Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society

Promoting Children's Participation in a Participatory Design Process in a Rural School: A new role needed?

Dyego Carlos Sales de Morais, Taciana Pontual Falcão, Patrícia Tedesco — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In Brazil, Education of Rural Areas is a model which started with social movements and became a public policy with the aim of improving participation of people of rural areas in making decisions about the model of their education. Schools in that context need to improve access to scientific and technological knowledge, but ensuring that previous values and knowledge of the students about agroecology and sustainability are considered. Even though some studies focus on digital inclusion and teacher training to use technologies in rural schools, very few address the development of digital technologies by students themselves, in this context. Participatory Design (PD) is a method often used to develop technological artifacts that could help address this gap. Of particular interest in the context of Education of Rural Areas, PD includes a valid preoccupation with power balance between designers and target users in decision-making. However, this power balance is still hard to attain, even more when design involves vulnerable groups, like children. In this sense, models and frameworks of children's participation can give a more solid theoretical framing for PD with children. In this paper, we present a theoretical model for supporting PD with children which was drawn from theories of children's participation, and refined through its application for qualitatively analysing a design process of digital educational artifacts with children from rural schools in Brazil. We highlight children’s autonomy in the creation of artifacts within a process managed by adults, which we interpret as a new role of children in PD which emerged from the educational context, that is children as artifact designers. The model proposed can be used for researchers and designers to plan or to analyse children's participation in PD interventions, helping them to employ methods that promote their autonomy and participation.

A Deep Learning Model for the Assessment of the Visual Aesthetics of Mobile User Interfaces

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Visual aesthetics is one of the first aspects that users experience when looking at graphical user interfaces (GUIs), contributing to the perceived usability and credibility of a software system. It can also be an essential success factor in contexts where graphical elements play an important role in attracting users, such as choosing a mobile app from an app store. Therefore, visual aesthetics assessments are crucial in interface design, but traditional methods, involving target user representatives assessing each GUI individually, are costly and time-consuming. In this context, machine learning models have been demonstrated to be promising in automating the assessment of GUIs of web-based software systems. Yet, solutions for the assessment of mobile GUIs using machine learning are still unknown. Here we introduce a deep learning model to assess the visual aesthetics of mobile Android applications designed with App Inventor. We used a supervised learning approach to train and compare models using three different architectures. The highest performing model, a Resnet50, achieved a mean squared error of .022. The assessments of new GUIs showed an excellent correlation with human ratings (ρ = .9), and the Bland Altman plot analysis revealed 95% agreement with their labels. These results indicate the model’s effectiveness in automating the visual aesthetics assessment of GUIs of mobile apps.

Building soft skills through a role-play based approach for Requirements Engineering remote education

Gretchen Torres de Macedo, Awdren Fontão, Bruno Gadelha — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Teaching Requirements Engineering requires adopting pedagogical techniques to develop students' technical skills for identifying users' needs and designing software solutions. Additionally, since requirements engineering involves group work, students must cultivate social skills such as communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. In remote learning scenarios, developing these skills becomes more challenging due to limited interaction. To address these needs, this paper proposes adapting a project-based collaborative learning approach for remote education that combines Role-Play and Send-a-Problem learning techniques. In this approach, students collaborate on software projects in teams, assuming two roles: customers and software developers. We evaluated this approach during two cycles of Action Research, conducted remotely in two disciplines of a Software Engineering undergraduate course involving advanced and beginner students, respectively. In the advanced students' class, we observed that the methodology enhanced communication skills, analytical reasoning, conflict resolution, and empathy. To validate these results, we conducted a new study with beginning students, achieving positive outcomes despite the need for more support in team communication. As our primary contribution, we provide guidelines for implementing this collaborative learning approach online.

