Subject: Software Engineering

Topic: Software Design Specification

Difficulty: Medium

Steps in design process

• Requirements : What is there and what is wanted
• Analysis : Ordering and understanding
• Design: What to do and how to decide
• Iteration and prototyping : Getting it right and finding what is really needed
• Implementation and deployment : Making it and getting it out there

User Focus:

1.Know your user

i. Who are they? (Young/old/experienced/new)

ii. Talk to them

• Structured interviews (job/life)
• Open ended discussions

iii. Watch them

• How they spend day?
• What they do?
• What they are using?
• What they say?

iv. Use your imagination

• Many users cannot be involved throughout the design.

2.Persona

• Description of an example user - Not necessarily a real person
• Use as surrogate user-What would they think?
• Details matter-Makes the example user real

3.Information Collection Techniques

i. Direct Methods

• Individual face-to-face interview
• Telephone interview or survey
• Traditional focus group
• Facilitated team workshop
• Observational field study
• Requirements prototyping
• User-interface prototyping
• Usability laboratory testing
• Card sorting for websites

ii. Indirect Methods:

• Use intermediary between developer and user. Intermediary may be electronic or another person.
• MIS intermediary
• Paper survey or questionnaire
• Electronic survey or questionnaire
• Electronic focus group
• Marketing and sales
• Support line
• Email or bulletin board
• User group
• Competitor analysis
• Trade show
• Other media analysis
• System testing

Scenarios:

i. Scenarios are stories for design to communicate with others, validate other models, and understand dynamics.

ii. Linearity

• Time is linear
• Don’t show alternatives

iii. What will the users want to do?

iv. Step-by-step walk through

• what can they see
• what do they do
• what are they thinking

v. Use and reuse throughout design

Explore the depths:

i. Explore interaction-What happens when?

ii. Explore cognition-What are the users thinking?

iii. Explore architecture -What is happening inside?

Use scenarios to:

i. Communicate with others

• Designers, clients, users

ii. Validate other models

• ‘Play’ it against other models

iii. Express dynamics

• Screenshots – appearance
• Scenario – behaviour

Four Golden Rules:

i. Knowing where you are

• State of system – e.g. Downloading now.

ii. Knowing what you can do

• Which text is clickable

iii. Knowing where you are going

• or what will happen- X-Enter,X-Exit,Icons

iv. Knowing where you’ve been

• or what you’ve done

Levels:

i. Widget choice –How to use them.

• Menus, buttons etc.

ii. Screen design –

• Find things on screen, understand logical grouping of buttons.

iii. Application navigation design

• What will happen? When?
• Where you are in interaction

iv. Environment

• other apps, O/S