Serious Games for Software Refactoring

The research topic focuses on the characterization of software quality considering the main software elements such as people, process and product. Many attributes (size, language, testing techniques etc.) probably could have an effect on the quality of software. In this thesis we aim to understand the impact of attributes of three P's (people, product, process) on the quality of software by empirical means. Software quality can be interpreted in many ways, such as customer satisfaction, stability and defects etc. In this thesis we adopt ‘defect density' as a quality measure. Therefore the research focus on the empirical evidences of the impact of attributes of the three P's on the software defect density. For this reason empirical research methods (systematic literature reviews, case studies, and interviews) are utilized to collect empirical evidence. Each of this research method helps to extract the empirical evidences of the object under study and for data analysis statistical methods are used. Considering the product attributes, we have studied the size, language, development mode, age, complexity, module structure, module dependency, and module quality and their impact on project quality. Considering the process attributes, we have studied the process maturity and structure, and their impact on the project quality. Considering the people attributes, we have studied the experience and capability, and their impact on the project quality. Moreover, in the process category, we have studied the impact of one testing approach called ‘exploratory testing' and its impact on the quality of software. Exploratory testing is a widely used software-testing practice and means simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution. We have analyzed the exploratory testing weaknesses, and proposed a hybrid testing approach in an attempt to improve the quality. Concerning the product attributes, we found that there exist a significant difference of quality between open and close source projects, java and C projects, and large and small projects. Very small and defect free modules have impact on the software quality. Different complexity metrics have different impact on the software quality considering the size. Product complexity as defined in Table 53 has partial impact on the software quality. However software age and module dependencies are not factor to characterize the software quality. Concerning the people attributes, we found that platform experience, application experience and language and tool experience have significant impact on the software quality. Regarding the capability we found that programmer capability has partial impact on the software quality where as analyst capability has no impact on the software quality. Concerning process attributes we found that there is no difference of quality between the project developed under CMMI and those that are not developed under CMMI. Regarding the CMMI levels there is difference of software quality particularly between CMMI level 1 and CMMI level 3. Comparing different process types we found that hybrid projects are of better quality than waterfall projects. Process maturity defined by (SEI-CMM) has partial impact on the software quality. Concerning exploratory testing, we found that exploratory testing weaknesses induce the testing technical debt therefore a process is defined in conjunction with the scripted testing in an attempt to reduce the associated technical debt of exploratory testing. The findings are useful for both researchers and practitioners to evaluate their projects

Software Engineering courses are perceived as being dry and boring. The education community has been looking at active learning and hands-on training techniques to engage students better and thereby provide a better understanding of concepts. This paper presents a web-based game called Scrumify, developed by undergraduate students, that is designed to introduce students to the Scrum software development process through story elements, and quiz mechanics. The game is designed to reinforce software engineering concepts more specifically agile software processes. Quizzes within the game are designed to grant points that inject a sense of competition for the users and motivation to learn the agile methodology concepts. Scrumify serves two objectives: software engineering education for audience of the game and web-based game development and software testing education for the developers of the game. Use of this game in classroom provides an active learning technique for agile software processes. Students are more engaged with games and thereby absorb the concepts better. The game was evaluated in a sophomore software engineering class and the results are presented.

Software refactoring is a crucial practice in modern software development methodologies, such as Agile and DevOps, as it enables teams to iteratively improve and evolve their codebases while minimizing the risk of introducing bugs or regressions. It fosters a culture of continuous improvement and code hygiene, ultimately leading to more robust, maintainable, and scalable software systems. However, research examining the impact of refactoring on code effectiveness is scarce. This study, therefore, seeks to investigate the impact of refactoring methods on the code’s effectiveness. The study was carried out in four distinct phases: refactoring methods selection, case study selection, software metric selection for evaluating the effectiveness of the code, and refactoring methods implementation. The five most prevalent refactoring methods (Extract Subclass, Extract Class, Introduce Parameter Object, Extract Method, and Move Method) were chosen and implemented in the jHotDraw case study. The refactoring methods were implemented 86 times across five experiments in the jHotDraw case study. The results indicate that Extract Subclass, Extract Class, and Introduce Parameter Object have a significant positive impact on code effectiveness, while Extract Method and Move Method do not affect code effectiveness. Practitioners and software designers can utilize this knowledge to make informed assessments regarding refactoring methods and produce software systems that are more reliable and effective.

