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Evolution of Software Development Process

Originally programmers did it all

In the early days of software industry smart programmers dreamed up useful software, wrote and even tested it on their own. But as their businesses grew, the software business and software business and software products became more complicated.

programmers

Managers brought order

Inevitably, professional managers were brought in. Good product managers understand the market and competitors. They define software product by creating requirements documents. Often, however, requirements are little more than a list of features and managers find themselves having to give up features in order to meet schedule.

Testing and design became separate steps

As the industry matured, testing became a separate discipline and separate step in the process. In the move from commandline to graphical user interface, design and usability also became involved in the process, though often only at the end, and often only affecting visual presentation. Today common practice includes simultaneous coding and design followed by bug and user testing and then revision.

Design must precede the programming effort

A goal directed design approach to software development means that all decisions proceed from a format definition of the user and his or her goals. Definition of the

User experts

Design

Design, according to industrial designer Victor Papanek, is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order. Cooper proposes a somewhat detailed definition:

• Understanding the user’s wants, needs, motivations, and contexts
• Understanding business, technical, and domain requirements and constraints
• Translating this knowledge into plans for artifacts whose form content, and behavior is useful, usable and desirable, as well as economically viable and technically feasible.

This definition applies across all design disciples, although the precise focus on form versus content versus behavior varies by design discipline. When performed using the appropriate methods, design can provide the missing human connection in technological product. But clearly, the currently approach to the design of digital products either isn’t working or isn’t happening as advertised.

Three dimensions of designs

Interaction design focuses on an area that traditional design disciplines do not often explore: the design of behavior. All design affects human behavior: architecture is about how people use spaces as much as it is about form and light. And what would be the point of a poster if no one acted on the information it presented? However, it is only with the introduction of interactive technologies – courtesy of the computer – that the design of the behavior of artifacts and how this behavior affects and

supports human goals and desires, has become a discipline worthy of attention. One way of making sense of he difference is focus between interaction design and more traditional design is through a historical lens. In the first half of the twentieth century, designers focused primarily on form.

Later designers became increasingly concerned with meaning; for example, product designers and architects introduced vernacular and retro forms in the 70s. The trend continues today with retrostyled automobiles such as the PT Cruiser. Today,

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information designers continue the focus on meaning to include the design of usable content. Within the last fifteen years a growing group of designers have begun to talk about behavior: the dynamic ways that softwareenabled products interact directly with users. These concerns (form, meaning and behavior) are not exclusive. Interactive products must have each in some measure; software applications focus more on behavior and form, with less demand on content; web sites and kiosks focus more on content and form, with less sophisticated behaviors.

Definition interaction design

Simply put, interaction design is the definition and design of the behavior of artifacts, environment, and systems, as well as the formal elements that communicate that behavior. Unlike, traditional design disciplines, whose focus has historically been on form and, more recently, on content and meaning, interaction design seeks first to plan and describe how things behave and then, as necessary, to describe the most effective form to communicate those behaviors.