Agneta Nilsson

Rashidah Kasauli, Eric Knauss, Benjamin Kanagwa et al.

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.

Pariya Kashfi, Robert Feldt, Agneta Nilsson et al.

Although integrating UX practices into software development processes is a type of Software Process Improvement (SPI) activity, this has not yet been taken into account in UX publications. In this study, we approach UX integration in a software development company in Sweden from a SPI perspective. Following the guidelines in SPI literature, we performed a retrospective meeting at the company to reflect on their decade of SPI activities for enhancing UX integration. The aim of the meeting was to reflect on, learn from, and coordinate various activities spanned across various organizational units and projects. We therefore supported the meeting by a pre- generated timeline of the main activities in the organization that is different from common project retrospective meetings in SPI. This approach is a refinement of a similar approach that is used in Agile projects, and is shown to improve effectiveness of, and decrease memory bias. We hypothesized that this method can be useful in the context of UX integration, and in this broader scope. To evaluate the method we gathered practitioners' view through a questionnaire. The findings showed our hypothesis to be plausible. Here, we present that UX integration research and practice can benefit from the SPI body of knowledge; We also show that such cross-section evidence-based timeline retrospective meetings are useful for UX integration, and in a larger scale than one project, especially for identifying and reflecting on 'organizational issues'. This approach also provides a cross- section longitudinal overview of the SPI activities that cannot easily be gained in other common SPI learning approaches.

Pariya Kashfi, Agneta Nilsson, Robert Feldt

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 characteristics including usability. In this empirical study, we have interviewed 17 practitioners from eight software development companies. Their responses are coded and analysed with thematic analysis. We report 11 challenges that practitioners face in their work with UX. Some of these challenges partly overlap with those reported in existing literature about usability or software quality characteristics. In contrast to these overlaps, the participants of our study either view many of the challenges unique to UX, or more severe than for usability or other quality characteristics. Although at a superficial level challenges with UX and other quality characteristics overlap, we differentiate these challenges at a deeper level through two main aspects of UX: subjectivity and emergent nature. In particular, we identify at least five issues that are essential to the very nature of UX, and add at least seven extra difficulties to the work of practitioners. These difficulties can explain why practitioners perceive the challenges to be more severe than for other quality characteristics. Our findings can be useful for researchers in identifying industrially relevant research areas and for practitioners to learn from empirically investigated challenges and base their improvement efforts on such knowledge. Investigating the overlaps can help finding research areas not only for enhancing practice of UX but also software quality in general. It also makes it easier for practitioners to spot, better understand as well as find mitigation strategies for UX challenges.

Pariya Kashfi, Robert Feldt, Agneta Nilsson et al.

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.