ACUX: um guia para escrita de aspectos de UX em Critérios de Aceitação de User Stories

Abstract

In recent years, the use of agile software development practices has expanded. In this same context, the concern with User Experience (UX) factors in the software development process has become evident, which is a differential, an aspect of quality. Among the artifacts used in agile practices, User Stories (USs) have great prominence and acceptance, being these the most adopted method to document requirements in agile approaches, as they present points that developers need to elaborate direct form, from the end user perspective. Together with the USs, the Acceptance Criteria (ACs) are described, to complement them, presenting points that should be considered by developers when implementing the software, in addition to defining when a US is satisfied. The attention devoted to the requirements stage, significantly impacts the quality of a final product. However, even understanding the importance, it is common for UX-related requirements to be neglected in practice. It is observed that there is a demand for tools and methods that can eliminate difficulties both in requirements engineering related to UX, as well as in the integration of UX with agile development. Thus, the objective of this master’s project was to propose a guide, called ACUX, composed of guidelines to help developers and software teams to write aspects of UX in ACs of USs. From a preliminary study of the literature, it was possible to identify and understand the main related topics and obtain an overview of the research. A Systematic Literature Mapping (MSL) was conducted to gather evidence on existing approaches related to ACs and USs, and UX. The results confirmed the absence of studies focused on ACs, and made it possible to establish a relationship between the existing approaches and necessary actions for elaboration of the proposal. An exploratory study was conducted to identify how developers describe UX aspects in ACs, and for that, a qualitative analysis was carried out on a set of USs/ACs. The results showed that UX aspects can be included in ACs. ACUX was proposed considering information extracted from the MSL and from the results of exploratory study. The proposed guide was validated by four specialists, who are in the areas of: Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, and UX. After the validation process, the final version of ACUX was defined. ACUX was evaluated in a case study carried out in industry, in which two development teams, from two software startups, used ACUX in real projects. After use, the participants made the artifacts (USs and ACs) available that were prepared with the support of ACUX, and provided feedbacks on the use of the guide through interviews. The analysis of the artifacts showed that in the two startups, UX aspects were reported in most ACs elaborated with support of ACUX. The interviews, on the other hand, showed that ACUX conduce the writing of UX aspects in ACs, promoting the discussion of UX information.