The primary driver of the recent resurgence in virtual reality has been video gaming, and while VR games are becoming an increasingly saturated market, they are likely to linger as the field's prime mover for several years to come. Additionally, the availability of development tools such as Unity and Unreal, which allow professionals and novices alike to design and build games easily, means that the spring whence VR games issue will not soon be stanched. It is up to game designers and software engineers to map out the frontier that this medium opens up and, moreover, to do so with a careful eye toward not inundating the user in mishmashed sensory overload.

Due to the fact that the traditional Digital Electronic Technology (hereinafter referred to as DET) experiments bear sufficient reference material, elaborate design plan and complete design circuits (which makes it difficult for the students to design some experiments by themselves innovatively), but fail to bear enough experimenting methods, combined with the requirements raised by the competitions for experiment case teaching of elementary curriculums on electronic engineering and technique, in order to make some changes to the traditional experiment teaching, the paper innovated a new experiment case for the design of Rock-paper-scissors Game. In the design, two methods, Digital-integrated-circuit method and programmable-techniques method, are adopted to make it come true. When adopting digital-integrated-circuit method, right integrated circuit components will be employed according to the game-designing plan, using the software of Proteus to simulate it first, followed by debugging and testing of the hardware circuits on the bread board. The programmable-techniques method can describe the functions of the game on the development platform of the software of Quartus II by programming, adopting HDL (hardware description language). After right simulation, the programs will be downloaded onto FPGA experimental boxes or development board to realize the design of the game. The experimental case of Rock-paper-scissors Simulation Game is interesting and novel, which tends to stimulate the students to explore new world, study and innovate new things on their own. The adoption of the two methods will not only further enhance students’ knowledge application ability and engineer practice ability, but also help them better understand the difference of an experiment between the traditional and modern method, which will, in turn, understand the significance and value of programmable techniques in digital system designing.

With the advent of Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies which are crucial to Web 2.0 sites, Internet user experience has moved from the click-and-wait mode to a richer, faster and more interactive mode. Instead of refreshing the entire web page every time when a user requests a change, only updated information within the web page is modified. This allows RIAs to behave and feel more like desktop applications. Due to the evolving nature of RIAs, many efficiency issues need to be resolved before RIAs can behave like desktop applications. Ensuring the efficiency of RIAs is now an important issue. This is the reason why many web browsers advertise the speed of their JavaScript engines as one of the key features. Additionally, web application performance issues can affect corporate revenues because with every 1-second delay, customer satisfaction decreases . Two of the most popular RIA technologies are Adobe Flash and Ajax, and the efficiency of RIAs using both of these technologies can be improved. This dissertation introduces refactoring as a method to improve the efficiency of applications built using these platforms. Programmers using the techniques and tools introduced in this dissertation can greatly improve the efficiency and user experience of their applications. More specifically, the thesis introduces four techniques and tools. • A refactoring tool called ActionScript Refactoring Tool (ART) is introduced to improve the efficiency of Flash applications by rewriting ActionScript 3.0 code. • To aid programmers embed Flash programs effectively, a refactoring tool called FlashembedRT is introduced. This tool can refactor five popular markup-based Flash embedding methods to a JavaScript-based Flash embedding method called flashembed. • A refactoring approach to aid programmers transform their XML data structures into JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)-based structures to improve the efficiency of their applications is presented. A proof of concept tool called XtoJ shows that this transformation can be automated to help programmers rapidly access the efficiency gained when JSON is used. • A refactoring system called Form Transformation Tool (FTT) is proposed as a technique to help programmers convert traditional web forms into Web 2.0 Ajax-enabled forms.

