The unified modeling language (UML) is a general-purpose visual modeling language that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system.
Rapid application development (RAD), also called rapid application building (RAB), is both a general term for adaptive software development approaches, and the name for James Martin's method of rapid development. In general, RAD approaches to software development put less emphasis on planning and more emphasis on an adaptive process. Prototypes are often used in addition to or sometimes even instead of design specifications.
In software and systems engineering, the phrase use case is a polyseme with two senses:
- A usage scenario for a piece of software; often used in the plural to suggest situations where a piece of software may be useful.
- A potential scenario in which a system receives an external request and responds to it.
User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models and post production, completing a circle of proof back to and ensuring that "development proceeds with the user as the center of focus." Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. User-centered design is based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities and experiences and when used, is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers satisfaction to the user.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:
In computing, a scenario is a narrative of foreseeable interactions of user roles and the technical system, which usually includes computer hardware and software.
User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicate to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.
Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) is a technical approach for analyzing and designing an application, system, or business by applying object-oriented programming, as well as using visual modeling throughout the software development process to guide stakeholder communication and product quality.
User interface modeling is a development technique used by computer application programmers. Today's user interfaces (UIs) are complex software components, which play an essential role in the usability of an application. The development of UIs requires therefore, not only guidelines and best practice reports, but also a development process including the elaboration of visual models and a standardized notation for this visualization.
Larry LeRoy Constantine is an American software engineer, professor in the Center for Exact Sciences and Engineering at the University of Madeira Portugal, and considered one of the pioneers of computing. He has contributed numerous concepts and techniques forming the foundations of modern practice in software engineering and applications design and development.
In software engineering, structured analysis (SA) and structured design (SD) are methods for analyzing business requirements and developing specifications for converting practices into computer programs, hardware configurations, and related manual procedures.
User experience design defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all aspects and stages of a customer's experience and interaction with a company.
The principles of user interface design are intended to improve the quality of user interface design. According to Lucy Lockwood's approach of usage-centered design, these principles are:
In computing, an object-oriented user interface (OOUI) is a type of user interface based on an object-oriented programming metaphor, and describes most modern operating systems such as MacOS and Windows. In an OOUI, the user interacts explicitly with objects that represent entities in the domain that the application is concerned with. Many vector drawing applications, for example, have an OOUI – the objects being lines, circles and canvases. The user may explicitly select an object, alter its properties, or invoke other actions upon it. If a business application has any OOUI, the user may be selecting and/or invoking actions on objects representing entities in the business domain such as customers, products or orders.
An interaction technique, user interface technique or input technique is a combination of hardware and software elements that provides a way for computer users to accomplish a single task. For example, one can go back to the previously visited page on a Web browser by either clicking a button, pressing a key, performing a mouse gesture or uttering a speech command. It is a widely used term in human-computer interaction. In particular, the term "new interaction technique" is frequently used to introduce a novel user interface design idea.
Useware is a term introduced in 1998 to encompass all hardware and software components of a technical system designed for interactive use. It focuses on technological design in relation to human abilities and needs. A promising method to design technical products is to understand human abilities and limitations and tailor the technology to them.
Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways. A device that allows interaction between human being and a computer is known as a "Human-computer Interface (HCI)".
Responsibility-driven design is a design technique in object-oriented programming, which improves encapsulation by using the client–server model. It focuses on the contract by considering the actions that the object is responsible for and the information that the object shares. It was proposed by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Brian Wilkerson.
Agile usability engineering is a method created from a combination of agile software development and usability engineering practices. Agile usability engineering attempts to apply the principles of rapid and iterative development to the field of user interface design.
Wisdom is a software development process and method to design software-intensive interactive systems. It is based on object modelling, and focuses human-computer interaction (HCI) in order to model the software architecture of the system i.e. it is architecture-centric. The focus on HCI while being architecture-centric places Wisdom as a pioneer method within human-centered software engineering. Wisdom was conceived by Nuno Nunes and first published in the years 1999-2000 in order to close the gaps of existing software engineering methods regarding the user interface design.
