O principal objetivo do desenvolvimento de aplicações multimodais é possibilitar uma maneira mais natural dos seres humanos se comunicarem com as máquinas, por meio de interfaces mais eficientes, intuitivas, fáceis de usar e, de certa forma, mais inteligentes. No entanto, a literatura da área mostra que a reutilização, tanto de conhecimento como de código fonte, ainda apresenta problemas, dados a complexidade do código em sistemas multimodais, a falta de mecanismos eficientes de testes de usabilidade e a dificuldade em se gerenciar a captura, o armazenamento e a recuperação de conhecimento de projeto. Nesta tese argumenta-se que a utilização de uma abordagem sistemática, centrada no usuário, apoiada por uma ferramenta computacional e com um modelo bem definido que permita o desenvolvimento de interfaces multimodais com a reutilização de Design Rationale, aumenta e melhora os níveis de usabilidade, promove a identificação e utilização de padrões de projeto e o reúso de componentes. Para demonstrar esta tese, apresenta-se neste texto a abordagem para o desenvolvimento de interfaces multimodais Web, MMWA, e o seu ambiente de autoria, o MMWA-ae, ambos compostos por atividades que auxiliam a equipe de projeto durante as fases de projeto, desenvolvimento e avaliações de usabilidade. São discutidos também os resultados obtidos com a execução de três estudos de caso, realizados no ambiente acadêmico, nos quais se buscou determinar a viabilidade da abordagem e os benefícios que podem ser alcançados com a combinação de diferentes técnicas, a saber: design rationale, padrões de projeto, modelagem de tarefas, componentes de software, princípios de usabilidade, avaliações heurísticas, testes com usuários, regras de associação, entre outras. Os resultados evidenciam que a abordagem e seu ambiente de autoria podem proporcionar diferentes benefícios para organizações que desenvolvem sistemas multimodais, incluindo o aumento da usabilidade e consequentemente da qualidade do produto, bem como a diminuição de custos e da complexidade do desenvolvimento com a reutilização de código e de conhecimento capturado em projetos anteriores / The main goal of developing multimodal applications is to enable a more natural way of communication between human beings and machines through interfaces that are more efficient, intuitive, easier to use and, in a certain way, more intelligent. However, the literature shows that the reuse of both knowledge and source code still presents problems, given the complexity of the code in multimodal systems, the lack of efficient mechanisms to test the usability and the difficulty in managing the capture, the storage and the recovery of design knowledge. In this thesis it is discussed that the use of a systematic approach, usercentered, supported by a computer tool and with a well defined model that allows the development of multimodal interfaces with the reuse of DR, increases and improves the usability levels, promotes the identification and the use of design patterns and the reuse of components. To demonstrate this thesis, it is shown in this text an approach to develop Web multimodal interfaces (MMWA) and its authoring environment (MMWA-ae), both composed of activities that help the design team during the different project phases: design, development and usability evaluation. We also discuss in this thesis the results obtained with the execution of three case studies, executed in the academic environment, which aimed to determine the feasibility of the approach and the benefits that can be achieved with the combination of different techniques, such as: design rationale, design patterns, tasks model, software components, usability principles, heuristic evaluations, user testing, association rules, among others. The results show clearly that the approach and its author environment can provide different benefits to organizations that develop multimodal systems, including the usability improvement and, consequently, the quality of the product, as well as the decrease of costs and complexity since it encompasses the development with reused code and design knowledge captured in previous projects

Atenção especial tem sido dada às atividades de documentação e suporte a projetos em Engenharia de Software, principalmente quando estão relacionadas a sistemas complexos e equipes distribuídas. Geralmente apenas se registram as informações relativas às decisões finais de determinada fase. Não são documentadas as razões de cada decisão e nem as alternativas que foram consideradas e descartadas. A captura e recuperação, de maneira eficiente, deste tipo de informação é a finalidade do estudo do Design Rationale. O registro destas informações pode facilitar a manutenção, o reuso e também a própria fase de elaboração do projeto, na medida em que possibilita um melhor entendimento do sistema, por meio da disseminação de conhecimento, comunicação e integração entre a equipe de projeto. A questão é quando e como capturar estas informações sem muita interferência junto às atividades usuais dos projetistas, a fim de que os benefícios possam superar os custos envolvidos nesta tarefa. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo mostrar com razões plausíveis a grande utilidade da aplicação da técnica de Design Rationale em projetos de sistemas ERP, propondo um novo modelo de representação das decisões de projeto para estes sistemas. / Special attention has been given to documentation and support activities in Software Engineering design, mainly when they are related to complex systems and distributed teams. Usually, information related to the final decisions of each phase is registered. However, the reasons of each decision and the alternatives that were considered and discarded are not documented. Capture and recovery of this type of information, in an efficient way, are the purposes of the Design Rationale study. Recording this information can facilitates maintenance, reuse and even the design phase, providing a better understanding of the system, by knowledge spread, communication and integration among the project team. The main concern is when and how to capture this information with low interference in designers\' usual activities, so that benefits can overcome costs involved in this task. The purpose of the present work is to show with plausible reasons the great usefulness of the application of Design Rationale technique in ERP systems design, proposing a new representation model for recording design decisions in these system.

Durante o processo de desenvolvimento de software, uma grande quantidade de documentos é gerada com o propósito de registrar as experiências e as decisões relacionadas ao projeto de software. Apesar do esforço empregado na documentação de tais informações, muitas vezes esses documentos não contêm informações suficientes e necessárias para o completo entendimento do software, para a reutilização das experiências adquiridas e a recuperação do processo de tomada de decisão. De maneira geral, apenas as decisões finais a respeito do projeto são documentadas. O Design Rationale (DR) consiste das informações adicionais aos documentos padrões em um processo de desenvolvimento de software, facilitando sua compreensão, manutenção e reuso. Na literatura, muitas pesquisas referem-se aos problemas relacionados à atividade de captura de DR, principalmente no que diz respeito à sobrecarga de trabalho durante o momento de design. O desenvolvimento de mecanismos que facilitem a captura de Design Rationale durante a elaboração de artefatos de software é ainda um desafio. No contexto de ferramentas CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering), cuja utilização enfrenta grande resistência por parte de seus usuários (desenvolvedores), torna-se imprescindível a aplicação de técnicas para garantir a máxima usabilidade dessas ferramentas, de forma a minimizar a resistência à sua utilização. O paradigma da computação ubíqua trouxe grandes mudanças ao desenvolvimento de aplicações da Ciência da Computação, visto que estas aplicações são transparentes, apresentam um comportamento contínuo e ciente de contexto, e visam tornar a interação com o usuário a mais natural possível. Diante desse contexto, a adoção de mecanismos de computação ubíqua na atividade de captura de DR torna-se uma abordagem de interesse científico. O uso de mecanismos de computação ubíqua faz com que a captura das informações e decisões relacionadas ao projeto de software seja realizada de forma mais natural, reduzindo a sobrecarga do uso de uma ferramenta que necessite de tempo adicional para o armazenamento do DR, seja durante o processo de tomada de decisões ou depois do mesmo. Assim sendo, o trabalho realizado neste projeto de mestrado consistiu na reengenharia de uma ferramenta de suporte a DR e à sua integração com um editor gráfico que permite a escrita manual e oferece um serviço de reconhecimento de escrita, de modo a prover uma maneira mais flexí?vel para a entrada de dados e que pode ser utilizada em dispositivos com diferentes tamanhos e características, tais como Tablet PCs e lousas eletrônicas / During the process of software development, a great amount of documents is generated with the purpose of registering experiences and decisions related to software project. Despite the effort made aiming at documenting of such information, in general, these documents do not contain enough and necessary information for the complete understanding of the software, for the reuse of the acquired experiences and the recovery of the process of decision making. In general, only the final decisions regarding the project are registered. The Design Rationale (DR) consists of the additional information to standards documents in a process of software development, aiming to facilitate its understanding, maintenance and reuse. In literature, many researches reveal the problems related to the activity of DR capture, especially related to the work overload during the moment of design. The development of mechanisms to facilitate the Design Rationale capture, during the elaboration of software artifacts, is still a challenge. In the context of CASE (Computer Aided Engineering Software) tools usage, users (developers) present great resistance, so the application of techniques to achieve the maximum usability in the tools becomes essential, aiming to minimize the resistance to their adoption. The paradigm of ubiquitous computing brought great innovations to the development of applications, since the applications are transparent; they present a continuous and aware context behavior, and aim the user-computer interaction become the most natural as possible. For that reason, the adoption of ubiquitous computing mechanisms in the activity of DR capture becomes an approach of scientific interest. The use of the ubiquitous computing makes the capture of the information and decisions related to software project be carried out on a more natural way, reducing the overload of using a tool that needs additional time for the DR storage, either during the process of making decisions or just after. This master project consisted of re-engineering of a DR tool and its integration with a graphical editor. The editor allows handwriting and offers a service of writing recognition in order to provide a more flexible way for the data entry and can be used in devices of different sizes and characteristics, such as Tablet PCs and electronic blackboards.

