Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping knowledge-intensive industries, requiring knowledge workers to adapt and, at times, reinvent their practices. Educating the next generation of knowledge workers in this rapidly evolving era of GenAI requires higher education to prepare students for this new work environment by incorporating GenAI-augmented practices into the educational process. This study investigates the integration of GenAI tools in design thinking (DT) workshops and examines their behavioral and cognitive implications across two educational settings. Drawing on data from two case studies and using a mixed-method research approach, we analyzed students’ experience with and without the use of GenAI in both real and simulated customer contexts. Our findings reveal that GenAI integration transformed the practice of DT. Qualitative analysis of students’ prompting practices revealed limited sophistication, with most students copying task guidelines directly and accepting AI-generated content without iteration, effectively exhibiting “metacognitive laziness.” However, in authentic project contexts, students demonstrated more structured approaches. Quantitatively, students reported overwhelmingly positive perceptions of GenAI integration, with surveys showing notable improvements in perceived capabilities and self-efficacy compared with baseline conditions. Context-dependent differences emerged, with authentic project settings consistently associated with higher performance across all DT stages compared with hypothetical scenarios. This research contributes to the emerging discussion on the use of GenAI in design tasks by providing empirically grounded insights. It further proposes a GenAI-DT framework that facilitates authenticity and cognitive forcing processes to prevent cognitive degradation and promote critical thinking.

The concept of responsible human-centered AI refers to the ethical, accountable, and conscious development, deployment, and operation of AI systems. It is dedicated to ensuring that AI systems align with societal and environmental values, legal norms, and regulations while providing transparency, fairness, privacy, and accountability of the solutions. Responsible human-centered AI encompasses a broad range of socio-technical and sustainability concerns, including biases in AI models, data privacy and security, and explainability of AI decisions, along with robust mechanisms for auditing and monitoring systems' post-deployment to address unintended consequences or evolving risks. The goal of the First International Workshop on Requirements Engineering for Accountable and Conscious Human-centered AI (REACH-AI 2025) is to create a platform for an interdisciplinary discourse of researchers and practitioners on this important aspect of the AI impacts on society.

This study examines the motivational changes of undergraduate students participating in a practical course designed to address the challenge of aligning academic training with industry needs. The study spanned two iterations of the course. During the first iteration, qualitative interviews were conducted to assess changes in student motivation throughout the practical course. In the second iteration, a motivation questionnaire was administered at three points: before, during, and after course completion. The results indicate a general decrease in student motivation during the course, followed by a partial recovery towards the end. This fluctuation highlights the need for continuous support and realistic feedback to maintain student engagement and motivation. This study contributes to the expanding body of research on how practical, industry-focused courses influence student motivation. By incorporating real-world contexts and challenges, this type of course can greatly enrich learning experiences and better prepare students for professional settings. However, one should carefully design these courses and implement effective mechanisms to maintain and foster student motivation throughout the course duration.

Engineers’ team collaboration skills are among software development's most important success factors. Existing Artificial Intelligence practices for the engineers' soft skills assessment mainly rely on evaluations of subjective data gathered through surveys, interviews, or observations. As a result, the insights gained by these methods are biased because of the subjective data people report. To overcome the challenge of subjectivity, we offer a novel objectivity-by-design approach for continuous AI-driven team collaboration skills analytics. The method analyzes the data from workstreams gathered from data repositories like Jira. Based on the study results, we conclude that this approach enables a continuous assessment of employees' team collaboration skills, provides more accurate insights, eliminates subjective biases, and helps uncover trends and deficits on individual and team levels. Understanding and recognizing employees' strengths and weaknesses can foster an organizational culture of growth and development. An improved organizational climate is expected to result in work satisfaction, engagement, and motivation, thus positively impacting employees, businesses, and society.

We identify 14 fundamental cloud infrastructure procedures (CIPs) applicable to software development processes on the public cloud and their associated challenges. We then evaluate the capabilities of leading cloud automation technologies, such as infrastructure as code, and pinpoint their gaps in enabling the CIPs.

