People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tend to enjoy themselves and be engaged when interacting with computers, as these interactions occur in a safe and trustworthy environment. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review on the state of the research on the use of technology to teach people with ASD. We reviewed 94 studies that show how the use of technology in educational contexts helps people with ASD develop several skills, how these approaches consider aspects of user experience, usability and accessibility, and how game elements are used to enrich learning environments. This systematic literature review shows that the development and evaluation of systems and applications for users with ASD is very promising. The use of technological advancements such as virtual agents, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality undoubtedly provides a comfortable environment that promotes constant learning for people with ASD.

Programmers use various software development artifacts in their work, such as programming environments, design documents, and programming codes. These software artifacts can be studied and improved based on usability and User eXperience (UX) factors. In this work, we consider programmers to be a specific case of users and analyze different elements that influence their experience in this specific context. We conducted a systematic literature review of papers published over the last 10 years related to: (i) the definition of the Programmer eXperience (PX); (ii) the PX, UX, and usability factors regarding the programming environments, design documents, and programming codes; and (iii) sets of heuristics to evaluate the software development artifacts mentioned before. We analyzed 73 articles, and the results obtained show: (i) the important elements that influence the PX are the motivation of programmers and the choice of tools they use in their work, such as programming environments; (ii) most of the identified studies (59%) aimed to evaluate the influence of the PX, UX, and usability on programming environments; (iii) the majority of the studies (70%) used methods such as usability tests and/or heuristic evaluation methods; (iv) 4 sets of heuristics are used to evaluate software development artifacts in relation to programming environments, programming languages and application programming interfaces. The results suggest that further research in this area is necessary to better understand and evaluate the concept of the PX.

With the growth and overcrowding of the internet, the use of online social networks has been increasing. Currently, social networks are used by a wide variety of users–with different objectives and in different contexts of use–, so it is essential to design intuitive and easy to use social network applications that generate a positive user experience (UX). The heuristic evaluation is a well-known evaluation method that allows detecting usability problems; a group of experts evaluates a product and/or system using a set of heuristics as a guide. Although the heuristic evaluation is oriented to evaluate the usability, it can be useful to evaluate other aspects related to the UX. Due to the specific features of social networks, it is necessary to have a specific set of heuristics to evaluate them. Sets of specific heuristics for social networks have been proposed, but they focus on evaluating the only usability. This article presents a set of heuristics that attend not only usability issues, but other UX factors as well, social network user experience heuristics (SNUXH). The new set of heuristics was developed, validated, and refined in four iterations. The results obtained in the experimental validation indicate that the SNUXH set is useful and more effective than generic heuristics (Nielsen’s heuristics) when evaluating social networks.