Collaborative Software Design Research Articles

How did COVID-19 Impact Software Design Activities in Global Software Engineering — Systematic Review

Background: Global Software Engineering (GSE) extends geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries in distributed environments. Over the past two decades, GSE research has evolved to manage software development for distributed teams. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the need for comprehensive research, particularly during the software design phase, to support team collaboration in distributed development. Aim: This study systematically analyzes the evolution of research emphasis in the GSE field, specifically exploring on whether the research focuses increasing on software design due to the global pandemic. Method: We systematically analyzed the existing literature in two phases. In the first phase of our study, we mapped GSE research over the two decades leading to the pandemic (2000–2020). In the second phase, we used the forward snowballing approach to examine the literature on the software design phase published between 2020 and 2022. Results: The analysis of 592 research studies in the two phases reveals various trends in GSE research. Evaluation research is the most explored research type in methods and processes, and human aspects of development. Despite the paradigm shift caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that increased reliance on distributed teams, results show that while software organizations are extensively studied across all software engineering phases, the software design phase remains one of the least explored areas. Conclusion: This work highlights the evolving GSE research trends, emphasizing the rising significance of collaborative software design in distributed settings. Our findings address current research gaps and underscore the need for further research on software design activities. This contribution envisions a more collaborative, adaptable GSE field, guiding future research to support distributed teams.

Research And Application Of 3D Collaborative Design in Oil and Gas Field Surface Engineering

With the constant development of major oil and gas fields at home and abroad towards the direction of digitalization and intelligent technologies, the traditional surface engineering process has encountered the challenges of limited professional collaborative design and poor data connection, etc. The advanced 3D collaborative design has gradually become the mainstream platform of oil and gas field surface engineering design due to its features of a higher degree of model reduction and its advantages of cross-discipline, cross-platform, and cross-region collaborative design. However, in the course of current station modeling and designing, due to the complexity of engineering and the limits of design software, etc., the problems of mutual transmission failure amongst models and the loss of attribute information are prone to occur, causing a bad impact on the work efficiency of 3D collaborative design. In this paper, the commonly used 3D collaborative design software in oil and gas fields has been systematically discussed along with the common issues and their solutions in aspects of 3D design analyzed. Moreover, the effective application of collaborative design in the stage of procurement and construction, and the stage of the operation and maintenance of the digital station shall be separately discussed. While improving the efficiency of 3D collaborative design, it also plays the role of guidance in strengthening the digital and intelligent construction foundation of oil and gas fields.

Collaborative software design and modeling in virtual reality

Context:Software engineering is becoming more and more distributed. Developers and other stakeholders are often located in different locations, departments, and countries and operating within different time zones. Most online software design and modeling tools are not adequate for distributed collaboration since they do not support awareness and lack features for effective communication. Objective:The aim of our research is to support distributed software design activities in Virtual Reality (VR). Method:Using design science research methodology, we design and evaluate a tool for collaborative design in VR. We evaluate the collaboration efficiency and recall of design information when using the VR software design environment compared to a non-VR software design environment. Moreover, we collect the perceptions and preferences of users to explore the opportunities and challenges that were incurred by using the VR software design environment. Results:We find that there is no significant difference in the efficiency and recall of design information when using the VR compared to the non-VR environment. Furthermore, we find that developers are more satisfied with collaboration in VR. Conclusion:The results of our research and similar studies show that working in VR is not yet faster or more efficient than working on standard desktops. It is very important to improve the interface in VR (gestures with haptics, keyboard and voice input), as confirmed by the difference in results between the first and second evaluation.

Design and evaluation of a collaborative UML modeling environment in virtual reality.

