Alejandra Garrido
InvestigadorScientific Accreditations
Degree
Doctora en Ciencias de la Computación
CONICET
Investigador Independiente
CIC Position
N/A
Contact and Profiles
#human-computer interaction
#software engineering
#design thinking
Biography and Interests
Short CV
Alejandra Garrido became a member of LIFIA in 1994, doing research in object-oriented (OO) software development and hypermedia. She developed an OO framework to augment applications with a hypermedia layer (“Building Application Frameworks”, Ch. 11, Wiley, 1999). She also worked on several design patterns that were presented at the Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) Conferences (“Pattern Languages of Program Design”, Addison Wesley, Vol 2-Ch 11, Vol 3-Ch 13, and “Design Patterns in Communications Software”, Ch. 10, Sigs, 2001). In 1997 she graduated as Lic. in Informatics from the Univ. of La Plata, Argentina, and started her graduate studies in the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. For her MS and PhD studies she worked in the area of refactoring under the advice of Dr. Ralph Johnson. Her MS thesis (UIUC, 2000) proposes a catalog of refactorings for the C programming language. Her PhD thesis (UIUC, 2005) focuses on integrating C preprocessor directives during the analysis and refactoring of C programs, and defines strategies, algorithms, and a refactoring tool for their automatic application. Alejandra also worked at UIUC with Dr. José Meseguer during her postdoc, creating a formal specification of the C preprocessor and refactoring on Cpp directives. She also developed a formal specification of some refactorings for the Java language. In 2006, Alejandra moved back to Argentina and restarted working at LIFIA with a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from CONICET. She is currently a CONICET Independent Researcher and Full Professor at UNLP. Since her graduate studies Alejandra was very much involved in the patterns community and was conference chair of PLoP 2000. She organized with Federico Balaguer the first Latin American Conference on Patterns in Argentina (SugarLoafPLoP-Tango Edition), which was held in Buenos Aires in 2016. Her research interests include software refactoring applied to the UX of web applications and agile methods.
Research Interests
The current area of research of Alejandra Garrido is the application of refactoring techniques and agile processes, especially in web application development. She has been particularly interested in promoting refactoring as an essential technique to improve not only internal quality attributes of code but also external quality attributes like user experience (UX), usability and accessibility. Her research groups works in the construction of tools for the automatic application of UX refactorings, as well as the automated measurement of UX problems defined as UX debt.
Related Projects
Related Theses
Related Publications
APA (7th Edition)
Cecilia Challiol, A. Garrido., Andres Rodriguez. (2026). Agile empathy for the early stage of software design. Science of Computer Programming, 253(103494). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2026.103494
Raverta, C., Grigera, J., Gardey, J. C., & Garrido, A. (2026). How Mobile UX Smells Affect Interaction Efficiency: A Multi-Metric Empirical Study. SADIO Electronic Journal of Informatics and Operations Research, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.24215/15146774e092
Durgam, F., Grigera, J., & Garrido, A. (2025). Dynamic detection of accessibility smells. Universal Access in the Information Society, 24, 281–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-023-01043-5
Gardey, J. C., Grigera, J., Rodriguez, A., & Garrido, A. (2025). Evaluating Design Variations Using UX-Analyzer. ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review, 24(4), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3722097.3722100
Loza Bonora, L. G., Grigera, J., & Garrido, A. (2025). You Are What You Click: Web Interaction Analysis for User Profile Detection. International Conference on Web Engineering, 404–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-97207-2_35
Challiol, C., Rodriguez, A., & Garrido, A. (2025). Training from experiential learning’s vision to acquire Design Thinking as a thought process. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 57, 101829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2025.101829
An Analysis of Federal and Municipal Chatbots in Germany. Verena Traubinger, Sebastian Heil, Julián Grigera, Alejandra Garrido, Sonia Abhyankar, and Martin Gaedke. In Proceedings of the 8th. International Workshop on Chatbots and Human-Centred AI (CONVERSATIONS 2024), Thessaloniki, Greece, December 2024.
