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From User Interface Usability to the Overall Usability of Interactive Systems: Adding Usability in System Architecture

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Human-Centered Software Engineering

Part of the book series: Human-Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

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Abstract

Traditional interactive system architectures such as MVC and PAC decompose the system into subsystems that are relatively independent, thereby allowing the design work to be partitioned between the user interfaces and underlying functionalities. Such architectures extend the independence assumption to usability, approaching the design of the user interface as a subsystem that can be designed and tested independently from the underlying functionality. This Cartesian dichotomy can be fallacious, as functionalities buried in the application’s logic can sometimes affect the usability of the system. Our investigations model the relationships between internal software attributes and externally visible usability factors. We propose a pattern-based approach for dealing with these relationships. We conclude by discussing how these patterns can lead to a methodological framework for improving interactive system architec-tures, and how these patterns can support the integration of usability in the software design process.

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Correspondence to Mohamed Taleb .

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Taleb, M., Seffah, A., Engleberg, D. (2009). From User Interface Usability to the Overall Usability of Interactive Systems: Adding Usability in System Architecture. In: Seffah, A., Vanderdonckt, J., Desmarais, M.C. (eds) Human-Centered Software Engineering. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-907-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-907-3_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84800-906-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84800-907-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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