HCI IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Software Engineering

- The sub discipline that addresses the management and technical issues of the
development of software systems.
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Software Lifecycle

- The activities that take place form the initial concept for a software system up
until its eventual phasing out and replacement.
The Software Lifecycle

 Requirement Analysis

- Requirements analysis encompasses those tasks that go into determining the

needs or conditions to meet for a new or altered product or project.

 System Design

- The process of defining the architecture, modules, interfaces, and data for a
system to satisfy specified requirements. Systems design could be seen as the
application of systems theory to product development.

 Implementation

- This phase involves the construction of the actual project result. Programmers are
occupied with encoding, designers are involved in developing graphic material,
contractors are building, and the actual reorganisation takes place. It is during
this phase that the project becomes visible to outsiders, to whom it may appear
that the project has just begun.

 Testing

- The testing phase of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is where you
focus on investigation and discovery. During the testing phase, developers find
out whether their code and programming work according to customer
requirements.

 Deployment

- The final phase of the software development life cycle (SDLC) and puts the
product into production. After the project team tests the product and the
product passes each testing phase, the product is ready to go live. This means
 that the product is ready to be used in a real environment by all end users of the
product.
 Maintenance
- The Maintenance Phase occurs once the system is operational. It includes
implementation of changes that software might undergo over a period of time,
or implementation of new requirements after the software is deployed at the
customer location. The maintenance phase also includes handling the residual
errors that may exist in the software even after the testing phase.
Usability Engineering

- A field that is concerned generally with human-computer interaction and

specifically with devising human-computer interfaces that have high usability or
user friendliness.

Validation

- Validation is the process of evaluating software. Validation of a design

(designing the right thing) demonstrates that within the various activities the
customer’s requirements are satisfied.

Verification

- Verification is the process of evaluating products of a development phase.

Verification (designing the thing right) will most often occur within a single life-
cycle activity or between two adjacent activities. Verification proofs are
between rather formal languages, the proofs are rather formal too.

Management and Contractual Issue

• In management, the technical view on the software lifecycle is sometime

insufficient
• In a technical discussion, management issues of design, such as time constraints
and economic forces, are not as important.
• Training needs, the availability of skilled personnel or possible subcontractors,
and other topics outside the activities for the development if the isolated system.
• In managing the development process, the temporal relationship between the
various activities is more important, as are the intermediate deliverables which
represent the technical content.

Usability Engineering

• The inclusion of a usability specification, forming part of the requirement

specification that concentrates on features of the user-system interaction which
contribute to the usability of the product.
• The emphasis for usability engineering is in knowing exactly what criteria will be
used to judge a product for its usability.
Six Attribute of Usability Specification

• Measuring Concept- makes the abstract attribute more concrete by describing

it in terms of the actual product.
• Measuring Method- states how the attribute will be measured.
• Now Level- indicates the value for the measurement with the existing system.
• Worst Case- the lowest acceptable measurement for the task.
• Planned Level- the target for the design
• Best Case- the level which is agreed to be the best possible measurement given
the current state of development tools and technology.

Interactive Design

- Defined as a user-oriented field of study that focuses on meaningful

communication of media through cyclical and collaborative processes between
people and technology.

Prototyping

- A draft version of a product that allows you to explore your ideas and show the
intention behind a feature or the overall design concept to users before investing
time and money into development.

3 Main Approaches of Prototyping

• Throw Away: The knowledge gained from prototype is used in the final design
but the prototype is discarded.
• Incremental: The final product is released as a series of components that have
been prototyped separately.
• Evolutionary: The prototype is not discarded but serves as a basis for the next
integration of the design.

Techniques for Prototyping

• Storyboards: A graphical depiction of the outward appearance of the intended

system, without any accompanying system functionality.
• Limited Functionality Simulations: Programming support for simulations means a
designer can rapidly build graphical and textual interaction objects and attach
some behavior to those objects, which mimics the system's functionality.
• High Level Programming Support: Allows the programmer to abstract away from
the hardware specification and thinking terms that are closer to the way the
input and output devices are perceived as interaction devices.

Design Rationale
 - An Explicit documentation of the reasons behind decisions made when designing a
system or artifact.

The Benefits of Design Rationale

• DR provides a communication mechanism among the members of the design

team.
• DR can capture the context of a design decision in order that a different design
team can determine if a similar rationale is appropriate for their product.
• Producing DR forces the designer deliberate more carefully about design
decision
• Capturing the context of a decision in the DR will help when using the current
design in future design.

Process Oriented Design Rationale

- is interested in recording an historically accurate description of a design team

making some decision on a particular issue for the design.

IBIS

- Issue-Based Information System. In which a hierarchical process oriented

structure is used

Design Space Analysis

- Is initially structured by a set of questions representing the major issues of the

design.

Psychological Design Rationale

- The purpose of PDR is to design the natural task-artifact cycle of design activity. When
a new system becomes an artifact, further observation reveals that in addition to the
required tasks it also supports tasks the designer never intended.