Co-authoring Proto-patterns to Support on Designing Systems

to Be Adequate for Users´ Diversity

Junia Coutinho Anacleto, Marcos Alexandre Rose Silva and Elis Cristina Montoro Hernandes

Department of Computing, Federal University of São Carlos. Washigton Luis KM 235, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

Keywords: Co-authoring, Education, Educational System, Patterns and Design.

Abstract: This paper describes about co-authoring proto-patterns, i.e., patterns candidate, with successful solutions for

recurrent problems on generating adequate system that allows users, as co-authors, create, format and make

available the content of system according to users´ profile, language, needs, etc. A case study, considering

educational environment, was done in order to collect evidences about the use of these proto-patterns and, it

was observed that these proto-patterns express the essence of solutions to support on designing systems to

allow co-authoring.

1 INTRODUCTION

Designing computer system that allows being

adequate has been a strategy to support its use by

diversity of users with different profile, necessities,

etc. (Dorça et al., 2013; Fischer, 2011; Villena et al.,

2010; Ferreira et al., 2009; Silva et al., 2009).

System which can be adequate enables users feel in

control, identify themselves and, consequently, feel

satisfied with it, because its design can be related to

their characteristics and needs. That´s why this

strategy has been used in many areas, as business,

health, entertainment, education, among others

(Marathe et al., 2011).

On the other hand, designing a system that

allows being adequate is a challenged task because

users need to realize this possibility and know how

to change the system easily. In this context, there is

the necessity on formalizing of knowledge, methods,

frameworks, i.e., strategies to support on design of

this kind of system (Marathe et al., 2011; Neris et

al., 2011).

Specially, in this paper, we discuss about

adequate system at educational area because of our

experience and the necessity to create system to be

adequate to different pedagogical purposes,

students´ needs and characteristics. Piaget (1998)

describes the importance to adequate educational

materials considering student´s difficulties, culture,

knowledge, reality, vocabulary, etc., because when

students identify the relationship between what they

are learning and their reality, they feel more

interested and engaged.

In this context, our research question is how to

support on designing adequate educational system?

Our proposal and hypothesis is that formalized

knowledge through design proto-patterns supports

on designing adequate system at educational area. In

our context, the knowledge represents the learning

and experience of researches during 10 years on

designing co-authoring educational system.

For better understanding of the proposal, firstly

explanation about co-authoring system is presented;

secondly design patterns and a brief description

about how co-authoring proto-patterns have been

formalized are explained; thirdly case study to

observe designers using proto-patterns are described

and; fourthly there are final considerations.

2 CO-AUTHORING

EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Co-authoring at educational environment means

allows user on creating, formatting and making

available content of the system according to different

pedagogical purposes, students´ needs and

characteristics (Ferreira et al., 2009; Silva et al.,

2009). For example, Figure 1 illustrates an example of

educational system that allows co-authoring. This

system is a quiz game that shows up until ten clues

and, by seeing these clues, students have to guess a

164

Coutinho Anacleto J., Alexandre Rose Silva M. and Montoro Hernandes E..

Co-authoring Proto-patterns to Support on Designing Systems to Be Adequate for Users´Diversity .

DOI: 10.5220/0004565801640169

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 164-169

ISBN: 978-989-8565-61-7

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

secret word.

There are two roles in co-authoring system

design. 1) Author who represents one or more

professionals and users responsible for system

design. For example, in this quiz game, author

defined colors, location to display clues, secret

word, etc.; 2) Co-author who represents users to

contextualize content. In this quiz game, defining

clues and secret word.

Figure 1: Quiz Game (Ferreira et al., 2009).

Co-authoring has been a useful strategy to

support co-authors, e.g., educators, on using of the

same system for different reasons, because the

purpose of system or game, like that quiz game, can

be interesting in many situations or classes, but if its

content was pre-defined, probably it could be used

just for it was planned before. On the other hand,

with co-authoring possibility it can be used in many

moments and classes like biology, sexual education,

among others, because co-authors can define clues

and secret word considering student´s vocabulary

and what they are learning at classroom (Ferreira et

al., 2009; Silva et al., 2009).

Considering co-authoring system design, there

are strategies such as class diagram from Unified

Modeling Language (UML) (Lorenz et al., 2006),

ontology (Sieg et al., 2007) and ConcurTaskTrees

(Libório et al., 2005) can support on identification of

input and output data system, e.g., clues and secret

words are input data. Otherwise, strategies like those

are not related to co-authoring process, i.e., what and

how display on interface to help co-authors identify

co-authoring possibility and insert the content of

system.

