Abstract: There is empirical evidence concerning the effectiveness and benefits of game-based learning (GBL). Our mainly interest is to present a tool that can be used to complement teaching software engineering in a motivating and didactic way. This paper studies the use of a GBL tool called SimulES-W (Simulation in Software Engineering), to teach Software Engineering in an undergraduate engineering program. SimulES-W has three characteristics: it is based on real software cases, it can be customized during the learning process, and it is a collaborative game. These characteristics are important because they help us understand and propose a new learning scenario, and to research with this the learning processes in their environments According to it, the first characteristic of SimulES-W makes it a motivating and engaging game, which brings up cases, which usually are only present in real software projects. Thanks to the second characteristic, the educators can use SimuelES-W to customize the education material, and tune the game for specific software engineering courses. The third characteristic is related to the proposed game as activity that involves group discussions and decision-making. This paper presents SimulES-W a digital version of SimulES and reports the results of an evaluation from a pedagogical perspective, where game adequacy for teaching a subject and positive potential impact in student’s academic performance are investigated.

A informação de qualidade é essencial para qualquer organização e, assim, as organizações necessitam de sistemas de informação fáceis de serem usados. Essa necessidade de informação qualificada e de boa usabilidade torna a interface com o usuário parte fundamental dos sistemas de informação. Por ser a parte visível do software, por meio da qual os usuários se comunicam com os sistemas para executarem suas tarefas, é preciso que ela seja amigável, ou seja, de fácil utilização e que atenda as expectativas e necessidades de seus usuários. Para obter tais interfaces, deve ser dada atenção especial aos requisitos relacionados às entradas de dados e à exibição de informação. Apesar da obviedade das afirmações, não é freqüente na definição de sistemas de informação uma preocupação com sua usabilidade. O nosso objetivo é demonstrar por meio de uma análise de um site de comércio eletrônico, uma série de requisitos não funcionais que deveriam estar sempre presentes no projeto de interfaces de software que dão apoio a sistemas de informação.

Quality information is essential organizations' success and efficacy. Because of this crucial role of information, organizations spend part of their budget with information systems. Due to the great value of information, the user interface, the way in which users interact with software to perform their tasks, becomes an important part of systems. It is necessary to design user-friendly interfaces, that is, interfaces that are easy to use. To obtain such systems´ interfaces, the designers must take in consideration the non functional requirement (NFR) usability at the system definition. Failure to take NFRs in consideration has been reported in the literature. In this article we show how the lack of consideration of the NFR usability interferes on the quality of a product. We define the nonfunctional requirements and then analyze how some examples are used in a famous commercial Brazilian site, submarino.com. These requirements allow the designer to use facilities that improve the system's efficacy.