Technical debt is the consequence of trade-offs made during software development to ensure speedy releases. The research community lacks rigorously evaluated guidelines to help practitioners characterize, manage and prioritize debt. This paper describes a study conducted with an industrial partner during their implementation of Agile development practices for a large software development division within the company. The report contains our initial findings based on ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews. The goal is to identify the best practices regarding managing technical debt so that the researchers and the practitioners can further evaluate these practices to extend their knowledge of the technical debt metaphor. We determined that the developers considered their own taxonomy of technical debt based on the type of work they were assigned and their personal understanding of the term. Despite management's high-level categories, the developers mostly considered design debt, testing debt and defect debt. In addition to developers having their own taxonomy, assigning dedicated teams for technical debt reduction and allowing other teams about 20% of time per sprint for debt reduction are good initiatives towards lowering technical debt. While technical debt has become a well-regarded concept in the Agile community, further empirical evaluation is needed to assess how to properly apply the concept for various development organizations.

As we transform into an aging and a computer prevalent society, an ever-increasing number of elderly hope to utilize computer resources. However, operation of the standard mouse requires precision and hand dexterity, which is increasingly difficult to execute as one ages. Therefore, to help the elderly enjoy digital resources, we must provide them with a suitable user interface. The aim of our study was to build an video-sensing game system. By detecting features from video input, no mouse is needed to execute the designed games. It is hoped that the system can give the elderly more chances to utilize their brain by playing cognition-training games. The interactive gaming system we developed is stored in a web server and is suitable for use by the average family, requiring only a small webcam and a basic computer with a web browser. The game system consisted of four games (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect 4, Fishing Card Game, and Arithmetic Game) and two operation modes (flag operation and gestures). In flag operation mode, the system recognition method is based on detecting regional color. In gestures mode, motion tracking is achieved by the mean shift algorithm. After building the system, we trial tested it and conducted assessment surveys. The survey results showed that flag operation mode received high marks of satisfaction. More than half of the testers agree or very agree with using the mode. Gestures mode received lower marks of satisfaction. Its technique requires improvement in the future. The testers gave high scores to our game design, and they regarded these games as helpful to their cognitive abilities. We hope that through casual and relaxing video-sensing gaming, it can help the elderly improve brain function utilization. The trial assessment results show that, to the elderly, flag operation mode is acceptable and the games are highly regarded. It also shows the feasibility of the designed gaming system.

Automata learning is emerging as an effective technique for obtaining state machine models of software and hardware systems. I will present an overview of recent work in which we used active automata learning to find standard violations and security vulnerabilities in implementations of network protocols such as TCP and SSH. Also, I will discuss applications of automata learning to support refactoring of legacy control software and identifying job patterns in manufacturing systems. As a guiding theme in my presentation, I will show how Galois connections (adjunctions) help us to scale the application of learning algorithms to practical problems.

Different works in the educational field have proposed many applications for serious games (SGs) that have had immense positive impact and great success. Nevertheless, despite their potential, the application of SGs in education has been limited in terms of pedagogy. Several authors assert that this lack is because SG standards and guidelines have not been developed, and that there is an imbalance between the contribution from experts in education and game design specialists during the SG development. Specifically, methodologies that incorporate both game and pedagogical components in the requirements definition phase are necessary to develop serious games successfully. The definition of requirements must guide the development process. Many SG studies and projects indicates that games that are not well designed at the initial phase lose qualities and fail to fulfill pedagogical objectives. The goal of this study is to present a framework for a game design methodology that gives the gamer options for flexible participation in the game. We analyze the tasks associated with game design methodologies and serious educational games, especially those linked to gamers with non-standard cognitive abilities. Our approach identifies how educational innovation and the teaching-learning process contribute to game design. We propose an overall development focus based on a participatory, flexible, user-centered methodology adaptable to any type of gamer.

