Engineering safer interactive computing systems

We interact with technology to monitor and control the most varied aspects of our lives. Particularly for safety technology, such as is the case of medical devices, badly designed user interfaces can have unacceptable costs. Formal methods, in particular when tool supported, are gaining acceptance as a means to perform rigorous analysis of complex systems. This talk will provide an overview of work on interactive computing system modelling and analysis, discussing also its integration with more traditional user centred development approaches. Examples of problems with real user interfaces will be presented and the role that formal analysis can play discussed.

José C. Campos is a lecturer at University of Minho and senior researcher at INESC TEC. His interests centre on engineering interactive systems, at the intersection of Formal Methods, Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, with a particular interest in developing tools to automate analysis (e.g. the IVY model-based user interfaces analysis tool). He is a member of the steering committee of the ACM Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS), of the Proc. ACM on HCI EICS editorial board, and chairs the IFIP working group 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering. He is a member of the College of Assessors of the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment.