Primary supervisor

Humphrey Obie

User reviews on app distribution platforms such as Google Play store and Apple App store are a valuable source of information, ideas, and requests from users. They reflect the needs and challenges users encounter including bugs, feature requests, and design. Recent research has shown that reviews can also serve as a proxy for understanding the values of the users and how users perceive that their values have been violated by the mobile app/mobile app developers. However, there are limited studies that show whether mobile app updates fix violations of the user's values and to what extent. This study aims to systematically analyse the evolution of user reviews with respect to human values while taking into account a set of mobile app updates.


 

Student cohort

Single Semester
Double Semester

URLs/references

  • H. Obie, W. Hussain, X. Xia, J. Grundy, L. Li, B. Turhan, J. Whittle and M. Shahin, "A First Look at Human Values-Violation in Mobile Apps," ICSE ’21: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, Madrid, Spain.
  • Li, X., Z. Zhang and K. Stefanidis. “Mobile App Evolution Analysis Based on User Reviews.” SoMeT (2018).
  • D. Mougouei, "Engineering human values in software through value programming," ICSEW’20. p. 133–136.
  • E. Winter, S. Forshaw, and M. A. Ferrario. 2018. "Measuring human values in software engineering." ESEM '18: ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement. 

Required knowledge

  • Excellent communication and writing skills
  • Good knowledge of qualitative and quantitative analysis
  • Programming experience (preferably Python)