Atenção especial tem sido dada às atividades de documentação e suporte a projetos em Engenharia de Software, principalmente quando estão relacionadas a sistemas complexos e equipes distribuídas. Geralmente apenas se registram as informações relativas às decisões finais de determinada fase. Não são documentadas as razões de cada decisão e nem as alternativas que foram consideradas e descartadas. A captura e recuperação, de maneira eficiente, deste tipo de informação é a finalidade do estudo do Design Rationale. O registro destas informações pode facilitar a manutenção, o reuso e também a própria fase de elaboração do projeto, na medida em que possibilita um melhor entendimento do sistema, por meio da disseminação de conhecimento, comunicação e integração entre a equipe de projeto. A questão é quando e como capturar estas informações sem muita interferência junto às atividades usuais dos projetistas, a fim de que os benefícios possam superar os custos envolvidos nesta tarefa. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo mostrar com razões plausíveis a grande utilidade da aplicação da técnica de Design Rationale em projetos de sistemas ERP, propondo um novo modelo de representação das decisões de projeto para estes sistemas. / Special attention has been given to documentation and support activities in Software Engineering design, mainly when they are related to complex systems and distributed teams. Usually, information related to the final decisions of each phase is registered. However, the reasons of each decision and the alternatives that were considered and discarded are not documented. Capture and recovery of this type of information, in an efficient way, are the purposes of the Design Rationale study. Recording this information can facilitates maintenance, reuse and even the design phase, providing a better understanding of the system, by knowledge spread, communication and integration among the project team. The main concern is when and how to capture this information with low interference in designers\' usual activities, so that benefits can overcome costs involved in this task. The purpose of the present work is to show with plausible reasons the great usefulness of the application of Design Rationale technique in ERP systems design, proposing a new representation model for recording design decisions in these system.

Enterprise systems (ES) implementation, especially Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP), is an extensively researched topic in recent years. Existing papers focus mainly on the success or failure of the project analyzed from the client’s standpoint. Although authors agree that a successful implementation requires the participation of consultants from a Value-Added Reseller (VAR), little or no work has been published that examines the topic from this perspective. While it is true that this kind of implementation is not strictly related to the traditional software development lifecycle, the two have many things in common and the former can benefit from software engineering techniques. Intellectual capital found in the heads of consultants, developers, project managers, and all other project stakeholders is VAR’s main asset as well as in most of software-related organizations. Hence, it is critical to preserve it in order to safeguard the foundation of these organizations. The goal of this paper is to propose rationale management as the basis of knowledge preservation for enterprise systems VARs. Enterprise systems implementation process, including its actors, challenges, and the knowledge that surrounds it, is examined to justify the proposal. To assess the perception of real-world VARs about knowledge management applicability and their existing strategies, a questionnaire was applied to 3 executives. Their answers confirmed that knowledge is considered vital to their organizations but the methodologies as well as the tools currently utilized to preserve it are rudimentary and distant from the theoretical literature. / text

O principal objetivo do desenvolvimento de aplicações multimodais é possibilitar uma maneira mais natural dos seres humanos se comunicarem com as máquinas, por meio de interfaces mais eficientes, intuitivas, fáceis de usar e, de certa forma, mais inteligentes. No entanto, a literatura da área mostra que a reutilização, tanto de conhecimento como de código fonte, ainda apresenta problemas, dados a complexidade do código em sistemas multimodais, a falta de mecanismos eficientes de testes de usabilidade e a dificuldade em se gerenciar a captura, o armazenamento e a recuperação de conhecimento de projeto. Nesta tese argumenta-se que a utilização de uma abordagem sistemática, centrada no usuário, apoiada por uma ferramenta computacional e com um modelo bem definido que permita o desenvolvimento de interfaces multimodais com a reutilização de Design Rationale, aumenta e melhora os níveis de usabilidade, promove a identificação e utilização de padrões de projeto e o reúso de componentes. Para demonstrar esta tese, apresenta-se