The Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering is a unique research and development initiative dedicated to making technology more useful, more usable, and more accessible. Lab:USE is a research unit in the Department of Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Madeira. Members of Lab:USE also have responsibilities in teaching in the various courses of the department, in particular in the Professional Master of Human-Computer Interaction that is offered in collaboration with the HCI Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
Lab:USE is currently starting up a number of research projects. We are hiring researchers!
Read more about Lab:USE and see the Lab:USE calendar
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post onlyDon Norman's public lecture
Time: Monday, 6 July 2009, 18:00-19:30
Place: Auditorium Castanheiro at the Reitoria da Universidade da Madeira, Funchal
Title: “In Favor of Complexity”
Speaker: Don Norman, Professor Northwestern University
Abstract: Why are things so complex? Because the world is complex. Our tools must reflect reality. Complexity can be good, leading to a rich, satisfying life, filled with rich, satisfying experiences. We must distinguish complexity from confusion, perplexity, and unintelligibility. The goal is complexity with order, lucidity and understandability.
Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen-Norman Group and Professor of Design at Northwestern University, is a world renowned authority on usability and design and the author of many books, including “The Design of Everyday Things,” “Emotional Design,” “The Design of Future Things,” and “Sociable Design.” Professor Norman is a guest of the University for MUSE III, the 2009 Madeira Usability and Software Encounters, an annual event sponsored by the Laboratory for Usage-Centered Software Engineering and the Department of Mathematics and Engineering at the University of Madeira.
This event is open to the public. The event will be streamed live at http://www.labuse.org/muse09
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post onlyKeynote at the ICA workshop on Geospatial Analysis and Modeling
Lab:USE member Vassilis Kostakos will give the keynote speech at the 3rd annual workshop on geospatial analysis and modeling, organised by the Interactional Cartographic Association. The workshop will take place on 6-7 August 2009 in Gävle, Sweden.
Founded upon the tradition of the workshop series, this workshop aims to bring together researchers from relevant fields to address issues related to geospatial analysis and modeling. The work presented at this workshop includes the development of visual and analytical tools for geospatial analysis and modeling, and the extraction of geospatial knowledge by applying these tools to huge arrays of geospatial data that have recently become available. The tools and the knowledge constitute two major concerns in the community's pursuit for better spatial planning and decision making
Mobile phones are becoming increasingly powerful platforms in terms of processing, networking and storage capabilities. As these devices continue to proliferate, researchers are coming up with ways to utilise and exploit them for a number of purposes: proximity-based advertisement, movement tracking, presence detection, proximity detection, situated voting, epidemic simulations, and implicit interactions. This talk will present an overview of my research on urban encounters that exploits people's Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices as a detection mechanism. The message I want to convey is that there is tremendous untapped potential in harnessing such information, and the potential benefits span multiple domains.
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post onlyTwo new CMU|Portugal research projects at Lab:USE
The competitive 2008 call for research funding in the CMU|Portugal program, opened by FCT, has received 21 project proposals, of which 8 were approved by an international panel led by Prof. Angel Jordan (ex Provost of CMU) and Prof. Raj Reddy (Turing Award).
Of these 8 approved projects 2 are led by Lab:USE:
- SINAIS - Sustainable Interaction with social Networks, context Awareness and Innovative Services
- WeSP - Web Security and Privacy: Weaving Together Technology Innovation with Human and Policy Consideration
We are now hiring!
These projects together represent a budget of € 760 000 for three years, allowing us to employ researchers at various levels, both post-doc and graduated. A third project, led by the University of Coimbra with strong participation of Lab:USE, is still under evaluation.
Of the remaining 6 approved projects, two are led by INESC-ID, one by IST, one by FCT/UNL, one by UAveiro and one by FC/UP.
Lab:USE Calendar
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post onlyLarry Constantine receives 2009 Stevens Award
On 21 April 2009, Larry Constantine, director of Lab:USE, will receive the 16th Stevens Award, a prestigious international award that recognizes outstanding contributions to the literature or practice of methods for software and systems development. In relation with this award, Larry will give the lecture "Of Models, Methods, and Muddles: Users and Usability in Model-Driven Development" at the Salt Palace Conference Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
The Stevens Award is managed by the Reengineering Forum (REF) industry association.
Quoting the association: "Most widely known as the formative creator of quality concepts in Structured Design, Larry Constantine is a pioneer of structured methods, quality metrics, interaction design, and user performance in safety-critical applications.
Combining his background in psychology and family therapy with his technical skills in information technology and software engineering, he has been a principal thought-leader in the human side of software development."
For more information about this award, visit the Stevens Award website and the Reengineering Forum website.
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post onlyLab:USE initiates two new research projects with ZON Multimedia
News item in Telejornal of RTP Madeira, 11 Feb. 2009
On 11 February, 2009, the regional government of Madeira, represented by the vice-president João Cunha e Silva, announced two new research projects that were initiated by Lab:USE and will be co-funded by the regional government's +Conhecimento program and by ZON Multimedia. The projects are managed by Madeira Tecnopolo and, in addition to ZON Multimedia, enjoy the collaboration of faculty from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Porto.
