CN02 - Avoiding "We can't change THAT!": An Introduction to Usability and Software Architecture

Instructors:
Bonnie E. John, Carnegie Mellon University
Len Bass, Carnegie Mellon University
Elspeth Golden, Carnegie Mellon University

Benefits:
Participants in this course will

  • Understand basic principles of software architecture for interactive systems and their relationship to the usability of those systems
  • Be able to evaluate whether common usability scenarios will arise in the systems they are developing so that the impact arising from these concerns can be considered at architecture design time.
  • Understand patterns of software architecture that facilitate usability
  • Be able to recognize architectural decisions that preclude usability of the end-product, so that they can effectively bring usability considerations into early architectural design.

Origins:
This is a new version of courses at CHI'02,'03, '04, '07 and ICSE '04.

Features:

  • An introduction to software architecture, its concepts, and purposes
  • The role of software architecture in the software lifecycle and how that
    • interacts with typical usability roles
  • Quality attributes in general and usability as a quality attribute
  • An introduction to usability-supporting architectural patterns (USAPs) and their role in software architecture design.
  • Detailed examples of the USAPs and their use in real-world system construction.
  • Results of a controlled experiment validating the benefit of using USAPs in architecture design.
  • Small group exercise applying USAPs to the attendees' specific design situations.

Audience:
Usability professionals desiring more involvement with early software decisions. Software developers who want to understand the usability implications of architectural decisions. No prior knowledge of software architecture is required.

Presentation:
Lecture, Q&A, and small group exercise.

Instructors:
Bonnie John, a psychologist & engineer, has 20 years experience teaching HCI. Len Bass is the author of three books on software architecture & developing user interfaces. Elspeth Golden is a graduate student in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon studying the intersection of HCI and software engineering.

Website:
www.cs.cmu.edu/~bej/usa/