A framework for capturing the relationship between usability and software architecture

Folmer, Eelke; Gurp, Jilles van; Bosch, Jan

doi:10.1002/spip.171

Cited by 61 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The selection of the chosen usability goal for prioritization was adopted from the analysis made by [11] that showed learnability, efficiency in use, reliability in use and subjective satisfaction were the most commonly cited. The method of prioritization and selecting prototype were adapted from [12,13] called Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP), a multi-criteria analysis approach.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Design towards Usability for Novice Designers

Hao¹,

Jaafar²

2016

TELKOMNIKA

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IntroductionExperienced designers rely on the available design guidelines, past design experiences, templates and problem-solution sets from previous experiences. This concurs to the study claimed that practitioners were depended on their intuition and experiences gained [1]. Thus, novice designers would find difficulties in designing intuitively if experience and knowledge are not sufficiently gained. Subsequently, further research works have been explored on how knowledge and experience were used among experienced and novice designers such as in [2,3] and [4]. Reference [4] suggested that design strategies, knowledge, and information should be included in developing support methods for novice designers as a guide to them.Previous works in [5,6] explored the use of guidelines and patterns as an aid to teach design. The result from [5] has shown the use of design patterns displayed a greater impact on the novice designer's performance than guidelines. We considered all design related knowledge and information such as design decision and design pattern in the proposed method that leading to the development of the tool.This research aims to understand how the proposed assistance tool and method drive the novice designers in designing a usable system, and thereby contribute towards developing a reliable tool and method for them in making design decision, particularly in determining usability goals and patterns, and selecting the best prototype. This paper was extended from [7] which included 2 experiments conducted following the proposed approach. The proposed tool was adopting the application of AHP technique in prioritizing the common usability goals and prototypes. AHP, a multi-criteria technique, has been applied in various disciplines. Recently, in engineering itself, the AHP technique was applied for the purpose of economic efficiency [8] and planning [9]. Relevant to the study, it is also applied in product design such as in [10]. A

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Design towards Usability for Novice Designers

Hao¹,

Jaafar²

2016

TELKOMNIKA

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“…Studies have shown that user-centred design techniques are still underused among development teams [12] and most usability issues are only detected during testing and after deployment [13,14]. Of those practicing UCD, one investigation revealed that the majority of methods in practice were informal, low-cost user-centered design methods.…”

Section: Usability and Web Development Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Role of Usability in the Software Process: A Study of Irish Software SMEs

O’Connor

2009

Communications in Computer and Information Science

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Abstract. This paper explores the software processes and usability techniques used by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that develop web applications. The significance of this research is that it looks at development processes used by SMEs in order to assess to what degree usability is integrated into the process. This study seeks to gain an understanding into the level of awareness of usability within SMEs today and their commitment to usability in practice. The motivation for this research is to explore the current development processes used by SMEs in developing web applications and to understand how usability is represented in those processes. The background for this research is provided by the growth of the web application industry beyond informational web sites to more sophisticated applications delivering a broad range of functionality. This paper presents an analysis of the practices of several Irish SMEs that develop web applications through a series of case studies. With the focus on SMEs that develop web applications as Management Information Systems and not ECommerce sites, informational sites, online communities or web portals. This study gathered data about the usability techniques practiced by these companies and their awareness of usability in the context of the software process in those SMEs. The contribution of this study is to further the understanding of the current role of usability within the software development processes of SMEs that develop web applications.

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“…Until recently [5,6] such relationships between usability and software architecture had not been described nor investigated. In [6] we defined a framework that expresses relationships between Software Architecture and Usability (SAU) based on our comprehensive survey [8].…”

Section: The Sau Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of the necessary usability changes to a system cannot be easily be accommodated by the software architecture. Certain usability improving solutions such as undo, user profiles and visual consistency have for particular application domains proven [5,6] to be extremely hard to retrofit during late stage development because they require architectural support. Restructuring the system during the later stages of development has proven to be an order of magnitude higher than the costs of an initial development [1].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based upon successful experiences [9] with architectural assessment of maintainability, we developed architectural analysis of usability as an important tool to cost effectively develop usable software. To be able to analyze a software architecture for its support of usability, we first investigated the relationship between usability and software architecture in [6]. The result of that research is captured in the softwarearchitecture-usability (SAU) framework, which consists of an integrated set of design solutions that in most cases have a positive effect on usability but are difficult to retrofit into applications because they have architectural impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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