Design decisions under object-oriented approach: A thematic analysis from the abstraction point of view

Many authors consider abstraction as one of the key principles in objected-oriented approach, but the ability to abstract is very difficult to achieve. Specifically, during the software design stage, abstraction allows in a software architecture decrease the complexity and achieve a more efficient decomposition. However, despite its importance and difficulty, there is a lack of theoretical or empirical research that explores how to enhance such ability. In this paper, we report the results of a research that was undertaken in order to address this gap in the body of knowledge. Particularly, we conducted a qualitative study through a thematic analysis to explore how students apply abstraction during the object-oriented software design. Our results reveal that during the modeling of the problem domain in Unified Modeling Language (UML), students express a deficiency of abstraction, being the possible causes: strict copy of reality to software, influence of structured approach, tendency to simplification, and lack of understanding of the concepts of object-oriented approach.