Mapping RDEVSNL-based Definitions of Constrained Network Models to Routed DEVS Simulation Models

Clarisa Espertino, Maria Julia Blas, Silvio Gonnet — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Routed DEVS (RDEVS) formalism has been introduced recently to provide a reasonable formalization for the simulation of routing processes over Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) models. Due to its novelty, new software tools are required to improve the Modeling and Simulation (MS) tasks related to the RDEVS formalism. This paper presents the mapping between constrained network models obtained from textual specifications of routing processes and RDEVS simulation models implemented in Java. RDEVSNL context-free grammar (previously defined) is used to support the textual specification of a routing process as a constrained network model. Such grammar is based on a metamodel that defines the syntactical elements. This metamodel is used in this paper as a middleware that allows mapping constrained network model concepts with RDEVS simulation models. From such a constrained network model template, RDEVS Java implementations are obtained. The proposal is part of a work-in-progress intended to develop MS software tools for the RDEVS formalism using well-known abstractions to get the computational models through conceptual mapping. Using these tools, modelers can specify simulation models without needing to codify any routing implementation. The main benefits are i) reduction of implementation times and ii) satisfactory simulation model correctness regarding the RDEVS formalism.

Adopting Human-data Interaction Guidelines and Participatory Practices for Supporting Inexperienced Designers in Information Visualization Applications

Eliane Zambon Victorelli, Julio Cesar Dos Reis — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Nowadays, voluminous data support may influence decision-making. People with varied profiles need to interact with data to gain valuable insights. There is a need for software tools to support the understanding and management of information to favor Human-Data Interaction (HDI) with a richer user experience. This study explores the combination of HDI design guidelines and participatory approaches to improve user experience in data interaction. We defined a design process to support the activities and adapted participatory practices to facilitate HDI design. We conducted workshops with inexperienced designers developing information visualization applications for common-sense domains. They generated and analyzed several application prototypes. Results suggest that design guidelines help generate HDI-based prototypes with a good user experience.

Advancing Chatbot Conversations: A Review of Knowledge Update Approaches

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Conversational systems like chatbots have emerged as powerful tools for automating interactive tasks traditionally confined to human involvement. Fundamental to chatbot functionality is their knowledge base, the foundation of their reasoning processes. A pivotal challenge resides in chatbots' innate incapacity to seamlessly integrate changes within their knowledge base, thereby hindering their ability to provide real-time responses. The increasing literature attention dedicated to effective knowledge base updates, which we term content update, underscores the significance of this topic. This work provides an overview of content update methodologies in the context of conversational agents. We delve into the state-of-the-art approaches for natural language understanding, such as language models and alike, which are essential for turning data into knowledge. Additionally, we discuss turning point strategies and primary resources, such as deep learning, which are crucial for supporting language models. As our principal contribution, we review and discuss the core techniques underpinning information extraction as well as knowledge base representation and update in the context of conversational agents.

Technologies to Support Adaptable Game Design: A Systematic Mapping Study

Caio Carvalho, Luciano Teran, Marcelle Mota, Roberto Pereira — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Designing games accessible and inclusive to a broader audience requires considering social, technical, and cultural aspects that recognize the diversity of the target audience. One strategy to foster inclusion is through adaptability, allowing games to be adapted based on the needs of their users. In this context, a Systematic Mapping Study was conducted to identify and document existing studies focusing on the adaptation of digital games. Aiming at creating a structured and wide panorama of the scientific literature, this paper draws on the 5W2H Framework to answer the following research questions: (1) What game characteristics are being adapted? (2) Why is it being adapted? (3) For whom is it being adapted? (4) When does the adaptation occur? (5) Who is carrying out the adaptation? (6) What technologies are present? (7) Where are the technologies used? (8) How were the technologies evaluated? (9) What was evaluated? (10) Who evaluated? and (11) What theories and methodologies support the study? Beyond presenting the current state-of-the-art in digital game adaptation, the mapping study highlights a prevailing trend in research on adaptive systems. Notably, Patients and Health Professionals emerge as the primary target audience, although many studies did not specify their target audience. The results also indicate that the evaluation of technologies commonly employs Proof of Concept, Experiment, and Case Studies, with Patients and Students frequently considered as the target audience, albeit as secondary participants in the adaptation and evaluation processes. Finally, the findings reveal that most papers lack explicit grounding in a theoretical or methodological foundation, suggesting the need for further investigation.