Whitewater Interactive System Development with Object Models

Wisdom (Whitewater Interactive System Development with Object Models) is a software development process and method to design software-intensive interactive systems. It is based on object modelling, and focuses human-computer interaction (HCI) in order to model the software architecture of the system i.e. it is architecture-centric. The focus on HCI while being architecture-centric places Wisdom as a pioneer method within human-centered software engineering.^[1] Wisdom was conceived by Nuno Nunes and first published in the years 1999-2000 ^[2][3][4] in order to close the gaps of existing software engineering methods regarding the user interface design.

Notably, the Wisdom method identifies for each use case the tasks of the user, the interaction spaces of the user interface, and the system responsibilities that support that user activity, which are complemented with the data entities used in each case, completing a usable software architecture, an MVC model. The Wisdom model clarifies the relation between the human and the computer-based system, allows rationalization over the software artifacts that must be implemented, therefore facilitating effort affection for a software development team.

From Wisdom, other relevant contributions were derived targeting the enhancement of software development based on the Wisdom model, such as: CanonSketch,^[5] Hydra Framework^[6] Cruz's^[7]

Another relevant contribution is related to effort estimation of software development, the iUCP^[8] method, which is based in traditional UCP^[9] method leveling the estimation based on the predicted user interface design. A comparison study was carried out using both methods,^[10] revealing that there is positive effect in the usage of iUCP when compared to UCP when considering the user interface design, a recurrent situation in nowadays software systems development.

References

1. Seffah, Ahmed; Vanderdonckt, Jean; Desmarais, Michel C., eds. (2009). Human-Centered Software Engineering: Software Engineering Models, Patterns and Architectures for HCI. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Vol. LNCS-8742. London: Springer London. doi:10.1007/978-1-84800-907-3. ISBN 978-1-84800-906-6.
2. Nunes, Nuno J, & Cunha, J. F. (1999). A Bridge Too Far: The WISDOM Approach. Proceedings of the Workshop on Object-Oriented Technology, 283–291. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=646779.705431
3. Nunes, N. J., & Cunha, J. F. (2000). Wisdom: a software engineering method for small software development companies. Software IEEE, 17(5), 113–119.
4. Nunes, J. (2000). WISDOM: Whitewater Interactive System Development with Object Models, PhD Thesis, University of Madeira
5. Campos, Pedro F.; Nunes, Nuno J. (2005). "CanonSketch: A User-Centered Tool for Canonical Abstract Prototyping". In Bastide, Rémi; Palanque, Philippe; Roth, Jörg (eds.). Engineering Human Computer Interaction and Interactive Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 3425. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 146–163. doi:10.1007/11431879_9. ISBN 978-3-540-31961-0.
6. Costa, Duarte; Nóbrega, Leonel; Nunes, Nuno Jardim (2007). "An MDA Approach for Generating Web Interfaces with UML ConcurTaskTrees and Canonical Abstract Prototypes". In Coninx, Karin; Luyten, Kris; Schneider, Kevin A. (eds.). Task Models and Diagrams for Users Interface Design. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 4385. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 137–152. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70816-2_11. ISBN 978-3-540-70816-2.
7. da Cruz, Antonio Miguel Rosado; Pascoal, Joao (2010-05-01), "Automatic Generation of User Interface Models and Prototypes from Domain and Use Case Models" (PDF), User Interfaces, InTech, doi:10.5772/9498, ISBN 978-953-307-084-1
8. Nunes, Nuno J, & Cunha, J. F. (1999). A Bridge Too Far: The WISDOM Approach. Proceedings of the Workshop on Object-Oriented Technology, 283–291. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=646779.705431
9. Karner, G. (1993). Resource estimation for objectory projects. Objective Systems SF AB, 1–9. http://si.lopesgazzani.com.br/docentes/marcio/gcm/p_Karner_ResourceEstimationForObjectoryProjects.pdf
10. Alves, R., Valente, P., & Nunes, N. J. (2013). Improving software effort estimation with human-centric models: A comparison of UCP and iUCP accuracy. EICS 2013 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/2480296.2480300