Page 124 - DCAP405_SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING

Unit 8: Design Engineering

Notes
Did u know? What is Platform-Independent Model (PIM)?
A Platform-Independent Model (PIM) in software engineering is a model of a software
system or business system that is independent of the specific technological platform used
to implement it.
8.2 Design Process

The phrase software design is often used to characterize the discipline that is also called software
engineering—the discipline concerned with the construction of software that is efficient, reliable,
robust, and easy to maintain.

Interface Design

Bringing Design to Software implies that the object of design is software, leaving out
considerations of the interface devices that are the inevitable embodiment of software for the
user. Design cannot be neatly divided into compartments for software and for devices: The
possibilities for software are both created and constrained by the physical interfaces. In today’s
world of computer applications, the vast majority of applications present themselves to users in
a standard way—a visual display with a keyboard and mouse. But the future of computing will
bring richer resources to physical human–computer interactions. Some new devices are already
in use on a modest scale.

Example: Pen-based personal digital assistants (PDAs), virtual-reality goggles and gloves,
and computers embedded in electromechanical devices of all kinds.
Researchers are exploring further possibilities, including tactile input and output devices,
immersive environments, audio spaces, wearable computers, and a host of gadgets that bear
little resemblance to today’s personal computer or workstation. As experience with a wider
variety of devices accumulates, the design of interaction based on new combinations of devices
and software will be an important emerging topic in what we have—for the moment—called
software design.

Human-computer Interaction

Whenever someone designs software that interacts with people, the effects of the design extend
beyond the software itself to include the experiences that people will have in encountering and
using that software. A person encountering any artifact applies knowledge and understanding,
based on wide variety of cognitive mechanisms grounded in human capacities for perception,
memory, and action. Researchers in human-computer interaction have studied the mental worlds
of computer users, developing approaches and methods for predicting properties of the
interactions and for supporting the design of interfaces. Although it would be overstating the
case to say that the cognitive analysis of human-computer interaction has led to commonly
accepted and widely applied methods, there is a substantial literature that can be of value to
anyone designing interactive software.

Art

The experience of a person who is interacting with a computer system is not limited to the
cognitive aspects that have been explored in the mainstream literature on human-computer

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