User View Language

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Barbara Paech; Professor Dr. Kurt Schneider
• Subject Area: Software Engineering and Programming Languages
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433661943

Software is ubiquitous in the digital society. Not only developers, but also users talk about software products. They describe the features of the software from an external point of view. They do not use common terminology of developers and experts which impedes the communication between users and developers. For example, users describe their external view when providing user feedback. Currently, feedback in e.g. AppStores is very short, difficult to understand and full of grammar problems. Current mining approaches can classify the intention of a statement, the kind of experience or mentioned quality attributes, but not the described features and their relationships. During requirements engineering approaches are used to elicit the requirements of users for software to be developed. In this case, the understanding between users and developers is endangered as developers focus on a technical inside view of the software. Requirements and other user-oriented documentation are, therefore, often difficult to understand for users, and, thus, user needs cannot be satisfied due to misunderstandings. A language is missing that can bridge the gap between the external views of users, developers and producers. In consequence, software is not user-oriented and software usage is not effective.The vision of the project UVL is to develop the language UVL for the user view of software, in analogy to the unified modeling language UML for the inside view. The UVL shall describe the features of the software and how they support the users and their tasks.Thereby,• Users can better describe their view of software • Developers and producers can better communicate about the user view with each others and with the users• Developers and producers create software aligned with the interests of the users.UVL can also help in the general discourse about software to better discuss the benefits of the software. In the long run this can improve the communication and participation of citizens in the digital society.The project will realize this vision with the following four goals(1) empirical research on the user view of users and developers(2) development of the user view language UVL(3+4) development and evaluation of methods and tools which use UVL to improve communication in two different contexts: (3) feedback for existing software products and (4) development of new software in a project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants