SiCaPEx: a dissertation audits usability in Brazilian Army's personnel system
Dione Ramos Canuto Moura defended at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program a dissertation analyzing the usability of SiCaPEx — the Brazilian Army personnel registration system — combining SUS, Nielsen’s heuristics, and implemented improvement proposals.
Brasília, January 10, 2025
SiCaPEx fulfills a central function in the Brazilian Army’s personnel management — and, over time, accumulated a usability debt expressed in the steady growth of support requests. The dissertation defended in January 2025 by Dione Ramos Canuto Moura at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program tackles that debt with method, under the advising of Prof. Dr. George Marsicano Corrêa .
The work analyzes user-system interaction from 2019 to 2023 using two complementary lenses: the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire and Nielsen’s Heuristic Evaluation. Results point to significant problems — learning difficulty, subpar efficiency, poor memorization —, and the author does not stop at diagnosis. From the identified suggestions, she prepares an internal memorandum and implements a FAQ addressing the most frequent doubts, an initiative well received by users.
The defense took place in January 2025 in Brasília. The examining committee was chaired by the advisor, Prof. Dr. George Marsicano Corrêa (UnB), and composed of Prof. Dr. Andrea Castello Branco Judice (UDF) and Prof. Dr. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas (FCTE/UnB). Prof. Dr. Edna Dias Canedo, PPCA program coordinator, also attended the session.
By pairing software architecture with concrete usability-improvement practice in a state corporate system, the dissertation offers a replicable path for other systems that suffer from the same time-driven stiffening.
Part of the results was also published in the paper Proposição de Melhoria de Usabilidade da Interação entre Usuário e Sistema Corporativo, presented at the 19th CONTECSI. The paper records the scientific version of the diagnosis and usability improvements applied to the corporate system.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Institutional Repository.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions.