“The design is right and the right design” – How to measure and theorize “right” in HCI and Software Engineering?
Abstract: In this keynote, we will show how to improve the practices of interactive software and user interfaces design, by applying lessons from various fields of design to the co-creation of interactive software products, systems and services. The goal is to create software that works – really works, meaning we can measure it works, usable, profitable yet secure, resilient and sustainable – in being appropriate and effective for people who live in the world that the software creates. Beyond the “cook-books of the HCI gurus” and the large diversity of HCI design patterns, guidelines and principles, the talk will highlight the the importance of the qualities, properties and quantities that quantify the quality of software systems from the human perspective. How to measure the “right”, “the old user friendly”, the past usability, the today quality of user experience and the tomorrow sustainability. How to ground measures of HCI in the general theory of software quality and measurement. What we can learn from the successful stories and history of measurement in many fields: medical sciences, engineering, and even from natural and hearth sciences?
Ahmed Seffah, Professor of Human-centric Software Engineering
Ahmed Seffah is a professor of human-centric software engineering and HCI at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. Previously, he was a professor and Concordia research chair on human-centered software engineering at Concordia University as well a visiting professor in more than 10 universities and research Centre including IBM, University of Lausanne, Daimler Chrysler and the Computer research institute of Montreal. Professor Seffah co-authored five books, the last one on the “Patterns of HCI Design Patterns and the HCI Design of Patterns”. His main research is to understanding those HCI and interactive software systems design, software usability, user-centric engineering, UX design practices and all similar ones within the wider software and systems engineering processes. Most visible contributions of his work are on the gaps and bridges between design science practices and software engineering methodologies such as agile, model-driven and service-oriented while building a theories of human-centric software engineering.