neste texto a abordagem para o desenvolvimento de interfaces multimodais Web, MMWA, e o seu ambiente de autoria, o MMWA-ae, ambos compostos por atividades que auxiliam a equipe de projeto durante as fases de projeto, desenvolvimento e avaliações de usabilidade. São discutidos também os resultados obtidos com a execução de três estudos de caso, realizados no ambiente acadêmico, nos quais se buscou determinar a viabilidade da abordagem e os benefícios que podem ser alcançados com a combinação de diferentes técnicas, a saber: design rationale, padrões de projeto, modelagem de tarefas, componentes de software, princípios de usabilidade, avaliações heurísticas, testes com usuários, regras de associação, entre outras. Os resultados evidenciam que a abordagem e seu ambiente de autoria podem proporcionar diferentes benefícios para organizações que desenvolvem sistemas multimodais, incluindo o aumento da usabilidade e consequentemente da qualidade do produto, bem como a diminuição de custos e da complexidade do desenvolvimento com a reutilização de código e de conhecimento capturado em projetos anteriores / The main goal of developing multimodal applications is to enable a more natural way of communication between human beings and machines through interfaces that are more efficient, intuitive, easier to use and, in a certain way, more intelligent. However, the literature shows that the reuse of both knowledge and source code still presents problems, given the complexity of the code in multimodal systems, the lack of efficient mechanisms to test the usability and the difficulty in managing the capture, the storage and the recovery of design knowledge. In this thesis it is discussed that the use of a systematic approach, usercentered, supported by a computer tool and with a well defined model that allows the development of multimodal interfaces with the reuse of DR, increases and improves the usability levels, promotes the identification and the use of design patterns and the reuse of components. To demonstrate this thesis, it is shown in this text an approach to develop Web multimodal interfaces (MMWA) and its authoring environment (MMWA-ae), both composed of activities that help the design team during the different project phases: design, development and usability evaluation. We also discuss in this thesis the results obtained with the execution of three case studies, executed in the academic environment, which aimed to determine the feasibility of the approach and the benefits that can be achieved with the combination of different techniques, such as: design rationale, design patterns, tasks model, software components, usability principles, heuristic evaluations, user testing, association rules, among others. The results show clearly that the approach and its author environment can provide different benefits to organizations that develop multimodal systems, including the usability improvement and, consequently, the quality of the product, as well as the decrease of costs and complexity since it encompasses the development with reused code and design knowledge captured in previous projects

Durante o processo de desenvolvimento de software, uma grande quantidade de documentos é gerada com o propósito de registrar as experiências e as decisões relacionadas ao projeto de software. Apesar do esforço empregado na documentação de tais informações, muitas vezes esses documentos não contêm informações suficientes e necessárias para o completo entendimento do software, para a reutilização das experiências adquiridas e a recuperação do processo de tomada de decisão. De maneira geral, apenas as decisões finais a respeito do projeto são documentadas. O Design Rationale (DR) consiste das informações adicionais aos documentos padrões em um processo de desenvolvimento de software, facilitando sua compreensão, manutenção e reuso. Na literatura, muitas pesquisas referem-se aos problemas relacionados à atividade de captura de DR, principalmente no que diz respeito à sobrecarga de trabalho durante o momento de design. O desenvolvimento de mecanismos que facilitem a captura de Design Rationale durante a elaboração de artefatos de software é ainda um desafio. No contexto de ferramentas CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering), cuja utilização enfrenta grande resistência por parte de seus usuários (desenvolvedores), torna-se imprescindível a aplicação de técnicas para garantir a máxima usabilidade dessas ferramentas, de forma a minimizar a resistência à sua utilização. O paradigma da computação ubíqua trouxe grandes mudanças ao desenvolvimento de aplicações da Ciência da Computação, visto que estas aplicações são transparentes, apresentam um comportamento contínuo e ciente de contexto, e visam tornar a interação com o usuário a mais natural possível. Diante desse contexto, a adoção de mecanismos de computação ubíqua na atividade de captura de DR torna-se uma abordagem de interesse científico. O uso de mecanismos de computação ubíqua faz com que a captura das informações e decisões