Um protótipo de referência para ferramentas CASE de modelagem em ambiente web

Abstract

Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools provide support for software engineers throughout the development cycle. These tools are endowed with a variety of features, which do not always have good usability. It was evidenced in the literature that the interface of CASE tools are neglected, causing great complexity in user interaction and making its use difficult. The aim of our work is to propose a reference prototype with a high level of usability for CASE web modeling tools. To this end, we conducted a literature review in conjunction with an in-depth data analysis to identify usability requirements that enable us to achieve our goal. The requirements found from the literature were visibility, satisfaction, low error rate, memorability, learning, and efficiency. In addition, we use the prototyping method to develop it. The process is to determine the needs, develop the prototype, evaluate, and refactor until a satisfactory result is obtained. We developed the reference prototype covering all needs encountered, i.e. the mapped usability requirements. Finally, we planned and executed the prototype evaluation. We choose 3 software engineering professors, 3 software engineering undergraduates, 3 software engineering master’s students and 3 software developers to evaluate the prototype. The technique we used to make the assessment was the System Usability Scale (SUS). Through this scale, we could find the results of the evaluation. The average resulting from the evaluation was 88.93 points, which we can consider a good result, because, according to the literature, above 68 points, it can be considered that the system has a good usability. With this, we believe we have achieved our goal, that is, to have a reference prototype with a good level of usability.