IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction Conference 2008 (IHCI)

I have just received the acceptance of the paper:
Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

Paper is proposed to be in the proceedings of IADIS Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction Conference 2008 (IHCI) as "Reflection Paper" . However, I had to renounce to publish it due to personal issues, economical mayorly. I also think that it can be improved a lot, as can be realized reading reviewers comments.

Somme positive comments for the paper are:

• "The paper has reasonable technical quality, and clear and consistent diagram and use of technical language"
• "The architecture is based on newly technologies and use well-known patterns"
• "The subject is relevant: Collaborative web-based tools demand a lot of research and implementation work"
• "An excellent idea, very promissing but a lack of credibility as regard to the implementation and the evaluation"
• "Very interesting key issue"

Also, some weak points were remarked by reviewers:

• "This is more a position paper than the result of implementatory work"
• "The lack of any sort of formal discussion or results, makes it hard to see the real world value of the model proposed"
• "Scenarios could be used to improve the explanation, even using hypothetical situations/applications"
• "There is not a proof of concept"
• "In addition, the introduction needs to be expanded to include an overview of the literature on collaborative web-based systems and how is the main differences/similarities with respect to other existing tools (e.g. Google docs)"
• "Unfortunately, there is no evaluation that measures the impact of the system on actual users"
• "It seems unusual to have a paper written in English with references written in any other language"
• "You claim as key words psychology and data mining but you don't adress these questions seriously"
• "Your bibliography could be broadenned"
  

[Draft] Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

This is the first paper in which I collaborate as principal author, with the support of José Emilio Labra Gayo, Sheila Méndez Núñez and Ana Belén Martinez Prieto.

Special thanks to Lucía Méndez Núñez for her review of the translation from Spanish to English.

The paper addresess the need of a web environment for colaborative diagram design, with broad posibilities of functional extensions, configuration and personalization by users. The idea grows from my end degree project, but with some new improvements in order to check some metrics about colaborative diagram tools usability, mainly UML, as well as psycological studies of software engineering.

Abstract

There is a growing need for development tools ubiquity, due to the portability and availability problems concerning desktop applications. In this paper, we suggest an approach to avoid any further download or installation. The main goal is to offer a collaborative and extensible web environment which covers a series of domains highly demanded by different kinds of working groups, in which it is crucial to have tools which facilitate the exchange of information and the collaboration among their members. The result would be the development of one or several diagrams accesible from any geographical location, independently of the device employed. By means of this environment, it will be possible to do research on the usability of collaborative tools for design diagrams, mainly UML, as well as research on the psychology of software engineering, assessing the results coming from the employment of methodologies, techniques, paradigms, patterns, etc. Both at an individual and at a collaborative development group level.

Full paper

[PDF] Web Environment for Collaborative and Extensible Diagram Design

[PDF] Entorno Web para el Diseño Colaborativo y Extensible de Diagramas