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Research into the environmental impact of software has increased in recent years, although its assessment remains complex due to the diversity of existing technologies. This paper proposes a structured and configurable framework that enables joint assessment of environmental sustainability and a particular software quality dimension or attribute. The framework builds upon established practices in software quality evaluation and considers statistical analysis to empirically explore the interplay between both dimensions. The paper contributes by proposing a methodological approach and illustrating its application through data analysis. The framework was configured to assess environmental sustainability and usability in a set of sports news aggregators, correlating heuristic-based usability metrics with environmental sustainability indicators derived from website performance data. The results revealed notable negative correlations between heuristic H5 (error prevention) and multimedia metrics (r = -0.86), and between H4 (consistency and standards) and operation-related sustainability metrics (r = -0.70). These findings provide insights into how usability factors may influence environmental sustainability and suggest directions for improvement. Overall, the paper provides preliminary insights into environmentally aware software quality assessment, through both the design of the framework and the analytical results obtained.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI), a rapidly evolving field of AI, holds transformative potential in mental health by addressing critical challenges such as accessibility, affordability, and personalization of care. Generative AI facilitates innovative solutions in illness screening, diagnosis, treatment, and psychoeducation. Despite these promises, integrating generative AI into mental health care poses significant risks, including misinformation, algorithmic bias, data privacy concerns, and a lack of regulatory oversight. This paper examines the opportunities and risks associated with generative AI in mental health and emphasizes the need for robust safeguards. Recommendations include implementing ethical design principles, developing clear regulatory frameworks, ensuring mental health professionals’ involvement, and prioritizing data privacy and security. By balancing innovation with caution, generative AI can advance mental health care responsibly and effectively.

Health care increasingly depends on information and communication technology. This offers both opportunities and challenges when designing connected health systems. While individual studies examined particular cases, there is a limited synthesis of insights across projects. The objective of this paper is to explore these opportunities and challenges by examining 6 diverse connected health projects and synthesizing lessons from an expert workshop. To achieve this, we conducted a full-day workshop that brought together 6 connected health projects. The workshop used an iterative and participatory process which included paper submissions and presentations and facilitated discussions, and a gallery walk to enable cross-case comparison and collaborative reflection. Thematic analysis of workshop outputs was then used to synthesize key opportunities and challenges in designing connected health systems. The 6 projects represented a variety of design methods and approaches to connected health, and their discussion surfaced both opportunities and challenges in this domain. Key opportunities include improving data integration and usability, enhancing collaboration across stakeholders, using a user-centered and iterative design process, addressing complexity in sociotechnical systems, sustainability, and adopting digital infrastructures for seamless communication. Participants also identified important challenges, namely exchange of information, interoperability, and communication; ethical considerations, rules, and regulations; understanding design, evaluation, and standards; actionable data, reliability, quality, and trust in data; and stakeholder involvement. The contribution of this paper lies in the synthesis of insights across multiple projects and perspectives to provide practical guidance for researchers, designers, and policymakers. By highlighting opportunities and challenges in designing connected health systems, the findings emphasize the importance of patient-centered, sustainable, and collaborative design approaches while also pointing to the need to address persistent barriers. Advancing connected health will require adopting iterative and inclusive design processes that prioritize patient-centeredness, sustainability, and collaboration across health care systems.

The relevance of sustainable software is growing, drawing attention from both academic researchers and practitioners. Understanding its impact on end-users' perceived quality, often termed quality-in-use, is crucial. This paper aims to explore the relationship between software sustainability and quality-in-use as reported in literature. We conducted a systematic mapping study using Scopus, one of the largest peer-reviewed databases, to explore this relationship. Twenty-seven papers were selected and analyzed based on publication year, source, application domain, research type, empirical type, sustainability dimensions, quality-in-use attributes, and the relationship between sustainability and quality-in-use. Results indicate this area of study is in its early stages, with few papers published annually. Conferences were the primary publication channels, with healthcare being the most examined application domain. Papers were categorized into solution proposals and evaluation research, with over half undergoing empirical evaluation. The environmental dimension, particularly power consumption, was the most studied sustainability dimension. Quality-in-use was explored through various attributes, with 63% of the selected papers identifying a relationship between sustainability and quality-in-use. This mapping study highlights the lack of a common definition within the software engineering community regarding software sustainability, and calls for further research to clarify the impact of sustainable software products on quality-in-use.

In recent years, the surge in society's use of information and communication technology solutions has increased the importance of software sustainability. Despite increasing attention and publications in this field, challenges persist due to the newness of the domain and the ambiguity surrounding a common definition of sustainability. The complexity of software sustainability extends to its categorization and effects, including first-order impacts from software production and broader consequences on global systems. Sustainability challenges are also noted when users interact with the software, which identifies the gap in user-focused perspectives and models integrating sustainability evaluation. To address this, my thesis aims to achieve four objectives over four years: (1) investigate the incorporation of user perspectives in current software sustainability practices, (2) explore user perceptions regarding software sustainability, (3) co-design a conceptual framework to integrate user perspectives into software sustainability evaluation and (4) empirically validate the framework. The thesis plan involves a mixed-method approach including systematic literature reviews, interviews, questionnaires, empirical evaluations, and participatory design. My preliminary findings reveal research gaps on the user perspective in software sustainability, emphasizing the need for further investigation and the potential impact of this research on software sustainability and user experience. The result of this research has the potential to assist software engineers in considering the user perspective when designing for sustainability in software systems.

Sustainability has become a significant concern in software systems like websites, driven by their increasing adoption and environmental impact. As website usage grows, so does their energy consumption and carbon footprint, affecting their environmental sustainability. Understanding the relationship be-tween usability and environmental sustainability is essential for designing web sites that meet user needs while minimizing environmental impact. This paper examines this relationship, focusing on popular sports websites due to their substantial internet traffic. We evaluated ten English-language sports web sites for their environmental sustainability and usability using Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. Our assessment considered factors such as Ecological Accommodation, Content, Operation, Multimedia, and HTTP Requests. The findings reveal a strong negative correlation between usability and sustainability, suggesting that improvements in usability may increase environmental impact and vice versa. This study's insights can inform website de-velopers in creating digital platforms that are both usable and environmentally sustainable.

This Research Full Paper presents findings on Swedish computer science students' perception of learning online during the Covid-19 pandemic at a mid-sized Swedish university. Due to the pandemic, classes in Swedish universities moved abruptly to an online format during the spring of 2020. Content analysis was used to analyze 10 interviews with third-year bachelor students. The results were discussed in the light of the community of inquiry theoretical framework. We found that when learning online, students communicated and collaborated via a class-wide Discord server, an online communication platform originally developed for the gaming community. The use of Discord was seen to change the students' expectations of student-instructor interaction. The students' frequency of questions to the instructor decreased drastically when learning in the online environment compared to the on-campus environment, both during live-lectures and outside of class. The students perceived instructor engagement and presence in both live and recorded lectures as more important for their learning online than in the on-campus setting and wanted more interaction during lectures. Discord created a community for the students. However, the social aspects of learning were still missed. Many interviewees found it hard to keep focus and struggled with self-discipline and identifying a work structure. Clear benefits given for online learning were flexibility and convenience of time and place. Students also experienced group work to be more efficient online.