Towards a Method for Analyzing Architectural Support Levels of Usability

The user acceptance of a software product especially depends on its usability. Therefore, it is a matter that needs to be addressed early in the software development process. In existing scenario-based software architecture analysis methods that focus on usability, the usage context is not employed to select scenarios used for analysis, although it is known that understanding a specific usage context is important to carefully design for usability. In order to address this, we propose in this position paper the ldquomethod for analyzing architectural support levels of usabilityrdquo, which incorporates a usage context analysis and a simple standards inspection of a user interface prototype. It furthermore provides a knowledge base of standardized analysis scenarios and analysis templates that are derived from general usability requirements and design patterns. By defining architectural support levels (ASL), which are defined based on analysis scenario gradings, the proposed procedure model shall guide evaluators to accomplish a repeatable analysis resulting in a rating of the current design for usability in a traceable way.