Placing human needs, cognitive constraints, and social context at the centre of software design and engineering. This theme spans empirical software engineering, accessibility, crowdsourcing, and the human aspects of how software is built and used.
Software is built by people, for people. Yet much of software engineering research treats human factors as secondary. This theme takes the opposite view: understanding how developers, users, and stakeholders think, feel, and behave is essential to building software that works in practice — not just in benchmarks.
Related Publications
Full title: "Characterizing Human Aspects in Reviews of COVID-19 Apps". Empirical study of how users express human-centred concerns — privacy, usability, trust, emotional response — in app store reviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distinguished Paper Award at ACM MobileSoft 2022. Google Scholar ↗
Systematic approach to mining user reviews from app stores to extract actionable requirements — covering classification, prioritisation, and traceability to feature requests. Empirical Software Engineering journal. Google Scholar ↗
Empirical study of how crowdsourced feedback translates into requirements in large-scale software projects — examining what kinds of contributions are acted on and why. Google Scholar ↗
Comprehensive mapping of how accessibility requirements are specified, implemented, and evaluated across the software engineering literature — identifying gaps and future directions. Google Scholar ↗
Explores multi-modal emotion recognition as a signal for software quality concerns — detecting developer stress, confusion, and disengagement as early indicators of defect-prone code. Led by PhD student Ben Cheng. Google Scholar ↗
Web Portal for Climate Resilient Agricultural Services
Intelligent Social Media Platform for Cultural Heritage Preservation
Multi-Modal Emotion Recognition for Human-Centric Software Engineering
Virtual Reality for Human-Centric Requirements Elicitation
Related PhD Research
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