This thesis proposes a new genre of outdoor games for children, namely Head Up Games. The concept was inspired by the observation that existing pervasive outdoor games for children were mostly played head down, as the predominantly screen-based interaction of existing games required constant attention of the children. First, the vision of Head Up Games is described and illustrated with several design cases (Chapter 2). In contrast to the head down games, Head Up Games aim to encourage and support rich social interaction and physical activity, play behaviors that are similar to play behaviors seen in traditional outdoor games (such as tag and hide-and-seek). The design process of Head Up Games poses several challenges. In User Centered Design it is commonly accepted to start the development of a new product using low-fi mock-ups, e.g., paper prototypes, and evaluate these with end-users. In the case of Head Up Games this proved to be difficult, as the emerging game experience is significantly altered when using paper prototypes. Therefore, a study was carried out that used high-fi prototypes, i.e. working, interactive, prototypes, from a very early stage in the design process (Chapter 3). This way, the effect of interactions on the game experience can be addressed earlier and better in the design process. Furthemore, having access to technology early in the design process, allows designers to better explore the design space. However, designers often do not possess adequate skills to quickly prototype interactive products, particularly products that need to be evaluated in an outdoor context. Such a development is often costly and time-consuming. Therefore, the RaPIDO platform was developed (Chapter 4). The platform not only includes the appropriate hardware for creating outdoor games, but is also bundled with software libraries, to allow designers not specifically trained in software engineering to adopt the platform easily. RaPIDO was evaluated using a case study methodology with two Industrial Design master students. The evaluation not only focused on the usability of the platform, but, more importantly, how the use of the platform affected the design process. The main conclusion of the study was that the designers indeed were able to rapidly create mobile games, and that the hardware offered was suitable for creating outdoor games. Furthermore, issues were identified with regard to writing the game software, e.g., managing the complexity of the software. Finally, for evaluating Head Up Games with children two methods were applied: the Outdoor Play Observation Scheme (OPOS) was used to quantify the intended play behavior. Furthermore, GroupSorter was developed to provide a framework to interview a group of children simultaneously, resulting in qualitative comments. Both OPOS and GroupSorter were applied for evaluating three Head Up Games, which are described in Chapter 5.

Chapter 2 - Measuring and Monitoring Technical Debt

This article uses the example of high-end raiding in the online game World of Warcraft to investigate the power relationships between players and producers and to examine how the notion of struggle can inform an understanding of co-creative game design. The study is based on a recently published dissertation work and complemented by an interview with two expert interviewees. The results of the study show that while game designers still have a de-facto power position in that they can ban guilds, however, producers are not seen as legitimate when exercising this power. Instead raiding guilds are reluctantly refereeing their game themselves and treat the game company at times even as an inconvenience to be played around. This participatory power is not given to raiders but it is the outcome of a struggle with the producers of the game. Raiders also explicitly criticize the exploitation of their labor in game testing.

Recently, smart phones have become a shining star in the mobile phone market, and the services provided by smart phones have significantly increased due to the advancements in hardware development and the great variety of user interfaces. Also, the stress of modern life has given more and more importance to the recreation and game industries. Therefore, this study aims to integrate a smart phone with a digital game so that the player can have the feel of real actions and enjoy the interaction during the game. By combining a digital game with a physical device, i.e., a mobile phone, the game player is provided with a richer gaming experience in which the mobile phone serves more than as a phone, and the game is more than tapping at a keyboard or clicking a mouse. The digital game in this study is about fishing. The fishing games on the market are typically played with a keyboard or a mouse, which nevertheless makes the games quite different from the real fishing experience. For example, the existing fishing games can hardly simulate the action of casting a fishing rod or reeling in the fish on the hook. In this study, a simulated setting is designed to mimic real situations so that digital interaction between the human and the computer in a human-computer interface can be assessed. A digital interactive game including both hardware and software is designed in this study, and whether the interactivity and the human-computer interface of the interactive game are acceptable by players is studied. According to questionnaire survey results, most players give positive evaluation to the combination of the mobile phone (i.e., hardware) and the digital game (i.e., software), and the more interactive the human-computer interface is, the stronger the interest and the greater the pleasure a player will feel in playing the game. Suggestions on how to improve the hardware and software design are also provided.

An important step towards gaining an understanding of how a particular medium can be used most effectively in education is to study its outstanding examples, regardless of their original purpose. It is assumed that “good” games already embody sound pedagogy in their designs even if that incorporation was not deliberate. The work described here is intended as a proof of concept for a larger study in progress. The following paragraphs will examine two games: one a commercial and critical success and the other designed deliberately as an educational game. The commercial game will be viewed as though it had been designed as a learning object. Through this perspective, it is possible to identify and classify built-in learning objectives and from there to associate the mechanisms and strategies employed to teach them. A significant outcome of the final work will be to describe how the existing strategies used to promote “learning objectives” in commercial video games can be used in the design of educational games. An additional outcome will be a synthesis of the core requirements for instructional design of digital games for learning. Anyone who makes a distinction between games and learning doesn't know the first thing about either.