CfP: 2nd Workshop on Evaluation of Qualitative Aspects of Intelligent Software Assistants (EQUISA), co-located with International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE).
9th – 12th June 2026, Glasgow, UK.
Link: https://conf.researchr.org/home/ease-2026/equisa-2026
Workshops Details
Intelligent software assistants have been defined as automated approaches based on advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models that aim to support end users in several aspects of software development lifecycles. While traditional systems are based on a curated knowledge base that represents the main source of the recommendation process, the advent of cutting-edge AI models, e.g., foundation and pre-trained models, is dramatically changing how those systems
are designed, developed, and evaluated.
Motivated by the need to ensure quality in advanced systems, EQUISA is a dedicated forum for discussing the qualitative aspects of intelligent software assistants, from their design to their deployment in real-world applications.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Evaluation and assessment of quality aspects of software assistants, e.g., explainability, transparency, and fairness, ensuring that software assistants produce reliable results.
- Re-usage of AI-based tools, techniques, and methodologies in developing intelligent software assistants.
- Foundational theories for software assistants to understand the underlying principles that can drive the development of more robust and generalizable recommendation systems in software engineering, with a focus on their evaluation.
- New methods, tools, and frameworks to support development tasks, e.g., code-related tasks, automated classification of software artifacts, or code generation leveraging generative AI models.
- Designing specific prompt engineering techniques for intelligent software assistants based on large language models to ensure quality aspects.
- Data-driven approaches for software assistants: Leveraging large-scale data from open-source software (OSS) repositories, Q&A forums, and issue trackers to enhance the effectiveness of software assistants.
- Integration with human-in-the-loop systems: Balancing automated recommendations with human expertise to improve decision-making in complex SE scenarios.
- Low-Code and No-Code approaches to ease the development of intelligent software assistants.
- Adoption of advanced generative AI models, including LLMs, pre-trained models (PTMs) for software assistants, particularly emphasizing the quality effects.
- Empirical studies and controlled experiments to assess qualitative aspects of intelligent systems.
- Evolution of software systems and long-term recommendations, e.g., how software assistants can cope with the evolving nature of software systems and provide recommendations that consider long-term system maintainability and evolution.
- Cross-disciplinary applications of software assistant: Studying how techniques from other domains, e.g., human-computer interaction, natural language processing, and social network analysis, can enhance their effectiveness and usability.
- Sustainability in design and developing intelligent software assistants.
- Surveys and experience reports on software assistants to support software engineering tasks, both in academic and industry use cases.
The aim of this workshop is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss novel methods and techniques for designing, developing, and assessing intelligent software assistants according to notable qualitative aspects. We expect that the workshop will help to:
- Analyze intelligent software assistants in industries and measure their conformity to recent qualitative standards.
- Provide researchers with a comprehensive landscape of recent intelligent software assistants.
- Investigate how generative AI models can be used in developing software assistants.
- Reinforce the foundational knowledge around software assistants, with a focus on empirical evaluation, trustworthiness, and ethical considerations.
- Identify new opportunities for applying software assistant research to address the most pressing challenges in modern software engineering.
- Proposing new empirical methodologies, protocols, and metrics to evaluate qualitative aspects.
How to Submit
All papers must be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair. The workshop will consider two different types of submissions:
- Full papers must be at least 5 pages and no more than 10, reporting original research on the topics.
- Short papers must be exactly 5 pages, presenting visions, novel ideas, and experience reports on the topics.
More details can be found at: https://conf.researchr.org/home/ease-2026/equisa-2026
Journal Special Issue
A selection of the accepted papers will be invited to a Special Issue of the Information and Technology Software (IST) Journal. Details to follow.
Important Dates
- Submission deadline: March 2nd, 2026.
- Notification to authors: April 6th, 2026.
- Camera-ready due: April 20th, 2026.
Organizers
Giordano d’Aloisio (Università degli Studi dell’Aquila, Italy)
Claudio Di Sipio (Johanns Kepler University, Austria)
Pablo Gómez-Abajo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Riccardo Rubei (Mälardalens universitet, Sweden)
Gianmario Voria (Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy)
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