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International Symposium on Formal Methods

FM 2019: Formal Methods. FM 2019 International Workshops pp 61–76Cite as

Addressing Usability in a Formal Development Environment

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12232))

Abstract

Even though the formal method community tends to overlook the problem, formal methods are sometimes difficult to use and not accessible to average users. On one hand, this is due to the intrinsic complexity of the methods and, therefore, some level of required expertise is unavoidable. On the other hand, however, the methods are sometimes hard to use because of lack of a user-friendly tool support. In this paper, we present our experience in addressing usability when developing a framework for the Abstract State Machines (ASMs) formal method. In particular, we discuss how we enhanced modeling, validation, and verification activities of an ASM-based development process. We also provide a critical review of which of our efforts have been more successful as well as those that have not obtained the results we were expecting. Finally, we outline other directions that we believe could further lower the adoption barrier of the method.

P. Arcaini is supported by ERATO HASUO Metamathematics for Systems Design Project (No. JPMJER1603), JST. Funding Reference number: 10.13039/501100009024 ERATO.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://asmeta.sourceforge.net/.

  2. 2.

    The update site is http://svn.code.sf.net/p/asmeta/code/code/stable/asmeta_update/.

  3. 3.

    http://nusmv.fbk.eu/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Paolo Arcaini

  2. University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

    Silvia Bonfanti, Angelo Gargantini & Patrizia Scandurra

  3. Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Elvinia Riccobene

Authors
  1. Paolo Arcaini
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  2. Silvia Bonfanti
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  3. Angelo Gargantini
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  4. Elvinia Riccobene
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  5. Patrizia Scandurra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paolo Arcaini .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Emil Sekerinski

  2. University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Nelma Moreira

  3. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    José N. Oliveira

  4. Argo Ai, Munich, Germany

    Daniel Ratiu

  5. University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Riccardo Guidotti

  6. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Marie Farrell

  7. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Matt Luckcuck

  8. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Diego Marmsoler

  9. University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    José Campos

  10. University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Troy Astarte

  11. Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France

    Laure Gonnord

  12. Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

    Antonio Cerone

  13. University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Luis Couto

  14. University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Brijesh Dongol

  15. University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Martin Kutrib

  16. University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Pedro Monteiro

  17. Airbus Operations S.A.S., Toulouse, France

    David Delmas

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Arcaini, P., Bonfanti, S., Gargantini, A., Riccobene, E., Scandurra, P. (2020). Addressing Usability in a Formal Development Environment. In: Sekerinski, E., et al. Formal Methods. FM 2019 International Workshops. FM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12232. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54994-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54994-7_6

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