This book establishes a dialog between the Human-Computer Interaction community and Software Engineering practitioners and researchers on the results and lessons learned associated with applying software development practices in the field of user interface.

Activity theory is a way of describing and characterizing the structure of human - tivity of all kinds. First introduced by Russian psychologists Rubinshtein, Leontiev, and Vigotsky in the early part of the last century, activity theory has more recently gained increasing attention among interaction designers and others in the hum- computer interaction and usability communities (see, for example, Gay and H- brooke, 2004). Interest was given a signi?cant boost when Donald Norman suggested activity-theory and activity-centered design as antidotes to some of the putative ills of human-centered design (Norman, 2005). Norman, who has been credited with coining the phrase user-centered design, suggested that too much attention focused on human users may be harmful, that to design better tools designers need to focus not so much on users as on the activities in which users are engaged and the tasks they seek to perform within those activities. Although many researchers and practitioners claim to have used or been in?uenced by activity theory in their work (see, for example, Nardi, 1996), it is often dif?cult to trace precisely where or how the results have actually been shaped by activity theory. Inmanycases, evendetailedcasestudiesreportresultsthatseemonlydistantlyrelated, if at all, to the use of activity theory. Contributing to the lack of precise and traceable impact is that activity theory, - spite its name, is not truly a formal and proper theory.

From the reviews:

"This book is comprised of four sections and 17 chapters. The physical structure of the book is quite pleasing . The editors have clearly thought about their chapter organization. This publication is a testament to the importance of the convergence of software engineering and HCI. this is a call to practitioners to take a larger role in creating better solutions, through a more 'whole brain' approach to a refined and sophisticated development model." (Brian D. Goodman, ACM Computing Reviews, October, 2009)

Klappentext

The fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Software Engineering (SE) have evolved almost independently from each other until the last two decades, when it became obvious that an integrated perspective would benefit the development of interactive software applications as considered in both disciplines. The chapters in this book are written by prominent researchers and practitioners who bring to light the major issues and challenges posed by this integration, and offer a variety of solutions in order to address the integration of HCI and SE, including:

Extensions of software development methodologies to accomodate for the specific constraints of usage-centered design.

Introduction of innovative, structured, and model-driven user interface engineering approaches.

Addressing software architecture issues in the design of user interfaces.

Reingineering of existing systems for better usability.

Inhalt
Human-Centered Software Engineering: Software Engineering Architectures, Patterns, and Models for Human Computer Interaction.- Human-Centered Software Engineering: Software Engineering Architectures, Patterns, and Sodels for Human Computer Interaction.- User Experiences, Usability Requirements, and Design.- What Drives Software Development: Bridging the Gap Between Software and Usability Engineering.- Human Activity Modeling: Toward A Pragmatic Integration of Activity Theory and Usage-Centered Design.- A User-Centered Framework for Deriving A Conceptual Design From User Experiences: Leveraging Personas and Patterns to Create Usable Designs.- XML-Based Tools for Creating, Mapping, and Transforming Usability Engineering Requirements.- Modeling and Model-Driven Engineering.- Multipath Transformational Development of User Interfaces with Graph Transformations.- Human-Centered Engineering Of Interactive Systems With The User Interface Markup Language.- Megamodeling and Metamodel-Driven Engineering for Plastic User Interfaces: MEGA-UI.- Cause and Effect in User Interface Development.- Interactive Systems Architectures.- From User Interface Usability to the Overall Usability of Interactive Systems: Adding Usability in System Architecture.- Toward a Refined Paradigm for Architecting Usable Systems.- Trace-Based Usability Evaluation Using Aspect-Oriented Programming and Agent-Based Software Architecture.- Achieving Usability of Adaptable Software: The Amf-Based Approach.- Reengineering, Reverse Engineering, and Refactoring.- The Gains Design Process: How to do Structured Design of User Interfaces in Any Software Environment.- Legacy Systems Interaction Reengineering.- Using Reverse Engineering for Automated Usability Evaluation of Gui-Based Applications.- Task Models and SystemModels as A Bridge Between Hci and Software Engineering.