IFIP Technical Committee on Human Computer Interaction
	Related Workshops Keynote Speaker: Dr. Matsubara Scope Requirements for Participants Organizers Program Reference	Workshop on Software and Usability Engineering Cross-Pollination The First Step for Integrating Usability into Software Engineering Eighth IFIP Conference on Human Computer Interaction  Tokyo, JAPAN July 10, 2001 Call for participation and position papers still open.  Send an email to one of the organizers

• Call for participation and position papers still open. Send an email to one of the organizers
• It seems that there is some similarities between this workshop and W4 workshop on Usability throughout the Entire Systems Development Lifecycle.  After a discussion with the W4 workshop organizers, we have rescheduled our workshop on July 10, 2001. Participants of the two workshops are encouraged to attend both. In the form of discussion, this workshop addresses the following fundamental question: What should software and usability engineering community learn from each other to facilitate and encourage their convergence and integration? 
• We are happy to announce that Dr. Tomoo Matsubara will  talk during this workshop about cross-pollinating disciplines.   

Many others related workshops have been organized in different conferences including: 

• Integrating Human Factors in Use Cases and OO Methods. 12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. Lisbon Portugal, June 14-18, 1999. 
• Integrating Human Factors Analysis Techniques with Use Cases and OO Methods. 10th Usability Professionals Association 8th Annual Conference, June 29-July 2, 1999. 
• Workshop on Interactive System Design and Object Models. 12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. Lisbon Portugal, June 14-18, 1999. 

Several disciplines have always both influenced others and learnt from them as they emerged and evolved. Linguistics, for example, has had a major influence on the development of modern programming languages. Sometimes, this influence can be bi-directional, as in the case of artificial intelligence and computer science. Software and usability engineering are also affected by this mutual influence that is called “cross-pollination”. There are many examples of usability and software engineering cross-pollination. One example would be design patterns introduced in early 1970 by the architect Christopher Alexander, popularized by the software engineering community and recently adopted by user interface designers. Usability and software engineering cross-pollination has many positive consequences. It can provide relevant feedback on ways to improve both usability and software engineering techniques especially those for interactive systems design and evaluation. It can lead to better communication and collaboration between software and usability researchers and practitioners.

More fundamentally, we advance in this workshop that cross-pollination studies are the first step towards integrating user-centered design methods, tools, and principles more efficiently into software engineering lifecycle and organizations. In fact, during the past two decades, the HCI community has developed, sometimes independently from software engineering, various tools and techniques mainly for user interface engineering. Unfortunately, even if big software development organizations such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun as well as few enlightened practitioners have recognized their importance and/or have considered usability factors when developing their products, usability engineering techniques are still relatively unknown, under used, difficult to master, and essentially inaccessible to small and medium-sized software development companies, and to most software developers. The reasons for this lack are multiple including technical, organizational, economical, educational and social.

Basically however, the main reason is that usability engineering techniques and tools are not cost-effectively integrated into software engineering methods and processes. For example, although software developers have theoretical knowledge of user interface design guidelines or usability standards, they nearly never use them in practice. This is either because they do not know when or how to apply them in their context, or their customers do not request them. Moreover, although some software engineering standards adhere to have similar goals to those of usability, in practice they often seem very different. This is because they are formulated using different terminology, notations and languages. An example of this would be the IEEE standards on software quality and the ISO collection on quality in use [See IEEE-1061 Standard on Software Quality Metric Methodology and ISO/IEC-9126 Standard on Quality Characteristics and Guidelines for their Use].

Cross-pollination can be achieved and can assist the integration of usability concerns into software engineering at different levels:

• Creating a sound set of principles and techniques for both software and usability engineering. For example, experiments where design patterns have strongly influenced the traditional user interface design approach.
• Guiding the software's and usability engineering's evolution, as two disciplines with converging needs following a similar path.
• Sharing common principles so both move in the same direction, thus exchanging results and growing.
• Unifying lifecycle models of the different communities.

• Successful and unsuccessful experiences related to the integration of usability into the software engineering lifecycle and small and medium-sized organizations including a comparison of the mind-set or "world view" of the two camps, and their respective assumptions and priorities  communication and collaboration techniques that usability specialists can use when working software development teams.
• Future research framework for bridging the current gap between the software and usability communities

Potential participants (maximum of 10) will be required to send an email (or a short position) detailing:

• Your areas of interest and experience (especially as they relate to this workshop).
• Any other relevant issues that you would like to bring to the table for general discussion.

For further information contact one of the organizers: