Evaluating Software Architectures for Usability

For the last twenty years, techniques to design software architectures for interactive systems that support usability have been a concern of both researchers and practitioners. Recently, in the context of performing architecture evaluations, we were reminded that the techniques developed thus far are of limited utility when evaluating the usability of a system based on its architecture. Techniques for supporting usability have historically focussed on selecting the correct overall system structure. Proponents of these techniques argue that their structure retains the modifiability needed during an iterative design process while still providing the required support for performance and other functionality.