In this context, our proposal was to formalize

proto-patterns considering ten years of researching,

observation and experiments on co-authoring design.

Six co-authoring educational systems were designed

with different professionals like designers,

educators, students, psychologists, therapists, etc.

One of them is illustrated on Figure 1. Case studies

were also done in order to observe the use of them at

classroom (Villena et al., 2010; Carvalho et al.,

2009; Ferreira et al., 2009; Silva et al., 2009).

3 CO-AUTHORING

PROTO-PATTERNS

According to Borches (2001) patterns contain the

essence of successful solutions to recurring design

problem in a certain context. In Human-Computer

Interaction (HCI) area, patterns have been used as a

useful way to formalize and register knowledge and

experience about design. There are patterns

describing solutions for problems that occur on

many context of design, such as web like Montero et

al., (2012); web and mobile device as Welie (2012);

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) as

Clear et al., (2005); ubiquitous computing as Chung

et al., (2004); games as Bjork et al., (2003); digital

home as Saponas et al., (2006); among others,

including more general ones to support on design

system as Tidwell (1999).

Investigating these patterns, it is possible to

notice that they are not describe the whole problems

and solutions observed at six co-authoring system.

Because of that, we are formalizing patterns

considering these problems and solutions. Our

patterns are called proto-patterns because they are

still prototype. It is necessary some experiments and

validations to confirm they are patterns (Meszaros et

al., 1996). Figure 2 illustrates how co-authoring

proto-patterns are been formalized.

Figure 2: Steps to formalize co-authoring proto-patterns.

There are four steps: 1) Investigating related

works to find strategies and patterns could support

on formalization of patterns and co-authoring

design; 2) Observing interfaces from six co-

authoring system. Technique bottom-up (Saponas et

al., 2006; Chung et al., 2004) has been used in order

to collect solutions from the interfaces of co-

authoring system. To register and organize the

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solutions, it was adopted the strategy, through tables,

described by Finlay (2012). Each table is related to

one problem and each line of it contains an interface

of co-authoring system that represents the solution.

These interfaces are investigated and the pattern

solution is written considering the common solution

in all interfaces;

3) Writing each pattern considering the solutions.

The co-authoring patterns are been written according

patterns that explain how to formalize patterns,

describing also required information to express the

knowledge and experience, such as name of patterns,

problem, context, solution and examples, as

illustrated in Figure 3 (Meszaros et al., 1996);

4) Validating the patterns. Currently, these steps

were done three times. Because of that, there were

three validations: First with designers who did not

know co-authoring and, they read the patterns and

expressed, through questionnaire, what they

understood; Second with expert co-authoring

designers, they compared the solutions described on

patterns with co-authoring systems that they

developed and; Third with designers who did not

know about co-authoring and, they needed to design

prototypes of co-authoring educational system. This

third validation is described in next section.

In this formalization process, seven proto-

patterns have been formalized. One of them is

described in details below and the others just name

and part of solution is described, but there are

complete patterns on link http://lia.dc.ufscar.br/ Co-

authoring proto-patterns.rar.

Figure 3: Co-authoring option pattern.

Name: Goal – Solution: Displaying the goal of

system in one sentence and, defining what

Information the co-author needs to insert to create

the content of system, considering the goal.

Name: Information – Solution: Defining what

information will be inserted by co-author; Allowing

the insertion of each part of information through

Steps.

Name: Steps – Solution: Creating one step for each

part of information; Displaying Characteristics of

steps to support inserting information by co-author.

Name: Characteristics of steps – Solution:

Displaying What needs to be done on each step.

Showing to co-author which step s/he is seeing and,

total number of steps.

Name: What needs to be done – Solution: Using

words to express what co-authors need to do;

Showing simple words; Allowing the Reuse of

information to be also example about how to insert

each information.

Name: Reuse of information – Solution: Showing

the possibility to use information stored on system,

inserted by any co-author.

4 CASE STUDY

In order to observe the use of co-authoring proto-

patterns, there had been a case study with 22

undergraduates, from last year of computer science

and computer engineering, who attended an optional

discipline at university about Human-Computer

Interaction (HCI) concepts to design computer

systems. Firstly, students filled a pre-questionnaire

considering their experience, knowledge and

experience about Software Engineering (SE) and

HCI. Then, these students were divided in 5 groups

– 2 with 5 students and 3 with 4 students.

