Abstract
In the emerging field of Internet of Things (IoT), where computerized devices are combined in creative new ways, there is a need to create Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for the systems being built, e.g. in the form of Android “apps”. This is generally a complicated, time consuming task. We report from a controlled experiment that evaluates a new approach for building GUIs that aims to make it easier for more people to build quality GUIs. A tool supporting the new approach (GPE) was compared to Android Studio (AS\({}_{}\)), the industry standard for Android development. Our data analysis shows that GPE is more effective than AS\({}_{}\) when performing certain tasks, with no measurable degrade in the quality of the produced GUIs. We conclude that non-Android developers and Android developers alike should consider using GPE rather than AS\({}_{}\) when building Android GUIs for PalCom based IoT systems.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Gunnar Weibull, M.Sc., for his work on implementing the Graphical PML Editor and for agreeing to train experiment participants in how to use the tool. We also thank Mia Månsson, M.Sc., for being an enthusiastic first user of the tool and for providing valuable insights on how to improve it. Furthermore, we thank all experiments subjects for taking the time to participate in our experiment. This research was founded by the Swedish research fund VINNOVA through its program on Challenge Driven Innovation, and by FORTE on a grant for Application Support in Healthcare (LUC3).
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Johnsson, B.A., Höst, M., Magnusson, B. (2016). Evaluating a GUI Development Tool for Internet of Things and Android. In: Abrahamsson, P., Jedlitschka, A., Nguyen Duc, A., Felderer, M., Amasaki, S., Mikkonen, T. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10027. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49094-6_12
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