Welcome to DSV-IS'2003, the tenth International Workshop on the Design, Specification and Verification of Interactive Systems, held in Funchal, Madeira. The workshop series originated in Italy in 1994 under the leadership of Fabio Paternò. Throughout its existence this event has played a significant role at the interface between the disciplines of User Interface and Software Engineering, arguing the case for balancing user and system considerations on (at least) an equal footing. The last decade has seen the broader emergence of user-centered concerns as a major driving force, a mainstay permeating the major changes the field of computing has endured in recent years.
While formal specifications and verification of interactive systems seem to suffer from a "double ghetto" effect in that the exercise may seem alien to both the software engineering and user interface design communities, the steady flow of contributions to this venue bears witness to a healthy interest in this convergence. The relatively large number of submissions (47) to the present venue reflects the strong interest in the field. Unfortunately this has meant that we could not include all the papers submitted during the span of a three-day event limited to a single track so that all attendees can listen to all the presentations. A compromise was achieved so as to have long and short paper tracks. The papers were reviewed by at least three researchers actively involved in many aspects of User Interface and Software Engineering disciplines in a doubly-blind fashion. Out of this process, capped by a lively on-line program committee meeting, we were able to select 26 contributions for oral presentation.
In keeping with the venue traditions these are the preliminary proceedings. the final version of accepted papers will be published by Springer LNCS - an extra quality control step will help us make sure the final contributions reflect the comments and discussions at the workshop.
This workshop owes its realization to many dedicated people. Besides the program committee members and reviewers, we would like to thank Angel Puerta for making the conference reviewing system available to support online submission and reviewing of submissions. Angel has endured a seemingly endless flow of requests from authors and program chairs. The local organizing committee has worked tirelessly in making the arrangements for this meeting. Our heartfelt thanks goes to the invited speakers, Henry Lieberman, Larry Constantine and Dave Roberts who with their excellent presentations have helped us shape an outstanding program. DSV-IS'2003 was only possible due to the kind support from the sponsors and cooperating institutions. We would like to thank CARE-Technologies Lda., the Luso-American Foundation for Development and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, for their financial support to this event. We would also like to thank the cooperation of the main professional organizations in our field: Eurographics Association, the Portuguese IEEE Section, ACM SIGCHI and SIGSOFT, IFIP TC13 and the British HCI Group. Finally a special word goes to Paula Centeno and Frederico Figueiredo for their helping hand in preparing the pre-workshop and online proceedings.
We would like to welcome all of you to the beautiful island of Madeira for the workshop which we hope will fulfill your expectations.
May 23, 2003
Joaquim Jorge
Nuno Jardim Nunes
João Falcão e Cunha