How Novice Software Engineers Apply User Interface Design Patterns: An Empirical Study

Conveying a positive User eXperience (UX) is essential for the success of any application, as it affects use a product. Nevertheless, novice software engineers may have difficulties in finding an appropriate solution for UX problems due to their lack of knowledge in interface design. User interface design patterns are well-working solutions to user problems that occur repeatedly which can help new developers solve interface problems. Although several studies investigated the effectiveness of applying design patterns in real development projects, few studies evaluate the difficulties that novice software engineers face when applying user interface design patterns for the first time. To understand how novice software engineers apply design patterns in the correction of UX problems, we carried out an empirical study with four small novice development teams redesigning mobile applications interfaces. We collected data on factors affecting the applicability of the employed design patterns, through questionnaires. Our results suggest that novice software engineers find this type of patterns useful but require means to find and select an adequate pattern to solve a problem. Keywords-design patterns; interface design; user experience; usability; software quality; mobile application, empirical study