Madeira Life
The Madeira Life project aims to create a new set of services that join the potential of social networking, location-awareness, context-awareness, mobile devices, and multimedia. This project is typically a 'research-by-design' activity: it will design and develop a number of pilot applications that are tested in the real world. Usability evaluation is the key to achieve an optimal result in this project. Four pilots will be initiated on (1) Situated Blogging, (2) Cultural Itineraries, (3) Story-Telling, and (4) Smart Shopping. For this project, a new research team will be established in the next few months that will have its offices in the premises of Madeira Tecnopolo. Eleven researchers will be involved in this new project that has a budget of circa € 648 000 and a duration of three years. Read more about Madeira Life.
Service Engineering
The project on Service Engineering aims to bridge the gap between technology and the services that ZON provides to its customers. Targeting the ideal situation that value is the result of the co-creation of company and clients, this project will align the needs of clients with the technology provided by ZON. This means going through cycles of designing the service architecture and user experience and modelling the activities of services and clients. This project has a duration of three years and a budget of circa € 550 000.
In the press
The announcement of these projects was covered in the regional press:
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post onlyECCE 2008 Proceedings online at ACM
The proceedings of ECCE 2008 are now available online at the ACM portal.
Lab:USE hosted the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics in Madeira from Sept. 16-19. ECCE 2008 aimed to provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to exchange new ideas and practical experience in all areas of cognitive ergonomics. By presenting, criticizing, and defending papers, ECCE 2008 participants explored knowledge and research areas in cognitive ergonomics and invented new directions for advancing both theoretical and practical aspects of cognitive ergonomics. ECCE 2008 keynotes were given by Austin Henderson and Norbert Streitz.
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post onlyModel Driven Inquiry
Technical paper published by Larry Constantine
Larry L. Constantine, IDSA
Chief Scientist, Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd.
Director, Laboratory for Usage-centered Software Engineering
University of Madeira, Funchal, Portugal
Abstract: Model-driven inquiry is an agile approach to investigating user requirements that reduces the need for field study by reversing the popular process of contextual inquiry and other ethnographic approaches. Instead of gathering data from which to build models, models are built in order to simplify and shortcut data gathering. The technique and its rationale are described and compared with contextual inquiry and combinations are explored.
Full text in PDF.
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post onlyThree Keynotes in Three Weeks
Lab:USE Director Larry Constantine has been busy on the conference circuit all September carrying the message of the interdependence of software engineering and human-computer interaction. After taking part in a panel on integrating interaction design and requirements engineering at Requirements Engineering ’08 in Barcelona, Spain on 11 September, he headed for Washington, DC, where he keynoted the 4th World Congress on Software Quality on 16 September with a provocative presentation titled “User Experience, User Performance, and Software Quality” [PDF doc, Powerpoint].
Then it was off to Pisa, Italy, where he delivered two keynotes in one week. For the International Workshop on the Interplay of Usability Evaluation and Software Development (I-USED) he delivered a keynote 24 September on “Theme and Variation: Usability in a Post-Waterfall World” [PDF doc, Powerpoint].
Then, for Engineering Interactive Systems (EIS 2008) which combined Human-Centered Software Engineering 2008 with the TAMODIA 2008 Workshop (Task Models and Diagrams), he spoke on “Linking Human-Centered and Software Engineering Perspectives and Practice: Activity Theory and Human Activity Modeling" [PDF doc, Powerpoint].
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post onlymetaSketch available for download
MetaSketch is a modeling language workbench that allows the rapid development of modeling languages, creating new possibilities and opportunities in the context of the Model-Driven Development approach. The technology behind the MetaSketch is based on OMG (The Object Management Group) standards like MOF 2.0, OCL 2.0 and XMI 2.1, and is specially tailored for creating new members of the UML family of language.Currently, this workbench comprises three tools – the editor, the merger and the designer – and all of them are in a pre-beta release stage.
- MetaSketch Editor - The editor is the heart of workbench and is simultaneously a modeling and a metamodeling editor. In a practical sense, this means that the same editor can be used to create the metamodel and the models that conforms to the created metamodel.
- MetaSketch Merger - This tool is only applicable on a metamodel and basically resolves all the Package Merge’s used on the definition of the metamodel. In addition, all hierarchy of package is flattened, resulting in a metamodel with only one package with all language constructs definition merged.
- MetaSketch Designer - This is a work in progress and will allow graphically the definition of the concrete syntax for each language constructs and type of diagram. Currently, these definitions have to be done directly in the XML files.
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post onlyECCE 2008
LabUSE is hosting the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics in Madeira from Sept. 16-19. ECCE 2008 aims to provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to exchange new ideas and practical experience in all areas of cognitive ergonomics. By presenting, criticizing, and defending papers, ECCE 2008 participants will explore knowledge and research areas in cognitive ergonomics and invent new directions for advancing both theoretical and practical aspects of cognitive ergonomics. ECCE 2008 keynotes will be given by Austin Henderson and Norbert Streitz.