Usability and software architecture

Posted in information architecture, interaction design, usability, user experience design 1 comment designing an interaction framework for your applications tasks posted on july 17, 2012 by kevin matz. Usability is the degree of ease with which products such as software and web applications can be used to achieve required goals effectively and efficiently. Prioritizing them is necessary because the client will optimistically ask that you do all of them. The software architecture patterns developed to implement this tactic and to support the modification of the user interface are. More often though they are people who are trained in specific applied fields who have taken on a. This paper outlines an approach to improving the usability of software systems by means of software architectural decisions. Therefore, simply separating the presentation from the dialogue and application made it easy to modify that presentation after user testing. A system may be composed of many levels of abstraction and many phases of operation, each with its own software architecture. The usability perspective software systems architecture.

Scenariobased assessment of software architecture usability. The role of software architecture with respect to usability has evolved over the past 20 years. Usability is the measure of a products potential to accomplish the goals of the user. Potential design solutions that accommodate the corresponding usability mechanisms into the web software architecture are presented, along with the rationale. Achieving usability through software architecture march 2001 technical report len bass, bonnie e.

A user experience designer can control accessibility, user interface, information architecture and usability to suit the uncontrolled aspects like goals, user lifestyle and habits. Unfortunately, no documented evidence exists of architecture level assessment techniques focusing on usability. As a designer of interactive and adaptive space, how do you make decisions about where to personalize elements for occupants, while still making them collectively accessible. We have tested our guidelines in an academic setting. Pdf usability and software architecture researchgate.

The architectures of the 1980s and early 1990s assumed that usability was primarily a property of the presentation of information. Supporting usability through software architecture ercim. Software architecture, usability, architectural patterns 1. To help you out, here is a quick list outlining my top 7 default ilities in the order that i prioritize them. Sad to say, these researchers were bass, clements, and kazman, and the book was the first edition of software architecture in practice. Evaluating usability at completion introduces a great risk of wasting effort on software.

Modelviewcontroller presentationabstractioncontrol seeheim archslinky. Software architecture is described as the organization of a system, where the system represents a set of components that accomplish the defined functions. Supporting usability through software architecture. Each layer is discussed starting from the problem domain. So, what does this mean for adaptive architecture and its architectural design usability. In this paper, we focus on the software design artifacts provided by the guidelines. The system usability scale sus provides a quick and dirty, reliable tool for measuring the usability. Usability practitioners are sometimes trained as industrial engineers, psychologists, kinesiologists, systems design engineers, or with a degree in information architecture, information or library science, or humancomputer interaction hci. Our research has identified several usability patterns that require architectural support.

Usability is an essential part of software quality. This perspective tends to focus on the end users of the system but should also address the concerns of any others who interact with it directly or indirectly, such as maintainers and support personnel. Functionality, usability, reliability, performance and supportability are together referred to as furps in relation to software requirements. Learn how to create more usable, useful, and accessible websites. Experiences with software architecture analysis of usability. The software had been carefully modularized so that modifications to the ui would be fast and easy. The architectures of the 1980s and early 1990s assumed that usability was primarily a property of. Search by entering keyword s and clicking the search button. It consists of a 10 item questionnaire with five response options for respondents. The software had been carefully modularized so that. For internal design projects, think of doubling usability as cutting training budgets in half and doubling the number of transactions employees perform per hour. In order to conduct a usability test, you must first identify the target audience, which will consist of one or more user groups.

This excerpt from a practical guide to information architecture will help you understand when to test, how testing works, what to prepare, and how to interpret your results. Software testing and evaluation browser software testing. Developing systematic ways to relate the software quality attributes of a system to the systems architecture provides a sound basis for making objective decisions about design tradeoffs and enables engineers to make reasonably accurate predictions about a. Introduction usability is important for interactive systems.

Achieving usability for an interactive system depends on a number of factors. Bonnie has teamed up with len bass to bring usability to the architecture design table as a. These attributes were chosen based on their importance in the. Usability is a controlled aspect of user experience design that ensures the enduser doesnt strain or encounter problems with the use of a product or websites user interface. Implications for software development are that usability concerns can be included at architecture design time, and that usaps can significantly help software architects to produce better designs. Information architecture focuses on designing effective navigation, organization, labeling, and search systems. To improve the usability of a software system, usability patterns can be applied. Software architecture analysis of usability proceedings of. We also formulate each aspect of usability as a scenario with a characteristic stimulus and response. Usability patterns in software architecture citeseerx. Hence it is important to design systems to support usability.

Agility in working software is an aggregation of seven architecturally sensitive attributes. Some facets of usability such as cancellation, undo, progress bars, and others require software architecture support. Usability testing is a vital part of the information architecture process. In the literature, there are available proposals that aim to contribute to bridge the gap between. Achieving usability through software architecture sei digital library. It gives the entire design team the tools to consider usability from the. How to test an information architecture ux mastery.

Schools offering computer engineering degrees can also be found in these popular choices. In information technology, the term is often used in relation to software applications and web sites, but it can be used in relation to any product that is employed to accomplish a task for example, a toaster, a car dashboard, or an alarm clock. Usability engineering is used to determine to what degree a product or prototype will be userfriendly. Techreprieve helps give you the edge over your competitors by enabling your customers and users to get the most out of your software or website through a simpler. The usability of software has traditionally been evaluated on completed systems. We detail the structure of the proposed design artifacts and how they should be used according to the software development process and software architecture used in each application. To relate the problem domain to the solution domain, and hence relate usability to software architecture several intermediate layers have been defined which will be discussed in the next subsections. For software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller but still substantial when you emphasize usability in the design process. If you would like to be involved, or if you would just like to offer suggestions for topics or evidence for inclusion, contact us at info.

When the usability problems are presented, someone around the table exclaims, oh, no, we cant change that. In this report, we present an approach to improving the usability of software systems by means of software architectural decisions. In the intervening five years we have learned quite a lot about many quality attributes, and none more so than usability. Practice shows that for current software systems, most usability issues are still only detected during testing and deployment. Jan 03, 2012 for software and physical products, the improvements are typically smaller but still substantial when you emphasize usability in the design process. We then organize the usability scenarios by category. Information architecture generally applies to websites, but can also apply to web applications, mobile applications, and social media software. Usability framework 3 software architecture assessment the design and use of an explicitly defined software architecture has received increasing amounts of attention during the last decade. Linking usability to software architecture patterns through. Longterm work, in this project i need data over 30 da. Bonnie has teamed up with len bass to bring usability to the architecture design table as a firstclass citizen on par with other. Investigating the impact of usability on software architecture through. A software architecture is an abstraction of the runtime elements of a software system during some phase of its operation. Pdf the role of software architecture with respect to usability has evolved over the past 20 years.

Software architecture analysis of usability springerlink. Up to this point, usability has been served only by separating a systems user interface from its functionality to support iterative design. She consults for many industrial and government organizations. The relation between usability and the software architecture. Information architecture is the work that goes into creating intuitive navigation schemes for software. Studies of software engineering projects show that a large number of usability related change requests are made after its deployment. Computer systems are used in many critical applications where a failure can have serious consequences loss of lives or property. The architectural style, also called as architectural pattern, is a set of principles which shapes an application. Some facets of usability such as cancellation, undo, progress bars, and. We argue the importance of the relation between usability and software. The quality attributes of a software system are, to a large extent determined by the systems software architecture. Carnegie mellon university, pittsburgh, pa 152, usa.