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Many software companies face challenges in their work with User eXperience (UX) and how to integrate UX practices into existing development processes. A better understanding of these challenges can help researchers and practitioners better address them. Existing research does not analyse UX challenges in relation to other software quality character...
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User eXperience (UX) is a key factor in the success of software systems. Many software companies face challenges in their work with UX. Existing research does not analyze UX practices and challenges in relation to other software quality characteristics or, in particular, in relation to usability. A better understanding of these challenges can help...
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... For instance, previous research has pointed to the fact that, in agile system development processes, feedback is often informal, and that lack of time leads to the (even more) limited use of user-centred design methods [17,18]. Some researchers are therefore working on integrating user-centred design methods in agile development [16,19,20], while others work towards a new software development methodology that includes more time for user involvement, e.g. [21]. ...
... This problem is closely connected to agile software development processes being dominant, as speed and agility are core values in the agile development model. We hence need to work more with the integration of user centred design methods in agile development [16,19,20], or work towards a software development methodology where there is more time for user involvement, such as for example [21], and which can be used in health care. Interestingly, participants did not note any breakdown in relation to meetings between IT department and nurse representatives. ...
Often, Health Information Technology (HIT) in hospitals consists of off the shelf systems that are configured and implemented by IT department workers. This means that these employees have a significant impact of the usability of HIT systems. Nonetheless, we currently do not know how IT department workers work. This prevents us from formulating educated recommendations aimed at improving HIT usability, known to be poor, especially from nurses’ perspective. In this paper, we hence present the results from an interview study, shedding light on 1) the communication channels that exist between nurses and IT department at a large public hospital in Sweden, and 2) the problems that undermine system-related communication between these two groups. Our findings stress the need for successful two-way communication between nurses and IT department in order to improve the usability of HIT in use.
... Besides this fact, software projects in themselves are considered a form of complex adaptive systems (Nguyen-Duc et al., 2015). In addition, there is also a growing need to understand the relation- ship between product differentiators such as quality, user experience and the challenges in integrating it with the software development process (Kashfi et al., 2016), owing to a rapid increase in competition in most markets. The field of user experience is in itself considered to be complex and subjective, with interrelated elements which are hard to separate (Kashfi et al., 2016). ...
... In addition, there is also a growing need to understand the relation- ship between product differentiators such as quality, user experience and the challenges in integrating it with the software development process (Kashfi et al., 2016), owing to a rapid increase in competition in most markets. The field of user experience is in itself considered to be complex and subjective, with interrelated elements which are hard to separate (Kashfi et al., 2016). It has been acknowledged that one of the factors affecting usability is the dynamics based on user and system interaction (Goodwin, 1987). ...
Software startups are increasingly under high pressure to deliver successful products to survive and thrive in the modern highly competitive technology market. Larger organizations with deep pockets can replicate the same business ideas used by startups with relative ease. So how does the average startup stand a chance at succeeding at this seemingly David vs. Goliath contest? This chapter looks at the available literature and identifies factors that can affect the success of software development startups. Using causal loop constructs from the field of system dynamics, the interactions among the various identified factors are visualized to reveal the dynamics of the system. The result is as a three-dimensional view of success factors in form of time, capital, and (product) differentiation. The chapter also explores the cornerstones in the context of the product and business dimensions of software startups. This research acts as groundwork for analyzing the workings of software startups and sets the stage for a more holistic study upon which further research can be carried out.
... To support practitioners in their UX integration efforts, various empirical studies report on challenges and success factors for usability and UX integration [22,33,36,41,42,43,52]. These studies, however, often do not investigate or reflect on the transition companies go through from only developing Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to also considering usability and more recently UX Similarly, these studies do not investigate how these challenges and success factors or their influence on integration change over time. ...
Current studies on User eXperience (UX) integration often do not investigate or reflect on the transition companies go through from only developing Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to also considering usability and more recently UX. Understanding this transition provides a more holistic and realistic picture of integration and can be a rich source of knowledge for improving UX integration in the software industry. Applying case study and grounded theory research we show that UX integration, like other organizational changes, can include a mixture of planned and emergent initiatives, and is influenced by various intertwined events; not only those that reside inside an organization but also those external to it. We also show that different decisions that are made outside the authority of UX practitioners have an inevitable impact on enabling or prohibiting UX integration. In addition, we found that for a successful integration, practitioners need to explicitly consider and address the characteristics of UX, otherwise, the integration efforts may have a lopsided focus on the pragmatic aspect of UX, consequently, leave the hedonic aspect unaddressed. Based on our findings, we present four lessons learned and five pitfalls companies should consider to go beyond GUI design and usability to also address UX.