Aim/Purpose This study aims to explore undergraduate IS students’ employability skills development while performing their final capstone project during their academic studies. Background The importance of soft skills in the Information Systems industry is not an arguable fact and has been broadly discussed both in the industry and the academic literature. The ability of professionals to collaborate, communicate, manage time, negotiate, solve problems, make decisions, and self-learning, called employability skills, are essential skills needed in today’s industry. The development of these skills during undergraduate studies is essential for graduate students’ readiness for work. Methodology A mixed methods approach was employed using exploratory research de-sign, including qualitative and quantitative approaches. First, a qualitative analysis of 156 reflections was performed, resulting in the conceptual framework of facets. Then, a quantitative analysis of the data was per-formed to examine the facets and the differences between the stages of the capstone project. Contribution This study contributes to both academy and industry. The former may use this study’s findings to upgrade academy courses and capstone projects in order to raise students’ readiness for the industry. The later may learn the approaches the academy use and give appropriate feedback. Findings The results showed that students’ reflections on their motivation, knowledge, and skills (teamwork, time management, and inter-communication) demonstrate the importance of those facets in the process they underwent, especially since the reflections collected were unstructured. Recommendations for Practitioners Information Systems undergraduate academic programs should develop structured capstone projects to provide the students with a better platform to learn and experience the employability skills the industry requires. Recommendations for Researchers The study presents a conceptual model based on students’ reflections on their experience performing a capstone project. The impact and influence of each of the model’s components should be further researched and measured. Impact on Society Moreover, it is very important to prepare the students for employability by including a “real-life” capstone project at the end of their undergraduate studies to prepare them to be valuable in the workforce, even at their start point as juniors. Future Research To evaluate the process of employability skills development, a further study can examine students’ perceptions prior to the capstone, during, and after to assess the progress and changes. To generalize the results, it would be valuable to investigate whether the findings of this study are consistent across different institutions and disciplines. Keywords employability skills, capstone projects, soft skills, motivation, information systems studies, student reflections

Privacy and security by design are policy measures that guide software developers to engineer privacy and security solutions inherently into the software systems they develop. However, although these policy measures have been widely discussed and promoted over the years, recent studies still show a consistent underperformance of privacy and security practices in industry. This research follows previous findings that indicate the role the organizational work environments of developers play in forming their mindsets and behavior. Specifically, we aimed to explore the potential of using organizational climate theory for attaining a better understanding of developers' perceptions and behaviors and the underlying forces affecting them, and to unveil the constructs that compose organizational privacy and security climates. To this end, we conducted interviews with 27 practitioners involved in developing software systems from 14 companies and qualitatively analyzed the collected data. Our findings indicate that software developers are faced with inconsistent and confusing cues conveyed by management and other parties in their work environment, many of which indicate that these facets are of relatively low priority, leading to perceptions and behaviors that are not in line with those expected and recommended by policy makers. Further, we show how these perceptions and behaviors can be explained by constructs of the organizational climate theory and how, based on our findings, organizational climate mechanisms can be used to go beyond understanding developers' current privacy and security mindsets toward improving them, thereby leading to an effective implementation of privacy and security by design.

Privacy by design (PbD) is a policy measure that guides software developers to apply inherent solutions to achieve better privacy protection. For PbD to be a viable option, it is important to understand developers' perceptions, interpretation and practices as to informational privacy (or data protection). To this end, we conducted in-depth interviews with 27 developers from different domains, who practice software design. Grounded analysis of the data revealed an interplay between several different forces affecting the way in which developers handle privacy concerns. Borrowing the schema of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), we classified and analyzed the cognitive, organizational and behavioral factors that play a role in developers' privacy decision making. Our findings indicate that developers use the vocabulary of data security to approach privacy challenges, and that this vocabulary limits their perceptions of privacy mainly to third-party threats coming from outside of the organization; that organizational privacy climate is a powerful means for organizations to guide developers toward particular practices of privacy; and that software architectural patterns frame privacy solutions that are used throughout the development process, possibly explaining developers' preference of policy-based solutions to architectural solutions. Further, we show, through the use of the SCT schema for framing the findings of this study, how a theoretical model of the factors that influence developers' privacy practices can be conceptualized and used as a guide for future research toward effective implementation of PbD.

ContextIndustry-academia collaboration (IAC) in the field of software engineering is widely discussed in the literature, highlighting its importance and benefits. However, along with the benefits, academic researchers face challenges while performing empirical studies in industry, risking their success. Awareness of these challenges and the importance of addressing them has recently grown, and became the center of discussion in several publication venues.ObjectiveIn this paper, we aim to address one of the key challenges affecting the success of IAC: stakeholder involvement. To this end, we propose a vision for leveraging organizational climate theory toward an effective management of IAC in software engineering research. Organizational climate is defined as the organization's priorities as perceived by its employees and was found to be an effective means of predicting employee behavior.MethodTo provide a basis and motivation for our vision, we conducted a literature review, focused on the workshop series of CESI, Conducting Empirical Studies in Industry, in order to elicit the relevant reported challenges of IAC, and to analyze them through the lens of the organizational climate theory.ResultsEmergent categories of the elicited challenges of IAC are related to the two basic components that determine the emergence of organizational climate: management commitment and communication. This result demonstrates that analyzing stakeholder involvement-related challenges of IAC through the lens of organizational climate theory provides an indication of the climate components that should be enhanced in order to address these challenges.ConclusionThe above analysis lays the foundation for our vision that organizational climate may serve as an effective means of addressing the discussed challenges. We propose that developing measures of organizational research collaboration climate and deploying respective interventions for improvement would be instrumental for enhancing stakeholder involvement in IAC. We further propose a research outline toward fulfilling these potential contributions.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a conference-based online social network (OSN) for academics’ knowledge sharing and collaboration around and beyond a conference, while exploring the entanglement of the social and technical aspects of the system. Design/methodology/approach – Following an exploratory study, an OSN prototype was developed and implemented in ECIS 2014. The usage of the OSN platform was monitored and in-depth interviews were conducted with seven of its active users. Findings – Academic researchers have positive attitudes toward using conference-based OSN. However, there is a gap between academics’ perceptions and their actual behavior. Several barriers for engagement were identified, leading to technical and social recommendations, including the following needs: integrating the OSN platform with other conference information systems; addressing privacy concerns; allowing on-going collaboration; increasing OSN vitality; using the wisdom of the crowd; and promotion and its timing. Research limitations/implications – The case study highlighted existing benefits, and identified potential future benefits from implementing a conference-based OSN. Future research is required to generalize the findings and evaluate the proposed strategies for enhancing user engagement. Practical implications – This study revealed the set of considerations that should be taken upon launching a new academic OSN, which are beyond the technical issues per se . Social implications – The paper presents the expected benefits from, and existing barriers to using a conference-based OSN, and suggests recommendations for encouraging academics to engage in such OSN, in order to enhance long-term social interactions, knowledge sharing and collaboration among conference participants. Originality/value – This is a first study to examine a conference-based OSN.

