This presentation was created for the SATURN conference series and does not necessarily reflect the positions and views of the Software Engineering Institute.

This presentation will describe the application of Usability Supporting Architectural Patterns (USAPs) to the architecture design of a product line of systems. The patterns were delivered by a web-enabled prototype tool. The tool prompted the designers with architecture responsibilities specific to their chosen usability scenarios, then required the designers to respond to each responsibility and additionally provided the designer with implementation instructions in a textual, rather than a component, form. The designers used the USAP delivery tool in the early design phase and were extremely positive. Two designers using the USAP delivery tool for six hours discovered 14 major issues related to usability support in the core architecture that were not previously incorporated in the architecture design. Two potential new subsystems were identified during this exercise.

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PRESENTATION