Achieving Usability Through Software Architecture
8 Further Work
This work is by no means complete. There are a number of activities that remain to be done to simplify the support of usability at the software architectural design stage of a system. These activities include
- validating and extending the list of general usability scenarios. We explicitly limited our attention to single-user desktop systems. The scenarios should be extended to include mobile and multi-user environments. Although many of the general scenarios presented here will still be applicable, these environments will introduce their own additional usability requirements. Furthermore, the scenarios need to be validated in practice. Their utility still must be determined, although we have used them successfully in several evaluation and design exercises to date.
- understanding the effect on other attributes of usability architecture patterns. In order for an architect to adopt a particular architectural pattern to support usability, the effect of this pattern on other quality attributes such as performance, modifiability, security and reliability should be understood. There is ongoing work at the SEI in this area [Bass 2000].
- understanding the usability impact of architectural mechanisms used to achieve other attributes. For example, what is the usability impact of a firewall? Again, there is ongoing work at the SEI in this area [Bass 2000].
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