... Second, companies should concentrate on the interplay between UX experts, developers and other stakeholders during the actual design and development. We present our early results on stakeholder involvement that are found through empirical studies in a number of software development companies (for more details, see [12,13]). ...
... In addition, UX principles (e.g. valuing essential human needs) should become an integral part of the organizational culture [2,13,21]. We refer to the process of integrating UX principles and practices into development processes and organizations as UX integration. UX integration is a socio-technical endeavor [2]: it requires organizational (e.g. ...
... introducing new roles, adjusting business strategies) as well as technical changes (modifying development processes, introducing new tools and methods). UX integration is known to be difficult and faced with various challenges [2,13]. Still, practitioners have limited access to actionable guidelines on UX integration [3]. ...
Stakeholder involvement is one of the major success factors in integrating user experience (UX) practices into software development processes and organizations. It is also a necessity for agile software development. However, practitioners still have limited access to guidelines on successful involvement of UX stakeholders in agile settings. Moreover, agile UX literature does not well address the specific characteristics of UX and it does not clearly differentiate between UX and usability work. This paper presents two guidelines for supporting stakeholder involvement in both UX integration and the daily UX work. In particular, we focus on the special characteristics of UX: being dynamic, subjective, holistic, and context-dependent. The guidelines clarify practical implications of these characteristics for practitioners. In addition, they can help researchers in addressing these characteristics better in agile UX research.
... Nevertheless, studies show that software companies often face various challenges in their work with UX. Among other things, researchers relate these challenges to practitioners' low knowledge and awareness of UX and low industrial impact of UX theories [6,7]. This can be addressed at least partially by developing suitable practical UX models [1,7]. ...
... Among other things, researchers relate these challenges to practitioners' low knowledge and awareness of UX and low industrial impact of UX theories [6,7]. This can be addressed at least partially by developing suitable practical UX models [1,7]. Models can be formal (e.g., analytical) or informal (e.g., conceptual). ...
... Current software quality and UX models are evidently not practical or actionable [7,6,16]. Therefore, we saw a need for a practical model that can summarize and clarify the current UX models and connect them to software quality models. ...
User eXperience (UX) is becoming increasingly important for success of software products. Yet, many companies still face various challenges in their work with UX. Part of these challenges relate to inadequate knowledge and awareness of UX and that current UX models are commonly not practical nor well integrated into existing Software Engineering (SE) models and concepts. Therefore, we present a conceptual UX-aware model of requirements for software development practitioners. This layered model shows the interrelation between UX and functional and quality requirements. The model is developed based on current models of UX and software quality characteristics. Through the model we highlight the main differences between various requirement types in particular essentially subjective and accidentally subjective quality requirements. We also present the result of an initial validation of the model through interviews with 12 practitioners and researchers. Our results show that the model can raise practitioners' knowledge and awareness of UX in particular in relation to requirement and testing activities. It can also facilitate UX-related communication among stakeholders with different backgrounds.
The objective of this study is to validate the use of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to segment and classify web elements. To achieve this, a dataset of 2200 images was created through screenshots of real web pages, with 10 distinct classes to represent the most common web elements. The contributions of this study encompass the validation of classification-only Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with the support of Class Activation Mapping (CAM), a weakly-supervised semantic segmentation technique that requires no in-image annotation, significantly simplifying the dataset creation process when compared to traditional segmentation models. Multiple networks with distinct hyper-parameter combinations were cross-validated with 10 folds, with a final accuracy rating of 95.71% on the best-performing model. Although the final CNN showed promising results, further improvements on the dataset and architecture are still required for it to be employed as the centerpiece of a real-time dynamic web page building solution, with clear improvements needed on the clarity of the segmentation heatmap.
Software startups are increasingly under high pressure to deliver successful products to survive and thrive in the modern highly competitive technology market. Larger organizations with deep pockets can replicate the same business ideas used by startups with relative ease. So how does the average startup stand a chance at succeeding at this seemingly David vs. Goliath contest? This article looks at the available literature and identifies such factors that can affect the success of software development startups. Using causal loop constructs from the field of system dynamics, the interactions among the various identified factors are visualised to reveal the dynamics of the system. The result is as a three-dimensional view of success factors in form of time, capital and (product) differentiation. The modelled system is then simulated, and the resultant trend is reviewed and interpreted. This research acts as ground work for analysing the workings of software development startups and sets the stage for a more holistic study of the area, upon which further research can be carried out.
