Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions

Chapter 10. Usability

Winning solutions are usable. They may not be perfect. They may not win design awards from fancy committees where people dress in black, sip champagne, and pontificate on issues like “convergence.” But they are usable: With them users can accomplish necessary tasks easily, efficiently, and with a minimum of errors. Winning solutions enable people to achieve their goals with little, if any, frustration.

I've already touched on two important but overlooked aspects of usability: deployment and integration/extension architectures. Subsequent chapters will focus on usability in the context of operations and maintenance—notably, installations and upgrades. This chapter briefly explores some other important aspects of usability, ...