Usability Evaluation of Domain-Specific Languages

Abstract

Abstract-Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) are claimed to bring important productivity improvements to developers, when compared to General-Purpose Languages (GPLs). The increased Usability is regarded as one of the key benefits of DSLs when compared to GPLs, and has an important impact on the achieved productivity of the DSL users. So, it is essential to build in good usability while developing the DSL. The purpose of this proposal is to contribute to the systematic activity of Software Language Engineering by focusing on the issue of the Usability evaluation of DSLs. Usability evaluation is often skipped, relaxed, or at least omitted from papers reporting development of DSLs. We argue that a systematic approach based on User Interface experimental validation techniques should be used to assess the impact of new DSLs. For that purpose, we propose to merge common Usability evaluation processes with the DSL development process. In order to provide reliable metrics and tools we should reuse and identify good practices that exist in Human-Computer Interaction community.

Model-driven engineering: A survey supported by the unified conceptual model

“…On the other hand, Barišić proposed a process for evaluating the usability of DSLs [4]. Recently, Morais and Silva also proposed the ARENA framework and used it to compare and evaluate user-interface modeling languages [47].…”

“…Furthermore, some recent studies have shown that software language engineers do not even have the common practice of evaluating their own languages [22], and conclude that more research is mandatory in the area of software language processes, particularly in what concerns the design, development and evaluation of these languages [22,4,47]. Fig.…”

Usability Evaluation of Variability Modeling by means of Common Variability Language

“…They take into account different criteria such as graphical completeness, usability, development effort, handling of language evolution, integration with other languages or analysis capabilities. In [15] the authors discuss how user-centered design can be adapted to the context of DSLs development. As a result, they argue that usability should be fostered from the beginning of the DSL development cycle, enabling real people to use the DSL.…”

Towards a Generic DSL for Automated Marking Systems

“…It is largely the specification of different concrete syntaxes of the language that determines the language usability characteristics discussed in Section 3.2. A significant amount of work has been done to design DSLs guided by usability metrics [5,4]. The rigorous development of a concrete syntax guided by usability metrics is work which is currently in progress.…”