relacionadas ao projeto de software seja realizada de forma mais natural, reduzindo a sobrecarga do uso de uma ferramenta que necessite de tempo adicional para o armazenamento do DR, seja durante o processo de tomada de decisões ou depois do mesmo. Assim sendo, o trabalho realizado neste projeto de mestrado consistiu na reengenharia de uma ferramenta de suporte a DR e à sua integração com um editor gráfico que permite a escrita manual e oferece um serviço de reconhecimento de escrita, de modo a prover uma maneira mais flexí?vel para a entrada de dados e que pode ser utilizada em dispositivos com diferentes tamanhos e características, tais como Tablet PCs e lousas eletrônicas / During the process of software development, a great amount of documents is generated with the purpose of registering experiences and decisions related to software project. Despite the effort made aiming at documenting of such information, in general, these documents do not contain enough and necessary information for the complete understanding of the software, for the reuse of the acquired experiences and the recovery of the process of decision making. In general, only the final decisions regarding the project are registered. The Design Rationale (DR) consists of the additional information to standards documents in a process of software development, aiming to facilitate its understanding, maintenance and reuse. In literature, many researches reveal the problems related to the activity of DR capture, especially related to the work overload during the moment of design. The development of mechanisms to facilitate the Design Rationale capture, during the elaboration of software artifacts, is still a challenge. In the context of CASE (Computer Aided Engineering Software) tools usage, users (developers) present great resistance, so the application of techniques to achieve the maximum usability in the tools becomes essential, aiming to minimize the resistance to their adoption. The paradigm of ubiquitous computing brought great innovations to the development of applications, since the applications are transparent; they present a continuous and aware context behavior, and aim the user-computer interaction become the most natural as possible. For that reason, the adoption of ubiquitous computing mechanisms in the activity of DR capture becomes an approach of scientific interest. The use of the ubiquitous computing makes the capture of the information and decisions related to software project be carried out on a more natural way, reducing the overload of using a tool that needs additional time for the DR storage, either during the process of making decisions or just after. This master project consisted of re-engineering of a DR tool and its integration with a graphical editor. The editor allows handwriting and offers a service of writing recognition in order to provide a more flexible way for the data entry and can be used in devices of different sizes and characteristics, such as Tablet PCs and electronic blackboards.

Um processo de software é definido pelas diversas atividades comumente efetuadas durante o desenvolvimento de software, considerando que tais atividades sejam realizadas sob políticas bem definidas e procedimentos bem estabelecidos. Assim, existem diversos modelos de processo de desenvolvimento de software, que visam garantir a qualidade do produto desenvolvido por meio de tal processo. Identificando a necessidade de processos de software específicos para o desenvolvimento de software livre, devido aos modelos tradicionais não considerarem as características do desenvolvimento deste tipo de software, foi proposto no contexto do Projeto QualiPSo o modelo OMM (Open Source Maturity Model). Com o intuito de contribuir com o modelo OMM e a comunidade de software livre, esse trabalho teve como um de seus objetivos a análise do emprego de wikis no processo de desenvolvimento de software. Outro objetivo dessa pesquisa foi o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para mensurar o quanto de documentação e registro de Design Rationale tem sido realizado em uma wiki / A software process is defined by several activities commonly performed during the software development, whereas such activities are conducted under well defined policies and and well established procedures. Thus, there are various models of software development process designed to ensure the quality of the product developed through this processes. By identifying the need for software processes specific to the development of free software, due to traditional models do not consider the characteristics of this type of software, the OMM Model (Open Source Maturity Model) was proposed in the the QualiPSos project context. Aiming to contribute with the OMM model and free software community, one of this work objectives was the analysis of using wikis in the software development process. The other objective of this research was to develop a tool to measure how much documentation and registration of Design Rationale has been performed in a wiki

Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, mit Hilfe 35 normalhörender Probanden im Alter von 19-27 Jahren Schwellenkurven (Speech reception threshold) zu einem neu aufgenommenen dynamischen Einsilbertest mit den Zahlen eins bis zwölf (enthält den Zweisilber sieben) und den Farben braun, blau, gelb, grün, rot, schwarz und weiß zu erstellen. Die Versuche sollten zunächst orientierende Ergebnisse der Sprachverständlichkeiten zu den verschiedenen Sprachmodi ohne Störlärm liefern. Das Besondere an diesem sprachaudiometrischen Test waren neun verschiedene Sprachmodi, kombiniert aus den Stimmen drei verschiedener, unterschiedlich gut trainierter Sprecher – Mann, Frau und Kind – mit den oben genannten Wörtern in geflüsterter, normaler und gebrüllter Sprache. Die für jeden Modus charakteristischen Sprachverständlichkeits-schwellen sind eine 50%ige Sprachverständlichkeit in den Modi Mann flüsternd bei einem Schalldruckpegel von 32,0 dB, Frau flüsternd bei 31,7 dB, Kind flüsternd bei 38,3 dB; Mann normal bei 26,7 dB; Frau normal bei 23,4 dB, Kind normal bei 25,7 dB; Mann laut bei 17,9 dB, Frau laut bei 16,6 dB und Kind laut bei 13,2 dB. Hieran kann deutlich gezeigt werden, dass stimmlose Flüstersprache schwieriger verstanden wird und höhere Schalldruckpegel zum Erreichen der Schwelle bzw. der vollständigen Sprachverständlichkeit benötigt, als leiser gedrehte normal betonte Sprache, wie es bei üblichen Sprachtests der Fall ist. Die verschiedenen Steigungen der sigmoidalen Sprachverständlich-keitskurven von Mann flüsternd 3,4%/dB, Frau flüsternd 4,3%/dB, Kind flüsternd 2,6%/dB; Mann normal 5,9%/dB; Frau normal 5,1%/dB, Kind normal 2,9%/dB; Mann laut 5,0%/dB, Frau laut 2,2%/dB und Kind laut 2,7%/dB, zusammen mit weiteren graphischen Analysen der Verständlichkeits-Pegel-Diagramme, lassen die Sprecherqualitäten der jeweiligen Sprachmodi beurteilen. Die Variabilitäten sowohl interindividuell als auch sprachmodusbezogen zeigen, dass erst verschiedene Sprecher sowie unterschiedliche Betonung der Testsprache geeignet sein könnten, um dem gesamten Sprachspektrum, dem ein Mensch in seinem sozialen Umfeld ausgesetzt ist, bei der Hörgeräte-anpassung näher zu kommen. Dieser neue Sprachtest vereint in Geschlecht und Alter verschiedene Sprecher mit geflüsterter, normaler und gerufener Sprache und wird durch sein knappes Testwörtervolumen klinisch anwendbar. Durch das größere getestete Sprachspektrum könnte bereits eine beginnende, subjektiv noch nicht wahrgenommene Schwerhörigkeit aufgedeckt werden. Die Untersuchungen des Sprachmaterials zeigen, dass ein Proband je nach Trainingslevel des Sprechers unterschiedlich gute Sprachverständlichkeiten erreicht. Ein Testergebnis ist somit nicht unerheblich von der Qualität des Sprechers abhängig. Weiterhin werden auch die Sprachverständlichkeiten auf jedes einzelne Wort hin betrachtet. Das Testmaterial erscheint außer den Wörtern „acht“ und „braun“ in seiner Verständlichkeit homogen. So ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass sich Hörgeräteträger in besonderen Alltagssituationen, zum Beispiel während eines Gesprächs mit dem Enkel, von ihrer Hörhilfe im Stich gelassen fühlen. Dies bestätigen Zahlen aus Studien über die allgemein niedrige Hörgeräteakzeptanz. Die für einen Hörverlust typischen Handicaps und die damit verbundenen Anforderungen an ein Hörgerät verlangen sensiblere Methoden zur Hörgeräteanpassung mit dem Ziel, die Hörgeräteakzeptanz zu verbessern. Die Untersuchung des Testmaterials an Menschen mit Hörverlust sowie in einer alltagsnahen Testsituation mit Störlärm soll in weiteren Studien abgeklärt werden. / The aim was to generate the speech reception thresholds of a new developed speech audiometry test on 35 normal hearing persons in the age of 19-27. The test contains the numbers one to twelve and the colours brown, blue, yellow, green, red, black and white. First the experiment should result in normal curves without background noise. The speciality of this speech test were nine different mode in speech, combined of three different voices of speakers with different training level - man, woman and child - with whispered, normal and shouted intonation. The characteristic speech reception thresholds were with "man whispered" at 32,0 dB, "woman whispered" at 31,7 dB, "child whispered" at 38,3 dB, "man normal" at 26,7 dB, "woman normal" at 23,4 dB, "child normal" at 25,7 dB, "man shouted" at 17,9 dB, "woman shouted" at 16,6 dB and "child shouted" at 13,2 dB. The gradients and the graphic analysis of the curves gave information about the speakers quality. The variabilities show, that different speakers and different mode of speech could be able to simulate the whole acoustic spectrum in the process of fitting a hearing aid. This speech audiometry test could be a method to make this process more sensitive in order to advance the acceptance of using a hearing aid. The examination of this test material on people with hearing loss as well as in an "everyday-like" situation with background noise has to be accomplished in further studies.

