Abstract
How do users perceive the usability of a graphical modeling tool? Software engineers are accustomed to a variety of useful features in textual editing that also benefit graphical modeling tools, such as efficient auto-completion, automated formatters, and immediate feedback on the software. Developers of graphical modeling tools strive to assist users in creating high quality and scalable models, but need to consider difficult trade-offs when they modify the user interface of a modeling tool. Such trade-offs affect either usability aspects or user groups: For instance, adding a dedicated feature may support novice users in learning the tool, while slowing down experts.
Bianca Wiesmayr is part of the project team of Eclipse 4diac, an open source environment for graphically modeling industrial automation software. It allows building software based on IEC 61499, which standardizes a domain-specific language. The talk will provide an overview on ongoing research and development activities around both the language and the tool.
In her talk, she shares her experiences in dealing with such trade-offs in the context of the 4diac IDE. The presented multi-stage usability study supports software engineers, who do not have extensive knowledge of user interface design, using the framework “Cognitive Dimensions of Notations”. The dimensions represent usability criteria of modeling tools for discussing and assessing features and strategies. Based on the notation, Bianca Wiesmayr organized developer walk-throughs and user studies within the IEC 61499 community that revealed major usability flaws. Resolving these issues significantly increased the user satisfaction of 4diac IDE. Many lessons learnt may be applicable also to developers of other graphical modelling tools.
Biography
Bianca Wiesmayr is a researcher at the LIT Cyber-Physical Systems Lab at the Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria. Her research interests focus around the domain-specific modelling language IEC 61499 and the usability of the respective modelling tools. Bianca Wiesmayr received her Master’s degree in electronics and information technology from Johannes Kepler University in 2018. She currently pursues her PhD degree in computer science on the topic of using behaviour models for developing distributed control software. She is a team member of the Eclipse 4diac project, where she contributes to the development of an open source IDE for IEC 61499. Her research is published at conferences from the modelling and the industrial automation community. In 2020, she received the Best Paper Award for Factory Automation at the 25th IEEE Conference for Factory Automation and Emerging Technologies (ETFA).
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