A holistic intelligent environment quality traceability approach for user-centric context-aware systems

Context-awareness is increasingly an essential component of modern software systems. For example, in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and the Internet of Things (IoT), context-awareness can be applied to deliver life-critical systems that empower users by reducing their dependence on others. Appreciating this role and the impact of context-aware systems (CaSs), especially in healthcare and AAL, is crucial to ensuring that such systems are delivered to meet acceptable system qualities and be usable by their intended users. However, the literature reviewed shows that such systems lack sufficient software engineering processes and disciplines to guide the developers throughout the context-aware system development cycle to deliver a context-aware system that meets a specified set of system requirements and acceptable quality attributes. Further investigations showed fragments of efforts made in silos. However, these efforts provide inadequate structure, inadequate linkage among the development phases and inadequate tools to guide the developer throughout the context-aware system development process. Therefore, this research proposes a holistic intelligent environment quality traceability approach (IEQTA) tailored for user-centric context-aware systems to support the development team throughout the context-aware system development cycle and enhance the delivery of context-aware system quality to encourage user acceptance. The IEQTA is stakeholder-centric and has tools and procedures that provide a holistic

step-by-step context-aware development approach. The approach includes requirement and context specification, system design, testing and validation processes. It complements the User Centred Intelligent Environment Development Process (U-CIEDP), focusing on development steps and their interaction. The U-CIEDP has three distinct phases namely: (1) the initial phase; (2) the main development phase; and (3) the installation phase. During the initial phase, the IEQTA supports the development team by guiding them towards contextualising requirements. In the main development phase, the IEQTA testing support tool allows developers to explore specific test cases of interest or allow the system to automatically generate test cases whilst addressing the issue of combinatorial explosion. Finally, in the installation phase, the IEQTA provides a validation process that can identify and track the quality of system responses and supports the identification of incomplete requirements and contexts.

A case study for an AAL system called Depression Monitoring and Management System (DMMS) was developed to achieve proof of concept. The design, implementation and evaluation of the DMMS for meaningful requirements and contexts were achieved through collaboration with professionals from the Middlesex University London Psychology Department. To validate the approach's effectiveness from a software engineering point of view, context-aware system industry experts and university students evaluated the DMMS.