Software development is a human intensive activity whatever the underlying production process it is based on. Though both software engineer ing (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI) communities aim towards creating better software products, the two communities are still far from being synergic while they could both gain from a better integration. Recent efforts have contributed to increase the synergy between SE and HCI. Nevertheless, this has not led to expected results and impacts with respect to software processes. Software product industry emphasizes the importance of contact with users and customers in order to understand requirements both regarding the functionality and the usability of software products. At the same time, multi layered software architectures are pursued in order to have robust and evolvable software products, according to the customers’ needs, even if they were not properly taken in to account at the beginning of the development process.

 

One might expect that such issues would lead to emphasize the core importance of human factors in software. Unfortunately this has not been the case. Indeed, recent literature has pointed out how in most empirical evaluations only a small number of works include human participants. Moreover, there is still little experience in conducting empirical studies with human participants.

 

Papers discussing topics on challenges and best practices of HCI in the evaluation of software processes and practices as well as software products are welcome.