With the explosion of software size, checking conformance of implementation to specification becomes an increasingly important but also hard problem. Current practice based on ad-hoc testing does not provide correctness guarantees, while highly confident traditional formal methods like model checking and theorem proving are still too expensive to become common practice. In this paper we present...

This paper presents a uniform approach for specifying mixed reality user interfaces, including 3D interaction techniques and 3D widgets. Our main goal is to facilitate the process of reusing previous work, so more complex applications can be built and documented in a formal and uniform way. Our work builds on previous experiences and taxonomies in related fields. Our specification method is des...

Software requirements are defined in many industries using informal software requirements specifications that are based on standards such as IEEE 830. Also, in teams of small to medium-sized projects there are often no experienced requirements engineers. These two factors leave product development efforts in a tar pit of ambiguities and misunderstandings that is risking product success. We inve...

Understanding the context of a software system during requirements specification is a difficult task. Sometimes application domains are very complex, other times the limits of the application are fuzzy. Thus, it is difficult to determine which are requirements of the software system and which are beyond its scope. In such situations technologically outstanding software systems can be built, but...

Societies need patterned behavior to exist. Large-scale agent societies may contain a diversity of agents, each with differing abilities and functionalities. When such an agent system is given a task, it must dynamically muster together a group of agents that collectively have the capability to accomplish the task. To do this, the agent society needs to be able to understand its agents and thei...

Software functionality expressed in user requirements is a key element for the measurement and planning of the software process. As such, it is important to have an upper model of existing function analysis models as those provided in function point counting methods. This paper discusses an ontological analysis of the concepts related to the specifications of functionality, in the context of ex...

Learning to design software ahead of directly constructing it is a significant hurdle in a Software Engineering education. Our University has run a course in software design for second-year undergraduate students since 1994. We describe the evaluation and improvement of the course as it evolved from 2000 to 2003, from a focus on reverse engineering to forward design, to add design patterns and ...

Visual communication is a method of communication using visual elements, which is suggested to be more effective than text or voice, and has the additional advantage that it, can also be used by who are unable to read. In this paper, the findings of a user requirements study, which was conducted at MnaziMmoja Hospital in Zanzibar, are presented. In a cross-sectional study, twenty nine people in...

Conceptual design involves requirements analysis, functional specification, and architectural design. It remains informal and poorly understood. We studied the conceptual design activities of a representative industrial software project, Centauri, for three months with follow-up observations and discussions over the following six months. Our goal was to understand how patterns of collaboration ...

The main components of the UML-based specification of the Ultimate Fitness Tracker (UFT) software are presented in this paper. The UFT is a web-based fitness tracking application that allows users to define and plan exercising programs and keep track of their progress. The application’s main functionality is outlined in the paper in terms of functional and non-functional requirements and sample...