This project aims to define the human-centric features of mobile applications (apps) reflecting end-user human values and to model mobile app defects violating those values. The PhD candidate will compile a corpus of existing mobile apps and develop an automated “app feature values miner” to incrementally develop a new taxonomy and characterisation of human values associated with mobile app features that are to be validated with end-users and software engineers. In the next step, the PhD candidate will define a set of human values-based “anti-patterns” for mobile app features, i.e. places where apps typically exhibit values violating defects, using qualitative coding methods and classification algorithms. Using the corpus and anti-patterns, the PhD candidate will then develop a model to recommend values-oriented requirements to app developers that are relevant to the app context and target end-users. This position is funded by the ARC and the PhD candidate will work under the supervision of Prof. John Grundy, Dr Waqar Hussain, and Dr Humphrey Obie.
Required knowledge
Essential
- First class Honours or Masters degree including a substantial research project, GPA 80%+ in Software Engineering or related area.
- Bachelor with Honours or Masters by research degree in Software Engineering, Mobile Application Development or Human-Computer Interaction, ideally with experience with mobile app development, and machine learning.
Desirable
- Refereed publications including journal or conference of high repute.