Large systems often have a long life-span and their system and software architecture design comprise many intricately related elements. The verification and maintenance of these architecture designs require an understanding of how and why the system are constructed. Design rationale is the reasoning behind a design and it provides an explanation of the design. However, the reasoning is often undocumented or unstructured in practice. This causes difficulties in the understanding of the original design, and makes it hard to detect inconsistencies, omissions and conflicts without any explanations to the intricacies of the design. Research into design rationale in the past has focused on argumentation-based design deliberations. Argumentation-based design rationale models provide an explicit representation of design rationale. However, these methods are ineffective in communicating design reasoning in practice because they do not support tracing to design elements and requirements in an effective manner. In this thesis, we firstly report a survey of practising architects to understand their perception of the value of design rationale and how they use and document this knowledge. From the survey, we have discovered that practitioners recognize the importance of documenting design rationale and frequently use them to reason about their design choices. However, they have indicated certain barriers to the use and documentation of design rationale. The results have indicated that there is no systematic approach to using and capturing design rationale in current architecture design practice. Using these findings, we address the issues of representing and applying architecture design rationale. We have constructed a rationale-based architecture model to represent design rationale, design objects and their relationships, which we call Architecture Rationale and Element Linkage (AREL). AREL captures both qualitative and quantitative rationale for architecture design. Quantitative rationale uses costs, benefits and risks to justify architecture decisions. Qualitative rationale documents the issues, arguments, alternatives and tradeoffs of a design decision. With the quantitative and qualitative rationale, the AREL model provides reasoning support to explain why architecture elements exist and what assumptions and constraints they depend on. Using a causal relationship in the AREL model, architecture decisions and architecture elements are linked together to explain the reasoning of the architecture design. Architecture Rationalisation Method (ARM) is a methodology that makes use of AREL to facilitate architecture design. ARM uses cost, benefit and risk as fundamental elements to rank and compare alternative solutions in the decision making process. Using the AREL model, we have proposed traceability and probabilistic techniques based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to support architecture understanding and maintenance. These techniques can help to carry out change impact analysis and rootcause analysis. The traceability techniques comprise of forward, backward and evolution tracings. Architects can trace the architecture design to discover the change impacts by analysing the qualitative reasons and the relationships in the architecture design. We have integrated BBN to AREL to provide an additional method where probability is used to evaluate and reason about the change impacts in the architecture design. This integration provides quantifiable support to AREL to perform predictive, diagnostic and combined reasoning. In order to align closely with industry practices, we have chosen to represent the rationale-based architecture model in UML. In a case study, the AREL model is applied retrospectively to a real-life bank payment systems to demonstrate its features and applications. Practising architects who are experts in the electronic payment system domain have been invited to evaluate the case study. They have found that AREL is useful in helping them understand the system architecture when they compared AREL with traditional design specifications. They have commented that AREL can be useful to support the verification and maintenance of the architecture because architects do not need to reconstruct or second-guess the design reasoning. We have implemented an AREL tool-set that is comprised of commercially available and custom-developed programs. It enables the capture of architecture design and its design rationale using a commercially available UML tool. It checks the well-formedness of an AREL model. It integrates a commercially available BBN tool to reason about the architecture design and to estimate its change impacts.