Impact of end user human aspects on software engineering

Software is designed and built to help solve human problems. However, much current software fails to take into account the diverse end users of software systems and their differing characteristics and needs eg. age, gender, culture, language, educational level, socio-economic status, physical and mental challenges, etc. I give examples of some of these diverse end user characteristics and the need to better incorporate them into requirements engineering, design, implementation, testing, and defect reporting activities in software engineering. I report on some of our work trying to address some of these issues, including: use of personas to better characterise diverse end user characteristics; extending requirements and design models to capture diverse end user needs; analysis of app reviews and JIRA logs to identify problems and ways developers try to address them; analysis of approaches to improve the accessibility of software designs for diverse end users; adaptive user interfaces and model-driven engineering with human aspects; improved human-centric defect reporting approaches; and use of living lab co-design approaches to ensure end users are first class contributors during all phases of software development. I finish by outlining a research roadmap aiming to improve the incorporation of end user human aspects into software engineering.