There were, in each group, one students with 18

months of SE courses and already developed system

but did not know HCI concepts; another with 12

months of SE courses but no practical experience

neither knowledge about HCI; one student (or two in

groups of five) with 12 months of SE courses and 6

months of HCI courses with practical experience in

both SE and HCI; one with six months of SE courses

and no practical experience neither knowledge about

HCI. These 5 groups designed interfaces of an

education system considering a scenario that

researchers, who have experience on co-authoring,

wrote while they were developing a system, i.e.,

there were all necessary information to plan and

draw co-authoring interfaces.

Three steps of the case study are described

below. Each step occurred in one day of the

discipline during 2 hours. After these steps, each

group evaluated the prototype of others considering

pattern-based usability inspection method, that

supports to analyze if patterns were applied at

interfaces (Schmettow et al., 2007). Inspections were

done as the last step considering the results from

each step. On the other hand, inspection results are

shown after each step, in this paper, in order to

facilitate the analyse of them.

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After each step, there was a post-questionnaire to

collect information about difficulties and facilities to

design interfaces prototypes, as well as their

comments about the use of different strategies, as

co-authoring proto-patterns, to design systems. The

questionnaire was based on Likert scale, developed

to subjectively evaluate user satisfaction through

answers as "Very Interesting", "Interesting",

"Indifferent", "Uninteresting", "Very Uninteresting"

"I cannot opine" (Preece et al., 2002).

First step – Students did interfaces of prototype

considering their previous knowledge, i.e., without

learn about co-authoring. Considering pre-

questionnaire, there were in each group participants

who known Requirements Elicitation, Unified

Modeling Language (UML), ISO Standards, Agile

Methods, Tests, as well as Usability and

Accessibility concepts, Heurist Evaluation, User

Tests, Brainstorming, Mental Model, among others.

Goal of this step – to observe if the groups could

reach co-authoring proto-patterns solutions using

other strategies. The results of this step are shown at

Table 1. It is import to mention that one group

missed class in two steps, and then the results of first

and second steps represent 4 groups´ opinions.

Table 1: Pattern-based usability inspection results.

Proto-

patterns

thought

Are there all solutions from

proto-patterns?

Group

None No

Group

Reuse No, it is not possible to see all

content of system

Group

Steps No, there is information that

co-author cannot

change/insert/delete and; there

are a lot of information to insert

in each step

Group

Steps No, there is a lot of information

to insert in each step

Second step – Students could change or do new

interfaces of prototypes considering Welie´s patterns

(Welie, 2012). These patterns were chosen because

their support on web design and the scenario

describes a web educational system, as well as it was

observed some patterns that could support co-

authoring, as Home Link, Action Button, Form and

Booking. Goal of this step – to observe if the groups

could reach co-authoring proto-patterns solutions

using Welie´s patterns and, if students could identify

patterns to support on co-authoring design. The

results of this step are shown at Table 2 with some

students’ comments.

Table 2: Post-questionnaire results of second step.

Questions Students´ answers

Easy to understand

the patterns

10 Strongly Agree; 8 Agree

There are difficult

patterns to

understand.

Comments

14 Strongly Disagree; 4 Agree.

"There are a lot of similar patterns.

Sometimes, it is not clear the

difference among them, e.g. there

are a lot of patterns related to

search.

Facility / benefits

of using patterns

18 students wrote answers like

“Help on thinking process, as well

as on choosing and designing of

elements interface”; “Increase

insights at discussions of group”,

etc.

Difficulty /

disadvantages of

using patterns

10 students wrote answers

expressing that “It is difficult to

choose appropriated patterns”.

There is not a table related to pattern-based

usability inspection because the data on Table 2 did

not change in this step. Welie´s patterns supported

many improvements on interfaces, such as Search

Field, Home Link, among other features that

students did not think before. On the other hand,

these specific changes do not represent co-authoring

proto-patterns solutions.

Third step – Students could change or do new

interfaces of prototypes considering Co-authoring

proto-patterns. Goal of this step – to observe if the

groups could apply co-authoring proto-patterns

solutions using the proto-patterns. The results of

this step are shown at Table 3 and Table 4.

Table 3: Post-questionnaire results of second step.

