Bachelor and Master Theses

The ubiquity of software and its use in disparate contexts increases the necessity of letting domain-experts, not necessarily software engineers, to specify their desired applications. In this respect, software engineering research has made huge efforts to provide design tools working at higher levels of abstraction and close the gap between domain-specific concepts and coding/implementation details. In general, those efforts are referred to as model-based development, where models are simplified representations of reality (also known as abstractions). Nonetheless, the use of modelling tools still represents a considerable barrier for many experts, that often prefer other specification forms like Power Point presentations and even natural language documents. Since those tools do not provide adequate constraints on their contents, they can introduce inconsistencies between the intentions of the designer and how those are interpreted in the next development phases.
This thesis project investigates the use of natural language as an interface layer for design activities. More specifically, designers interact with a chatbot by means of natural language, while in the background the chatbot is in charge of translating dictated design inputs into corresponding concepts provided by a domain-specific language and related tool.

Thesis objectives:
- a design process/workflow to map possible designer intentions into corresponding modelling elements for a specific target domain-specific language;
- a workflow for an implementation of the chatbot support correspondingly to the analysis results as elicited in the previous point;
- a concrete validation case implemented for the design of applications in the gamification domain.
The thesis will be co-supervised by an external “customer” providing the concrete case for the validation.

- the thesis project is primarily intended for an Advanced Level student. In case we receive only Basic Level candidates we will revise the thesis objectives accordingly;
- knowledge of model-driven engineering methodology and its implementation tools (Eclipse) is required;
- advanced programming skills are recommended;
- experiences with chatbots and/or gamification are considered as a plus.

Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, Italy Antonio Bucchiarone