Modeling is a key activity in conceptual design and system design. Through collaborative modeling, end-users, stakeholders, experts, and entrepreneurs are able to create a shared understanding of a system representation. While the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is one of the major conceptual modeling languages in object-oriented software engineering, more and more concerns arise from the modeling quality of UML and its tool-support. Among them, the limitation of the two-dimensional presentation of its notations and lack of natural collaborative modeling tools are reported to be significant. In this paper, we explore the potential of using virtual reality (VR) technology for collaborative UML software design by comparing it with classical collaborative software design using conventional devices (desktop PC/laptop). For this purpose, we have developed a VR modeling environment that offers a natural collaborative modeling experience for UML Class Diagrams. Based on a user study with 24 participants, we have compared collaborative VR modeling with conventional modeling with regard to efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. Results show that the use of VR has some disadvantages concerning efficiency and effectiveness, but the user's fun, the feeling of being in the same room with a remote collaborator, and the naturalness of collaboration were increased.

Toward Accountable and Explainable Artificial Intelligence Part Two: The Framework Implementation

This paper builds upon the theoretical foundations of the Accountable eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (AXAI) capability framework presented in part one of this paper. We demonstrate incorporation of the AXAI capability in the real time Affective State Assessment Module (ASAM) of a robotic system. We show that adhering to the eXtreme Programming (XP) practices would help in understanding user behavior and systematic incorporation of the AXAI capability in Machine Learning (ML) systems. We further show that a collaborative software design and development process (SDDP) would facilitate identification of ethical, technical, functional, and domain-specific system requirements. Meeting these requirements would increase user confidence in ML and AI systems. Our results show that the ASAM can synthesize discrete and continuous models of affective state expressions for classifying them in real-time. The ASAM continuously shares important inputs, processed data and the output information with users via a graphical user interface (GUI). Thus, the GUI presents reasons behind system decisions and disseminates information about local reasoning, data handling and decision-making. Through this demonstrated work, we expect to move toward enhancing AI systems’ acceptability, utility and establishing a chain of responsibility if a system fails. We hope this work will initiate further investigations on developing the AXAI capability and use of a suitable SDDP for incorporating them in AI systems.

Design thinking and creativity of colocated versus globally distributed software developers

AbstractDesigning software is an activity in which software developers think and make design decisions that shape the structure and behavior of software products. Designing software is one of the least understood software engineering activities. In a collaborative design setting, various types of distances can lead to challenges and effects that potentially affect how software is designed. To contribute to a better understanding of collaborative software design, we investigate how communication gaps caused by social and geographic distances affect its design thinking and the creativity of its discussions. To this end, we conducted a multiple‐case study exploring the design thinking and creativity of colocated and distributed software developers in a collaborative design setting. Compared with colocated developers, distributed developers spend less time on exploring the problem space, which could be related to different sociotechnical challenges, such as lack of awareness and common understanding. Distributed development does not seem to affect the creativity of their activities. Developers engaging in collaborative design need to be aware that problem space exploration is reduced in a distributed setting. Unless distributed teams take compensatory measures, this could adversely affect the development. Regarding the effect distance has on creativity, our results are inconclusive and further studies are needed.

Maturity assessment model for aircraft collaborative design software solution

Maturity assessment model for aircraft collaborative design software solution

AI Projects for Computer Science Capstone Classes (Extended Abstract)

Capstone senior design projects provide students with a collaborative software design and development experience to reinforce learned material while allowing students latitude in developing real-world applications. Our two-semester capstone classes are required for all computer science majors. Students must have completed a software engineering course — capstone classes are typically taken during their last two semesters. Project proposals come from a variety of sources, including industry, WSU faculty (from our own and other departments), local agencies, and entrepreneurs. We have recently targeted projects in AI — although students typically have little background, they find the ideas and methods compelling. This paper outlines our instructional approach and reports our experiences with three projects.