Gardey, J. C., Grigera, J., Rodriguez, A., & Garrido, A. (2024, April). UX-Analyzer: Visualizing the interaction effort for web analytics. Proceedings of the 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing. https://doi.org/10.1145/3605098.3636013
Experiencia de Usuario para identificar UX smells en Software para Discapacidad Cognitiva y de la Comunicación. Andrea Cecilia Cortizo, Alejandra Garrido, Silvia Luján Vega. XXX Congreso Argentino de Ciencias de la Computación (CACIC 2024). Octubre 2024. La Plata, Argentina
Traubinger, V., Heil, S., Grigera, J., Garrido, A., & Gaedke, M. (2024). In Search of Dark Patterns in Chatbots. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54975-5_7
de la Paz Diulio, M., Gardey, J. C., Gomez, A. F., & Garrido, A. (2023). Usability of data-oriented user interfaces for cultural heritage: A systematic mapping study. Journal of Information Science, 49(2), 359–372. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515211001787
Grigera, J., Gardey, J. C., Rossi, G., & Garrido, A. (2023). Flexible Detection of Similar DOM Elements. In Marchiori (Ed.), Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (Vol. 469, pp. 174–195). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24197-0_10
Rodriguez, A., Gardey, J. C., Grigera, J., Rossi, G., & Garrido, A. (2023). UX debt in an agile development process: evidence and characterization. Software Quality Journal, 31(31), 1467–1498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-023-09652-2
Gardey, J. C., Grigera, J., Rossi, G., & Garrido, A. (2023). UX-Painter: Fostering UX Improvement in an Agile Setting. In Rocha (Ed.), Agile Methods (Vol. 1642, pp. 54–65). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25648-6_4
Gardey, J., Grigera, J., Rodríguez, A., Rossi, G., & Garrido, A. (2022). An Interaction Effort Score for Web Pages. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies. https://doi.org/10.5220/0011591400003318
Bonora, L. G. L., Grigera, J., Gardey, J. C., & Garrido, A. (2022, November). Web User Interaction Speed Study. 2022 41st International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC). https://doi.org/10.1109/sccc57464.2022.10000388
Gardey, J. C., Grigera, J., Rodríguez, A., Rossi, G., & Garrido, A. (2022). Predicting interaction effort in web interface widgets. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 168, 102919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2022.102919
Miranda, B., Tuya, J., & Garrido, A. (2022). Guest editors’introduction to the special issue \textquotedblleftAutomatic Software Testing from the Trenches”. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 34(11). https://doi.org/10.1002/smr.2510
Ripalda, D., Guevara, C., & Garrido, A. (2021). Gestalt Prototyping Framework - Evaluation Tool. In Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing (pp. 747–752). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68017-6_111
Sanchez-Gomez, N., Torres-Valderrama, J., Risoto, M. M., & Garrido, A. (2021). Blockchain Smart Contract Meta-modeling. Journal of Web Engineering, 20(7). https://doi.org/10.13052/jwe1540-9589.2073
Grigera, J.; Gardey, J.; Garrido, A. and Rossi, G. (2021). A Scoring Map Algorithm for Automatically Detecting Structural Similarity of DOM Elements. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, ISBN 978-989-758-536-4, ISSN 2184-3252, pages 174-185.
