Approaches to software engineering: a human-centred perspective

  • Authors:
  • Liam J. Bannon

  • Affiliations:
  • Interaction Design Centre, Dept. of Computer Science & Information Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

  • Venue:
  • HCSE'10 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Human-centred software engineering
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The field of software engineering has been evolving since its inception in 1968. Arguments as to the exact nature of the field, whether it should be conceived as a real engineering profession, the role of formal methods, whether it is as much an art as a science, etc., continue to divide both practitioners and academics. My purpose here is not to debate these particular topics, but rather to approach the field from the outside, coming as I do from a long period of involvement in the human and social side of the computing discipline, namely, from the fields of Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Participative Design, Interaction Design, and Social Informatics, more generally. I wish to examine how this "human-centred" perspective might shed a new light on some issues within the SE field, perhaps opening up topics for further discussion and examination.