IOT-ENABLED KNOWLEDGE SHARING-BASED COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE DESIGN APPROACH

Modifying corrective programming code according to requirements modifications so that the modifications work with existing code is a challenge for software maintenance design, because it is difficult to understand the meaning of existing code. This refers to both software specifications and business implications associated with modifying a software system. The lack of a knowledge-based collaborative environment is one of the prominent problems in software maintenance design. This paper presents the IoT-enabled knowledge sharing architecture using combination and internalization for collaborative software maintenance design to derive a collaborative software design procedure from the problem-solving systematic methods TRIZ, AHP and Maturity Index on Reliability (MIR). Next, we illustrate three elements of the proposed approach in more detail: combination using MIR, collaborative tagging decision-making using AHP, and internalization of problem-solving using TRIZ. Finally, a case study and evaluation are presented to demonstrate a practical application of the proposed approach. To cite this document: Rui-Yang Chen and Chao-Tsong Fangtsou, IOT-enabled knowledge sharing-based collaborative software maintenance design approach, International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.6, No.2, pp. 163-186, 2015. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.1329

The Design of Embedded Ethernet System Based Microcontroller

With the wide application of Internet technology, the embedded system is becoming more and more to develop in the direction of the network. The combination of embedded devices and the Internet represents the future direction of development of embedded systems. In this paper, a microprocessor-based embedded Ethernet solution was presented. The collaborative software and hardware design thought was used in system. TheμC /OS-II operating system, joined the TCP/IP protocol stack, was transplanted to the embedded Ethernet platform. The test results proved that the embedded Ethernet system network communication is stable and reliable.

The aggregation of information qualities in collaborative software

Collaborative software supports teams involved in a common task in generating and sharing information over geographic distances. Such software is used in the cooperation between organisations, companies or individuals. The overall quality of the resulting information product depends on the quality of the individual contributions as well as on an underlying consolidation process. We therefore present different ‘composition functions’ indicating how the qualities of the contributions by single actors (qi) influence the quality of the aggregated information (Q). Based upon a qualitative empirical study of inter-organisational crisis management in Germany we match use cases with those composition functions and derive implications for the design of collaborative software.

RESEARCH ON COLLABORATIVE DESIGN SOFTWARE INTEGRATION BASED ON SOA

With the rapid development of economic globalization, more and more complex products have to be designed by the cooperation of the designers in different geographic locations. The effective sharing and deployment of collaborative design software are of great significance to enhance the capability of cooperative research and development of products. To solve the problem of software integration for collaborative design in the distributed and heterogeneous environment, a distributed software integration framework for collaborative product design based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was proposed. Based on Web Service technology, a collaborative design platform was built, which encapsulates the functions of Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), Product Data Management (PDM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to integrate distributed collaborative design software in heterogeneous environment.

Development of an integrated-collaborative decision making framework for product top-down design process

A process model based on product function and physical topology structure is proposed. This model decomposes the product top-down design process into module design task, part design task, design parameter and dependencies among them. According to the characteristics of the design process, an integrated collaborative design software framework is designed, which includes module task agent, part task agent and sensitivity-based collaborative design method for agents. The system is developed with Java and Web technologies and applied to the transmission design case to demonstrate its utilization and efficiency.

An Agent-Based Multimedia Intelligent Platform for Collaborative Design

Collaborative design can create added value in the design and production process by bringing the benefit of team work and cooperation in a concurrent and coordinated manner. However, distributed design knowledge and product data make the design process cumbersome. To facilitate collaborative design, an agent-based intelligent CAD platform is implemented. Intelligent agents are applied to the collaborative design. Adopting the JADE platform as framework, an intelligent collaborative design software (Co-Cad platform for short) is designed. In this platform, every man, design software, management software, equipment and resource is regarded as a single agent, the legacy design can be abstracted to be interaction between agents. Multimedia technology is integrated into Co-Cad platform, communication and identity authentication among collaborative designers from different areas are more convenient. Finally, an instance of collaborative design using Co-Cad platform is presented.

