The Development Lifecycle

1. Collect Information
• Organize the design team
• Obtain managment and customer participation
• Conduct interviews with users Submit written questionnaires to users
• Perform detailed task and task-frequency analysis
• Read Professional and academic literature
• Speak with designers and users of similar programs
• Estimate development, trainign, usage, and maintenance costs
• Prepare a schedule with obsevable milestones and reviews
• Design the testing strategy with the useability laboratory.
2. Define Requirements and Semantics.
• Define high level gioals and middle-level requirements
• Consider alternaitves in task flow sequencing
• Organize tasks into transaction unts
• Create task objects and actions
• Create computer objects and actions
• Determine reliability and availability needs
• Specify security, provacy, and integrity constraints
• Create guidelines document and process for enforcement
• Obtain manager and customer agreement on goals, requirements, and semantic designs.
3. Design Syntax and support facilities
• Compare alternative desing formats
• Create syntax for actions
• Design infiormative feedback for each action
• Develop error messages and error handling
• Specify system respinse times and display rates
• Plan user aids, online help, and tutorials
• Write User and reference manuals!!
• Review, evaluate, and revise design speicifications
• Carry out paper-and-pencil pilot tests or field studies with an on-line mockup or prototype.
4. Specify Physical devices
• Choose hard- or soft- copy devices
• Consider color, screen size, and resolution
• Specify keyboard layout
• Specify pointing devices
• Select audio, graphics, or peripheral devices
• Establish requirements for communication lines
• Consider work environment, such as noise elvel, lighting and talb space
• Carry out further pilot tests and revise design
5. Develop Software
• Use user-interface management systems
• Produce top-down modular design
• Emphasize modifiability and maintainability.
• Ensure reliability and security.
• Enable monitoring of user and systcm perfornanze.
• Provide adequate system documentation.
• Concduct thorough software tests with realistic usage load¸
6. Integrate system and disseminate to users
• Ensure user involvement at every stage
• Conduct acceptance tests and fine tune the system.
• Field test printed manuals, online help, and tutorials.
• Implement a training subsystem or simulator.
• Provide adequate training and consultation for users.
• Follow phased approach to dissemination, and provide time and resources to make modest revisions in response to user feedback
7. Nurture the user community
• Provide on-site or telephone consultants,
• Offer onlinee consultant.
• Develop online suggestion box.
• Conduct interviews and focus groups with users.
• Make user news and bulletin boards available on-line.
• Publish newsletter for users.
• Organize group meetigs,
• Respond to user suggestions for improvements.
• Concduct subjective and objective evaluations of the current system and of proposed improvements.
• Monitor usage frequencies and patterns (actions, help, other features)
• Track user-error frequencies.
8. Prepare Evolutionary Plan
• Design for easy repair and refinement.
• Reserve staff time for enhancemcnts.
• Measure user perfomance regularly.
• Improve error handling.
• Carry out experiments to assess suggested changes.
• Sample feedback from users by questionnaires and interviews.
• Schedule revisions regularly, and inform users in advance.

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Last Changed: 14 April 1995