Daniel, R., Cesar, G., & Alejandra, G. (2021). Gestalt Prototyping Framework applied to design a Mobile-Commerce interface. In IEEE (Ed.), 2021 Fifth World Conference on Smart Trends in Systems Security and Sustainability (WorldS4). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/worlds451998.2021.9514011
Alemany, M. M. E., Esteso, A., Ortiz, A., Hernández, J. E., Fernández, A., Garrido, A., Martin, J., Liu, S., Zhao, G., Guyon, C., & Iannacone, R. (2020). A Conceptual Framework for Crop-Based Agri-food Supply Chain Characterization Under Uncertainty. In Agriculture Value Chain - Challenges and Trends in Academia and Industry (pp. 19–33). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51047-3_2
Ripalda, D., Guevara, C., & Garrido, A. (2020). Relationship Between Gestalt and Usability Heuristics in Mobile Device Interfaces. Human Systems Engineering and Design III, 156–161. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58282-1_25
Garrido, A., Antonelli, L., Martin, J., Alemany, M. M. E., & Mula, J. (2020). Using LEL and scenarios to derive mathematical programming models. Application in a fresh tomato packing problem. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 170, 105242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105242
Gardey, J. C., Garrido, A., Firmenich, S., Grigera, J., & Rossi, G. (2020). UX-Painter: An Approach to Explore Interaction Fixes in the Browser. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(EICS), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3397877
Gardey, J. C., & Garrido, A. (2020, March). User Experience Evaluation through Automatic A/B Testing. Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion. https://doi.org/10.1145/3379336.3381514
Firmenich, S., Garrido, A., Paternò, F., & Rossi, G. (2019). User Interface Adaptation for Accessibility. In Web Accessibility - A Foundation for Research, Second Edition (pp. 547–568). Springer London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-7440-0\_29
Grigera, J., Gardey, J. C., Rodríguez, A., Garrido, A., & Rossi, G. (2019). One Metric for All: Calculating Interaction Effort of Individual Widgets. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, May 04-09, 2019., 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3312902
Firmenich, S., Garrido, A., Grigera, J., Rivero, J. M., & Rossi, G. (2019). Usability Improvement Through A/B Testing and Refactoring. Software Quality Journal, 27(1), 203–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-018-9413-y
Grigera, J., Garrido, A., Zaraté, P., Camilleri, G., & Fernández, A. (2018). A Mixed Usability Evaluation on a Multi Criteria Group Decision Support System in Agriculture. Proceedings of the XIX International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, Interacción 2018, Palma, Spain, September 12-14, 2018, 36:1-36:4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233824.3233852
Grigera, J., Gardey, J. C., Garrido, A., & Rossi, G. (2018). Live versioning of web applications through refactoring. Proceedings of the 33rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, ASE 2018, Montpellier, France, September 3-7, 2018, 872–875. https://doi.org/10.1145/3238147.3240483
Maria Isabel Cruz and Alejandra Garrido. "Sistema recomendador para la personalización de la interacción auditiva y háptica en sitios web para usuarios con discapacidad visual". In Ingeniería colaborativa aplicaciones y usos desde la perspectiva de la Interacción Humano Computador, Colombia: Universidad de San Buenaventura.
Daniel Ripalda; Alejandra Garrido; César Guevara. "Gestalt framework in the design of interfaces for mobile devices: Theoretical approach". In 13th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), Cáceres, España. Junio 2018.: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.23919/CISTI.2018.8399182. pp. 1-4
Martos, P. I., & Garrido, A. (2017, August). Software patterns for asymmetric multiprocessing devices on embedded systems: a performance assessment. 2017 Eight Argentine Symposium and Conference on Embedded Systems (CASE). https://doi.org/10.23919/sase-case.2017.8115373
Grigera, J., Garrido, A., & Rossi, G. (2017). Kobold: web usability as a service. Proceedings of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, ASE 2017, Urbana, IL, USA, October 30 - November 03, 2017, 990–995. https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE.2017.8115717
Alejandra Garrido, Sergio Firmenich, Julián Grigera, Gustavo Rossi: “Data-Driven Usability Refactoring: Tools and Challenges”. 6th International Workshop on Software Mining (SoftwareMining 2017), co-located with ASE 2017. Urbana, Illinois, USA. Oct. 30, 2017. pp. 52-55. IEEE.
Grigera, J., Garrido, A., Rivero, J. M., & Rossi, G. (2017). Automatic detection of usability smells in web applications. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Stud., 97, 129–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2016.09.009
Grigera, J., Garrido, A., Panach, J. I., Distante, D., & Rossi, G. (2015). Assessing refactorings for usability in e-commerce applications. Empirical Software Engineering, 21(3), 1224–1271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9384-6
Distante, D., Garrido, A., Camelier-Carvajal, J., Giandini, R., & Rossi, G. (2014). Business processes refactoring to improve usability in E-commerce applications. Electronic Commerce Research, 14(4), 497–529. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-014-9149-0
Garrido, A., Rossi, G., Medina-Medina, N., Grigera, J., & Firmenich, S. (2014). Improving accessibility of Web interfaces: refactoring to the rescue. Universal Access in the Information Society, 13(4), 387–399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-013-0323-2
Grigera, J., Garrido, A., & Rivero, J. M. (2014). A Tool for Detecting Bad Usability Smells in an Automatic Way. Web Engineering, 14th International Conference, ICWE 2014, Toulouse, France, July 1-4, 2014. Proceedings, 490–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08245-5\_34