Software architecture is an important part of software development, aiming at ensuring a high-quality product. Recent research has shown that collaboration and knowledge management are important parts of the architecture process, and have significant role in architecture design and review. In this paper we present a prototype for a tool we developed, as part of our ongoing research on the software architecture process, for supporting collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing during all steps of the architecture development process. This tool was developed based on the findings of a case-study research in a global, large software organization.

Conducting empirical research in industry is not an easy task. Previous research has discussed some of the challenges in this type of research and potential solutions have been proposed. However, conducting cross-organizational research introduces specific challenges, some of which are quite hard to overcome. In this paper, we present the use of professional interest groups in a professional social network, Linked In, as a way to recruit participant to an online survey. Using this social network, commonly used among practitioners, was found to be an effective research tool.

Software architecture is integral part of the software development; however, its integration in the development process has become more challenging with the transition from traditional to agile development methods, and with the architects becoming much more than technological experts responsible for high-level design. Some attention has been paid in recent years to the role of the architect, seeking a contemporary and comprehensive definition of this role. This paper reports on the results of an online survey, with the participation of 104 software architects, aimed at defining the soft aspects of the software architect's role. The results reveal that architects perform a variety of human-centered activities such as mentoring, leadership, reviewing and management,. Moreover, in the contexts of mentoring and leadership, software architects strive to do more than they currently do.

Software architecture is integral part of the software development; however, its integration in the development process has become more challenging with the transition from traditional to agile development methods, and with the architects becoming much more than technological experts responsible for high-level design. Some attention has been paid in recent years to the role of the architect, seeking a contemporary and comprehensive definition of this role. This paper reports on the results of an online survey, with the participation of 104 software architects, aimed at defining the soft aspects of the software architect's role. The results reveal that architects perform a variety of human-centered activities such as mentoring, leadership, reviewing and management,. Moreover, in the contexts of mentoring and leadership, software architects strive to do more than they currently do.

Software architecture is an integral part of software development, and has become more complex, with the transition from traditional to agile development methods. Hence, the architect's tasks in the software development project must be well defined. Though there was some amount of empirical research addressing architects' perceptions, most of the research in the area of software architecture addressed this topic theoretically. Perception, being a part of, and having an effect on, cognitive processes and decision making, is explored in this research in order to gain a deeper understanding of what tasks architects find to be included in their role and responsibility. Thus far, 8 in-depth interviews were conducted in various hi-tech firms, followed by distributing an on-line questionnaire, with the response of 12 architects. The obtained results demonstrate several differences between the role of the architect, as defined in literature, and the way architects perceive their role.

Academia and industry have been collaborating for over a century in different formats, including research projects' funds, commercialization of academic knowledge, academic consultancy in industrial projects, etc. Yet, academic researchers face various difficulties and challenges when performing research in industry. In this paper we describe several challenges we faced during a long-term case study research we performed in collaboration with a global IT firm. We present each challenge including its illustration in the context of our case study, describe the actions taken in the attempt to meet it, and discuss lessons learned.

The use of agile development methodologies in the software industry has increased significantly over the past decade. This has led to efforts to adjust these methodologies to enterprise products and complex systems' development, and specifically to combine the requirement of minimalism with the need for well-defined up-front architecture artifacts. Nevertheless, in many cases, architecture is accompanied with extensive documentation that requires significant effort to review and maintain throughout the development lifecycle. This paper presents a case study that aims at identifying difficulties architects and other stakeholders encounter when dealing with architecture documentation in agile development. The findings indicate that the architecture specification document is usually very long, complex, and not self-explanatory. In order to adjust the architecture documentation to the lean and minimal documentation approach of agile processes, we propose a considerably shorter abstract specification document, requiring reduced documentation efforts and resulting in a lean documentation that is easier to review, update, and communicate.