Questions Students´ answers

Easy to understand

the patterns

15 Strongly Agree; 7 Agree

There are difficult

patterns to

understand

20 Strongly Disagree; 2 Disagree

"I took a feel minutes to observe

the difference between Steps and

Characteristics of Steps patterns,

but it is not difficult.”

Facility / benefits

of using patterns

22 students wrote answers like

“Help on insights”; “From the

knowledge of the patterns was

easier to create the prototype”.

Difficulty /

disadvantages of

using patterns

None

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Table 4: Pattern-based usability inspection results.

Proto-

patterns

applied

Are there all solutions from proto-

patterns?

Group

Almost all,

excepted

Goal and

Reuse of

Information

No, students considered all

solutions from 5 patterns, but they

did not take into consideration

“Goal” and “Reuse of

Information” patterns.

Group

Almost all,

excepted

Goal

No, students considered all

solutions from 5 patterns, but they

did not take into consideration one

part of solution from “What needs

to be done”, because there are

instructions using technical

language. They did not apply

“Goal” pattern.

Group

All No, students considered all

solutions from 6 patterns, but they

did not take into consideration one

part of solution from

“Characteristics of steps”, because

it is not possible to change the

information ‘name of the game’

created, the name is defined

automatically.

Group

All Yes, students considered all

solutions from 7 patterns

Group

All Yes, students considered all

solutions from 7 patterns

5 FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

This paper describes co-authoring proto-patterns to

support on designing computer educational system

that allows co-authors adequate it considering

pedagogical goals and the diversity of students with

different profiles, necessities, etc. Through case

study was possible to collect some evidences:

First step, the groups could not reach co-

authoring proto-patterns solutions using other

strategies. Three groups designed interfaces that

represent a problem described at a proto-pattern but

their solutions did not represent the proto-pattern

solution, e.g., two groups divided the process to

insert the content of system into steps, but they

considered co-authors´ tasks to define steps;

however the pattern Steps describes to consider each

part of information. It helps co-authors know what

they have to do on each interface; they can also see

appropriated instructions and examples to be reused.

Second step, the groups could not reach co-

authoring proto-patterns solutions using Welie´s

patterns and, they could not identify patterns to

support on co-authoring design easily. The groups

were encouraged to write on interfaces the Welie´s

patterns applied, and two groups wrote 3 patterns

from 6 identified by one co-authoring expert as

appropriated for co-authoring process. Others

patterns, that the groups wrote, supported to improve

the interface, e.g., inserting search field, etc., but the

groups expressed difficulties to indentify appropriate

patterns to apply on interfaces, because there are a

lot of them. In this context, we see advantages to cite

others designers patterns in co-authoring patterns.

This strategy can help on indentifying appropriated

patterns easily, as well as while designers use co-

authoring patterns, they will be presented to others

that can also help them. It is important to highlight

that Wizard pattern from Welie describes the same

problem than Steps co-authoring proto-pattern. On

the other hand, the solutions are different. In the

Wizard, the steps are related to parts of task and, in

the Steps, the steps are related to parts of

information.

Third step, the groups could apply co-authoring

solutions using the proto-patterns. Considering the

pattern-based inspection, it was possible to observe

which solution was or was not applied. The most of

proto-patterns solutions were applied but some of

them have not been considered on design. For

example, Goal pattern was not considered by two

groups and Reuse of information by one, as well as

the groups B and C did not apply all the solution

described in one pattern. Then, these patterns will be

revised to be more understandable. On the other

hand, the groups knew how to use these solutions at

pattern-based usability inspection. For example,

group A and B did not apply “Goal” pattern, but at

inspection the group B identified that group A had

not applied “Goal” pattern and, then B suggested

some solutions considering the solution from this

pattern. This happening was evidence that the

essence of solution is described, but it can be clearer.

As future works, we will explain each proto-

pattern for students and they will be encouraged to

change or create new interfaces in order to observe if

the proto-patterns express the whole information

explained by one experienced co-authoring designer.

Educators will be invited to evaluate the prototypes.

Design patterns will be cited in co-authoring patterns

and, other case studies will be done.

These proto-patterns came from educational area

but we will investigate if they can be used on

designing of systems in different areas like business

in order to allow users identify the co-authoring

possibility and do that easily.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CAPES, FAPESP-Microsoft, CAPES-DFAIT and

BOEING.

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