EVALUATING USABILITY-SUPPORTING ARCHITECTURE PATTERNS:

摘要

ABSTRACTEdgardo LuzcandoEVALUATING USABILITY-SUPPORTING ARCHITECTURE PATTERNS:REACTIONS FROM USABILITY PROFESSIONALSUsability professionals and software engineers typically approach software designdifferently; driven by a similar goal to create usable software products yet advocatingdistinct design methodologies. This distinction often creates a communication gap thathinders effective usability design discussions. A potential way to bridge this gap is toleverage Usability-Supporting Architecture Patterns. Recent studies suggest that theyenable software engineers to include usability considerations in the architecture ofsoftware systems. A better understanding of what the usability community thinks aboutthese patterns can lead to their improvement as well as increased adoption by softwareengineers, hence more effectively integrating usability into software design. The purposeof this study was to evaluate how usability professionals react to these patterns via anonline pretest-posttest control group design experiment, where participants answeredquestions about the patterns based on prior software design experience. Participantsverified there is a communication gap with software engineers, and that Usability-Supporting Architecture Patterns are perceived as useful to account for usability insoftware architectures. Results suggest that participants recognize the patterns’ usabilitybenefits as important and that the presentation of these usability benefits could beimproved by using language more familiar to usability professionals.