Software documentation is written text or illustration that accompanies computer software or is embedded in the source code. The documentation either explains how the software operates or how to use it, and may mean different things to people in different roles.
Feature creep is the excessive ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, especially in computer software, video games and consumer and business electronics. These extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and can result in software bloat and over-complication, rather than simple design.
Usability engineering is a professional discipline that focuses on improving the usability of interactive systems. It draws on theories from computer science and psychology to define problems that occur during the use of such a system. Usability Engineering involves the testing of designs at various stages of the development process, with users or with usability experts. The history of usability engineering in this context dates back to the 1980s. In 1988, authors John Whiteside and John Bennett—of Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM, respectively—published material on the subject, isolating the early setting of goals, iterative evaluation, and prototyping as key activities. The usability expert Jakob Nielsen is a leader in the field of usability engineering. In his 1993 book Usability Engineering, Nielsen describes methods to use throughout a product development process—so designers can ensure they take into account the most important barriers to learnability, efficiency, memorability, error-free use, and subjective satisfaction before implementing the product. Nielsen’s work describes how to perform usability tests and how to use usability heuristics in the usability engineering lifecycle. Ensuring good usability via this process prevents problems in product adoption after release. Rather than focusing on finding solutions for usability problems—which is the focus of a UX or interaction designer—a usability engineer mainly concentrates on the research phase. In this sense, it is not strictly a design role, and many usability engineers have a background in computer science because of this. Despite this point, its connection to the design trade is absolutely crucial, not least as it delivers the framework by which designers can work so as to be sure that their products will connect properly with their target usership.
In engineering, a requirement is a condition that must be satisfied for the output of a work effort to be acceptable. It is an explicit, objective, clear and often quantitative description of a condition to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service.
In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. PLM integrates people, data, processes, and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises.
In software project management, software testing, and software engineering, verification and validation is the process of checking that a software engineer system meets specifications and requirements so that it fulfills its intended purpose. It may also be referred to as software quality control. It is normally the responsibility of software testers as part of the software development lifecycle. In simple terms, software verification is: "Assuming we should build X, does our software achieve its goals without any bugs or gaps?" On the other hand, software validation is: "Was X what we should have built? Does X meet the high-level requirements?"
Failure causes are defects in design, process, quality, or part application, which are the underlying cause of a failure or which initiate a process which leads to failure. Where failure depends on the user of the product or process, then human error must be considered.
In the context of software engineering, software quality refers to two related but distinct notions:
Ferdinand Karl Piëch was an Austrian business magnate, engineer, and executive who held the positions of chairman of the executive board (Vorstandsvorsitzender) of the Volkswagen Group from 1993 to 2002, and chairman of the supervisory board (Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender) from 2002 to 2015.
Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability is defined as the probability that a product, system, or service will perform its intended function adequately for a specified period of time, OR will operate in a defined environment without failure. Reliability is closely related to availability, which is typically described as the ability of a component or system to function at a specified moment or interval of time.
Automotive design is the process of developing the appearance of motor vehicles, including automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans.
Requirements management is the process of documenting, analyzing, tracing, prioritizing and agreeing on requirements and then controlling change and communicating to relevant stakeholders. It is a continuous process throughout a project. A requirement is a capability to which a project outcome should conform.
Integrated circuit design, semiconductor design, chip design or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography.
Porsche Design, legally Porsche Lizenz- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, is a German lifestyle brand and product design studio founded in 1972 by F. A. Porsche, the designer of the original Porsche 911, known for its accessories such as sunglasses, pens, and watches.
The following outline is provided as an overview of a topical guide to design:
Robert Eberan von Eberhorst, later known as Robert Eberan-Eberhorst, was a noted Austrian engineer, who designed the Auto Union Type D Grand Prix motor racing car.
In software, a feature is an identifiable characteristic of a computer program.
Xilinx ISE is a discontinued software tool from Xilinx for synthesis and analysis of HDL designs, which primarily targets development of embedded firmware for Xilinx FPGA and CPLD integrated circuit (IC) product families. It was succeeded by Xilinx Vivado. Use of the last released edition from October 2013 continues for in-system programming of legacy hardware designs containing older FPGAs and CPLDs otherwise orphaned by the replacement design tool, Vivado Design Suite.
Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.
Juicero was an American company that designed, manufactured and sold the Juicero Press, a fruit and vegetable juicer. The Juicero Press featured Wi-Fi connectivity and used proprietary, single-serving packets of pre-chopped fruits and vegetables that were sold exclusively by the company on a subscription basis. From 2014 to 2017, the San Francisco-based firm received $120 million in startup venture capital from investors.
