Abstract
Studies of software engineering projects show that a large number of usability related change requests are made after its deployment. Fixing usability problems during the later stages of development often proves to be costly, since many of the necessary changes require changes to the system that cannot be easily accommodated by its software architecture. These high costs prevent developers from meeting all the usability requirements, resulting in systems with less than optimal usability. The successful development of a usable software system therefore must include creating a software architecture that supports the right level of usability. Unfortunately, no documented evidence exists of architecture level assessment techniques focusing on usability. To support software architects in creating a software architecture that supports usability, we present a scenario based assessment technique that has been successfully applied in several cases. Explicit evaluation of usability during architectural design may reduce the risk of building a system that fails to meet its usability requirements and may prevent high costs incurring adaptive maintenance activities once the system has been implemented.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Argyris, C., Putnam, R., Smith, D.: Action Science: Concepts, methods and skills for research and intervention. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco (1985)
Bass, L., Clements, P., Kazman, R.: Software Architecture in Practice. Addison Wesley Longman, Reading (1998)
Bass, L., Kates, J., John, B.E.: Achieving Usability through software architecture, Technical Report CMU/SEI-2001-TR-005 (1-3-2001)
Bosch, J.: Design and use of Software Architectures: Adopting and evolving a product line approach. Pearson Education, Addison-Wesley and ACM Press, Harlow (2000)
Brighton, The Brighton Usability Pattern Collection, http://www.cmis.brighton.ac.uk/research/patterns/home.html
Buschmann, F., Meunier, R., Rohnert, H., Sommerlad, P., Stal, M.: Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture: A System of Patterns. John Wiley and Son Ltd., New York (1996)
Folmer, E., Bosch, J.: Architecting for usability; a survey. Journal of systems and software, 61–78 (2002)
Folmer, E., Gurp, J.v., Bosch, J.: Investigating the Relationship between Usability and Software Architecture. In: Software process improvement and practice, Wiley, Chichester (2003)
Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., Vlissides, J.: Design patterns elements of reusable object-orientated software. Addison-Wesley, Chichester (1995)
Gurp, J.v., Bosch, J.: Design Erosion: Problems and Causes. Journal of systems and software, 105–119 (3-1-2002)
Hix, D., Hartson, H.R.: Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product and Process. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester (1993)
IEEE, IEEE Architecture Working Group. Recommended practice for architectural description. Draft IEEE Standard P1471/D4.1. IEEE, Los Alamitos (1998)
ISO, ISO 9241-11 Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs) – Part 11: Guidance on usability (1994)
Kazman, R., Abowd, G., Webb, M.: SAAM: A Method for Analyzing the Properties of Software Architectures. In: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Software Engineering (1994)
Kazman, R., Klein, M., Barbacci, M., Longstaff, T., Lipson, H., Carriere, J.: The Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method. In: Proceedings of ICECCS (1998) (8-1-1998)
Kruchten, P.B.: The 4+1 View Model of Architecture. IEEE Software (1995)
Landauer, T.K.: The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability and Productivity. MIT Press, Cambridge (1995)
Lassing, N., Bengtsson, P.O., van Vliet, H., Bosch, J.: Experiences with ALMA: Architecture-Level Modifiability Analysis. Journal of systems and software, 47–57 (2002)
Lauesen, S., Younessi, H.: Six styles for usability requirements. In: Proceedings of REFSQ 1998 (1998)
Li, W., Henry, S.: OO Metrics that Predict Maintainability. Journal of systems and software, 111–122 (1993)
Nielsen, J.: Usability Engineering. Academic Press Inc., Boston (1993)
Nielsen, J.: Heuristic Evaluation. In: Nielsen, J., Mack, R.L. (eds.) Usability Inspection Methods. John Wiley and Sons, New York (1994)
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., Benyon, D., Holland, S., Carey, T.: Human-Computer Interaction. Addison Wesley, Reading (1994)
Pressman, R.S.: Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach. McGraw-Hill, NY (1992)
Shneiderman, B.: Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1998)
Tidwell, J.: Interaction Design Patterns. In: Conference on Pattern Languages of Programming 1998 (1998)
Wharton, C., Rieman, J., Lewis, C.H., Polson, P.G.: The Cognitive Walkthrough: A practitioner’s guide. In: Nielsen, J., Mack, R.L. (eds.) Usability Inspection Methods. John Wiley and Sons, New York (1994)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Folmer, E., van Gurp, J., Bosch, J. (2005). Software Architecture Analysis of Usability. In: Bastide, R., Palanque, P., Roth, J. (eds) Engineering Human Computer Interaction and Interactive Systems. EHCI 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3425. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11431879_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11431879_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26097-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31961-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)