1. User Interface Design and Development
Interface Goals Notes
Jeff Offutt
SWE 632
User Interface Design and Development

2. Summary Project submissions should be direct and to the point
Cover pages are not necessary
Subjective Satisfaction is whatever comes after the other 4 criteria are accounted for
Remember what I said on day one of class:
Don’t use the term
“user friendly”
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt

3. Requirements not Design
Requirements answer What, Design answers How
A goal was to separate WHAT (requirements) from HOW (design)
“The UI will be slower to use than a command line interface”
This pre-supposes a design
This is a common source of system faults that canNOT be found during early testing ... that is, very expensive
A common SWE mistake is to not think hard enough or deep enough about requirements
This postpones requirements thinking until design and implementation, often leading to unsolvable problems with the final project
Mistakes In Requirements Are Often Unrecoverable After Implementation
A couple of CS 101 slides …
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt

4. Software Testing in Real Life
Needs or idea
Requirements
Deployment
Future
Evolution
Unrecoverable, but Common !!
System Test
Architecture
Disaster!
Full System
Design
Very expensive
Expensive
Integration
Test
Programming
Unit Test
Integrate
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt

5. English and Writing Notes
In English, we usually add an s to make a noun plural, and an apostrophe (’s) to show ownership
Actor’s of the system
Actors of the system
The URL’s are entered …
The URLs are entered …
A lot of IT people do this
It makes us look poorly educated
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt

6. English and Writing Notes
Users(Actors)
Graphical User Interfaces(GUIs)
Users (Actors)
Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)
Always space before left parentheses, except in mathematical functions—F(x)
In Java, this style “while(X<0)” is harder to read and understand, but programming style is personal preference
In English it’s wrong
Don’t let poor programming habits morph into incorrect writing
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt

7. You can start designing
Now …
You can start designing
17-Apr-19
© Jeff Offutt