Collaborative Modelling Interaction Mechanisms

• Autor(a) principal: Góis, Maria Inês Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/160540
• topic: Model-Driven Software Engineering; Modelling Tools; Collaboration; AToMPM; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

Through the years, there is an increasing demand for collaboration tools to aid remote and multi-collaboratorwork. Most of the regular and nontechnical tools are advancing rapidly when it comes to developing features for synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Even so, whenever collaboration comes into question, a particular type of tool has received less priority when compared to text editing tools. Modelling tools have suffered slower updates and a less sophisticated support level for collaboration. Software development is a highly collaborative process, and Model-Driven Development is a viable approach to raising the level of abstraction in which we specify software systems. Therefore, modelling tools are used by many stakeholders with diverse competencies and backgrounds, making collaboration between technical and nontechnical stakeholders a challenge. We want to minimize this challenge by modelling everything at the right level of abstraction, using the most appropriate formalism. To empower these diverse stakeholders on a possibly global scale, we analyzed interaction mechanisms that raise awareness of collaborative modelling by promoting consistency among different model views, their synchronization and traceability of the model changes that occur. To contribute to the evolution of features for collaboration, in modelling tools, in this thesis we developed and implemented a Shadow Tracking feature, which promotes synchronous collaboration in modelling tools. This feature was implemented from the beginning in the modelling tool AToMPM and was later evaluated using time and subjective effort metrics, followed by an evaluation using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The evaluation was experimental, through a set of academic studies.