The Conceptual Integrity of Software

In the world of commercial computing, consumers are being inundated with baroque, bloated, and difficult-to-use computing applications, tools that use computational methods and technologies to perform tasks. Ensuring that planned features required for market competitiveness enhance a computing application without these side effects first requires that we understand how these features contribute to the overall design and conceptual integrity of the application. We present a research framework, methodologies, and artifacts for measuring the conceptual integrity of a computing application using its embedded theory of the world (its ontology) and show how conceptual integrity can be used to inform software design to ensure its usefulness to its users.

Autorentext

Idris H. Hsi: B.S. Cognitive Science, UC San Diego; M.S. Industrial Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; PhD, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently a User Experience Researcher at Microsoft.