and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agile development for vulnerable populations

Báez

Casati

2018

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

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In this paper we draw attention to the challenges of managing software projects for vulnerable populations, i.e., people potentially exposed to harm or not capable of protecting their own interests. The focus on human aspects, and particularly, the inclusion of humancentered approaches, has been a popular topic in the software engineering community. We argue, however, that current literature provides little understanding and guidance on how to approach these type of scenarios. Here, we shed some light on the topic by reporting on our experiences in developing innovative solutions for the residential care scenario, outlining potential issues and recommendations. KEYWORDSAgile development, human-centered design, vulnerable populations ACM Reference Format:

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Software engineering for 'social good': integrating action research, participatory design, and agile development

Cited by 64 publications

References 13 publications

Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

Tiree Energy Pulse

Agile development for vulnerable populations

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