Formal Description Techniques for Interactive Systems Engineering

Speaker: Philippe Palanque

22nd February 2006 , 2pm , G21/22 Devonshire Building

Abstract

Except form rare and isolated initiatives, Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction have been addressed quite separately. However, the widespread use of innovative interaction techniques, as a way of increasing bandwidth between interactive systems and users, calls for methods, notations, processes and tools to support design, implementation and validation of systems. While research in the field of Software Engineering has provided useful results for many kind of application domains (transactional systems, embedded systems, Information Systems, ...) very few solutions have been provided in the field of interactive systems. In this presentation we intend to discuss the specificities of interactive systems and why these specificities require dedicated support at support at the various stages of the development process. This will lead to a discussion about the difficulties of addressing in a single and coherent framework two fundamental requirements for interactive systems: Usability and Reliability. Lastly, the presentation will give an overview of current trends as well as a research agenda for the integration of research in Human Computer-Interaction and in Software Engineering.