Please Don't Make Me Draw!

This paper describes the development of a software tool to support knowledge acquisition by means of rich pictures, for Object Oriented Analysis (OOA). Transposition of manual rich picture practise into software proved difficult, therefore we decided to follow a user-centered approach, design and implement a prototype with basic functionalities, then run a usability test with a few students and professionals. The feedback collected in the test validated the design of our prototype, and unexpectedly helped us understand how to support behavioral descriptions (i.e. events), an elusive feature before the test. At a more general level our study suggests the presence of a gap between modern object-oriented analysis practices and programmers values: some techniques presuppose design skills that are alien to our students. To improve and test further our tool, we plan to use it for whole OOA and OOD course, next semester.