SUMLOW: early design‐stage sketching of UML diagrams on an E‐whiteboard

AbstractMost visual diagramming tools provide point‐and‐click construction of computer‐drawn diagram elements using a conventional desktop computer and mouse. SUMLOW is a unified modelling language (UML) diagramming tool that uses an electronic whiteboard (E‐whiteboard) and sketching‐based user interface to support collaborative software design. SUMLOW allows designers to sketch UML constructs, mixing different UML diagram elements, diagram annotations, and hand‐drawn text. A key novelty of the tool is the preservation of hand‐drawn diagrams and support for manipulation of these sketches using pen‐based actions. Sketched diagrams can be automatically ‘formalized’ into computer‐recognized and ‐drawn UML diagrams and then exported to a third party CASE tool for further extension and use. We describe the motivation for SUMLOW, illustrate the use of the tool to sketch various UML diagram types, describe its key architecture abstractions and implementation approaches, and report on two evaluations of the toolset. We hope that our experiences will be useful for others developing sketching‐based design tools or those looking to leverage pen‐based interfaces in software applications. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Scribbles

Scribbles represents a light weight intuitive tool to support early collaborative software design. Collaboration is not well supported in many modern CASE (computer aided software engineering) environments making paper and white boards an attractive alternative. As a result of this, CASE tools tend to be more suited to documenting designs rather than assisting the generation of a design, meaning that early ideas may be lost. Scribbles uses shape recognition, to allow freehand manipulation of a hybrid Mind Map. This preserves the simplicity of paper or a whiteboard whilst adding the ability to capture early design ideas in a reusable way. This is a very lightweight modeling environment ideally suited to introducing students to Object Oriented Design.

ClassCompass

Becoming a quality software developer requires practice under the guidance of an expert mentor. Unfortunately, in most academic environments, there are not enough experts to provide any significant design mentoring for software engineering students. To address this problem, we present a collaborative software design tool intended to maximize an instructor's ability to mentor a group of students. Students use the system to create software designs for a given set of requirements. While they work, students receive automated feedback regarding common design mistakes. The system then provides support and guidance for students to manually critique each other's work. Students can view and learn from the design approaches taken by other students, as well as the critiques associated with them. We have tried this approach in software engineering classes with some positive results. We believe that this collaborative and partially automated approach can significantly improve the quality of software design education when few mentors are available.

Integrated collaborative decision-making for product top-down design process

A process model based on product function and physical topology structure is proposed. This model decom-poses the product top-down design process into module design task, part design task, design parameter and dependencies among them. According to the characteristics of the design process, an integrated collaborative design software framework is designed, which includes module task agent, part task agent and sensitivity based collaborative design method for agents. The system is developed with Java and Web technologies, and applied to gear box design case to demonstrate its utilization and efficiency.

Collaborative software design in an SOA environment

Based on the current Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), this paper proposes a new collaborative software design methodology in an SOA Environment: the Global Software Enterprise (GSE). The current SOA is producer-centric, in which the service providers publish services that they produce and let the consumers to search available services to compose their applications. GSE is build on top of Consumer-Centric SOA (CCSOA), in which the application builders publish their application requirements for the service providers to follow when producing or customizing services to support the application. This new methodology reduces the workload and improves the application description capability of the service consumers. It also extends the capacity of design and code sharing, and thus further improves the software productivity. This paper presents the concepts, architecture, enabling techniques, and illustrative examples of collaborative software design in GSE.

Multiuser collaborative work in virtual environment based CASE tool

VRCASE is a virtual environment based Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool. It provides a 3D multiuser collaborative software modeling environment with automatic object-class abstraction, class diagram generation, and C++ skeleton generation facilities for assisting Object-Oriented software development. It allows multiple concurrent users to model software system collaboratively. To achieve efficient collaborative software development in VRCASE, we have proposed and implemented a Fine-grained locking and notification mechanism together with visual indicators to maintain system consistency among multiple concurrent users. The system evaluation shows that our approach can effectively support multiuser collaborative software design in VRCASE.