Hegarty-Kelly, Emlyn (2020) The Development of EyeMap 2.0. Masters thesis, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

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Abstract

EyeMap was developed for visualising and analysing eye-tracking data. It was specifically designed to get the most information from eye movements data in relation to reading research. EyeMap was developed with more advanced features compared to other software systems for eye movements data including the ability to automatically generate AOIs, and carry out variable calculations for over 150 reading variables. However, given the ever-advancing landscape with software systems, the EyeMap system has developed several issues. It was developed in the flex programming language and with each new update to Adobe AIR, it is becoming outdated and difficult to maintain. Several bugs have arisen in EyeMap that is making it more and more difficult to use including not being able to correctly segment the Chinese language. While talking to expert users of EyeMap that rely heavily on the tool, they presented ideas on how EyeMap could be improved by developing EyeMap 2.0. This project had the goal of developing develop EyeMap 2.0 using user participation so that current expert users of EyeMap would be able to provide input to the features in EyeMap 2.0 that would improve the features of the original EyeMap. The project used an Agile software development process, Rapid Application Development, to achieve this goal. This allowed the expert EyeMap users to participate heavily in the development and testing of the new system through the Backlog issue tracking software system. The Backlog system allowed the user to easily report any issues and follow the status of the issue ass it was being fixed and tested further. This thesis discusses the entire process of using the Rapid Application Development model to develop EyeMap 2.0. It will present the tools, frameworks and libraries that were used to develop this software artefact. The thesis will show that by using modern software development techniques and systems such as GitLab, EyeMap 2.0 can be continuously developed and improved upon, ensuring its future-proofing. The first contribution of this thesis is to investigate agile software development models and determine which model has greatest potential for a small development team. This model would also have to allow the users of the new software to easily contribute to the development process to produce an easy to use and reliable software application. The second contribution will be to show a variety of tools that can can be used during development. The tools will benefit by maximising the contributions from the users to the project while also assisting with good software development practice for any development project. The final contribution will show how having the intended users of an application advise in the development of a project can only benefit the project. The users can clearly explain how a feature should behave and look. They can also aid with the testing of the created feature, ensuring the correct functionality before the feature is added to the application.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Keywords:	EyeMap 2.0;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Computer Science
Item ID:	14854
Depositing User:	IR eTheses
Date Deposited:	27 Sep 2021 11:13
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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