Usable Software Design
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The document discusses the concept of usable software design, emphasizing the importance of creating code structures that prioritize developer needs and usability principles. It outlines practices such as defining developer personas, applying usability testing, and following coding guidelines to enhance learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction. The presentation ultimately advocates for designs that facilitate quicker onboarding, task implementation, and reduced errors in software development.
Usable Software Design
- 1. Usable Software Design A Keynote by Alex Bolboaca
- 3. Me ● Facilitated first code retreat outside US ● Polyglot programmer ● Trainer, Coach ● Turned product developer ● CTO @ Mozaic Labs
- 4. From a Team That Brought You ● Code retreats in multiple languages - http://coderetreat.org/history ● Brutal Refactoring Game ● Taking Baby Steps ● Teddy Bear Pairing ● I TAKE Unconference ● And now usable software design http://mozaicworks.com
- 5. Me - Product Developer
- 6. My Current Product – eventrix.co
- 7. My belief: YOU Deserve Better!
- 11. Naomi Weast Actress, not a programmer https://plus.google.com/110657773112027365790/posts
- 13. It reminds me of something else
- 14. Jacques Carelman Artist, creator of “The Catalogue of Impossible Objects” in the 60s http://www.patakosmos.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/RDA00147250.jpg
- 15. Coffee pot for masochists Catalogue of Impossible Objects by Jacques Carelman http://impossibleobjects.com/catalogue/coffeepot-for-masochists.html
- 16. Absorbent Bottle Catalogue of Impossible Objects by Jacques Carelman http://impossibleobjects.com/catalogue/absorbent-bottle.html
- 17. Siamese Hammers Catalogue of Impossible Objects by Jacques Carelman http://impossibleobjects.com/catalogue/siamese-hammers.html
- 18. It reminds me of something I read in a book ...
- 19. Donald A. Norman Author of “The Design of Everyday Things” http://www.jnd.org/NNg-Photographs/Photo1.jpg “It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.”
- 20. User Centric Design Process by UXPA Revolution started by Donald A. Norman's book http://uxmastery.com/what-does-a-user-centred-design-process-look-like/
- 21. Any design has a user. Who is the user of software design? Can't be the end user. Then: the developer => Developer-centric software design? DX? How about “Usable Software Design”?
- 22. So how to apply UX techniques to software design? ● Personas ● User journey for developer ● Quality attributes ● Usability testing ● Specific practices
- 23. Personas
- 24. Developer Persona For Your Team ● Kernel Developer ● Java Enterprise Developer ● Rails Developer ● C/C++ Embedded Developer ● Android Developer ● Front-end Javascript + html + CSS developer ● Etc. Each persona has different needs. Usability depends on the user!
- 25. Example of Team Agreement Usable Software Design means to us that: 1. It is written for developers to read 2. It is easy to find where to modify the code 3. Any modification has a minimal ripple-effect 4. It is easy AND fast to validate that we did the right thing 5. We don’t have to do similar modifications in several places Usable Software Design – A Federating Concept by Johan Martinsson
- 26. Next Step: Practices “It is written for developers to read” => coding guidelines, clean code etc. “It is easy to find where to modify the code” => navigability, consistency etc. “Any modification has a minimal ripple effect” => follow Open Closed Principle, Single Responsibility Principle etc.
- 27. User Journeys
- 28. You Are The User: Changing Code ● Figure out what you need to change ● Navigate there ● Read the code, tests, documentation, comments ● Write/change code, write/change tests ● Refactor ● Build ● Validate ● Integrate
- 29. Figure Out What To Change Static structure {}, Understand runtime behavior
- 31. Example: Modules
- 32. Is Your Design Easy to Navigate?
- 33. Is Your Design Easy to Navigate? ● What module / namespace to look in? – See previous examples ● How is that thing named? – Should be Consistent, Memorable, Precise ● How deep is the inheritance tree?
- 38. What is Usable Software Design? Usable Software Design is any code structure that exhibits design qualities similar to usability
- 39. 5 Design Qualities of Usability 1. Learnability 2. Efficiency 3. Memorability 4. Errors 5. Satisfaction http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/ How easy it is to accomplish basic tasks the first time you're using the design? How quickly can you perform a task once you've learned the design? When you go back to the design after a period of not using it, how easy is to become efficient again? How many errors do you make, how severe are they and how can you recover from them? How pleasant it is to use the design?
- 40. 1. Learnability How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- 41. Hints: Design For Learnability Code structure that shows what the application does Consistency Minimal Surprise Use Clearly Defined Modules With Clear APIs Readability / Clean Code Navigability Add Usage examples – tests / comments etc
- 42. Test Learnability Measure how long it takes for developers outside your team to understand the purpose of a class with as little help as possible.
- 43. 2. Efficiency Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- 44. Hints: Design For Efficiency Use code constructs the whole team understands Consistency Fast Validation
- 45. Test Efficiency Retro question: “what slowed you down in the past two weeks?” Measure how long it takes for developers to finish typical tasks (not simple, but typical)
- 46. 3. Memorability When you go back to the design after a period of not using it, how easy is to become efficient again?
- 47. Memorability ≈ Efficiency + Learnability
- 48. 4. Errors How many errors do you make? How severe are these errors? How easily can they recover from the errors?
- 49. Hints: Design For Mistake Proofing It's the system's fault Write automated tests Eliminate exceptions Pass mandatory arguments to constructor (more difficult when using Dependency Injection libraries) Avoid Primitive Obsession Principle of Minimum Surprise
- 52. Test Mistake-Proofing How many bugs do we have? What is the main cause of the bugs? (remember, it's typically in the design) How can we change the design to avoid it?
- 53. 5. Satisfaction How pleasant is it to use the design?
- 54. Hints: Design For Satisfaction Strictly personal, but relevant
- 55. Test Satisfaction What parts of the system are unpleasant to use? How can we change them to be more pleasant?
- 57. How To Do Usability Testing ● Pick a few common tasks ● Ask a developer who is not part of the team but knows the technology to do them ● Gather the feedback ● Define next improvement actions
- 58. The Tasks
- 59. I forgot to mention ● You are not allowed to start the application, only navigate through code
- 60. Results ● First two tasks were too vague – Create new event, create new user => write a new feature? Create a domain entity? – The feature existed, I was hinting at just creating a domain entity and saving it from the code (no UI) – It showed an inconsistency in design ● Task 3 “Explain how an event is created in the application” took less than 5'
- 61. ● Task 4 “Validation for event creation” took less than 5', but it was incomplete – Claudia missed the client-side validation because... – It was using custom tags extracted in a plugin that... – Required to run “grails refresh-dependencies” but... – It wasn't compiling because … – It was using a library that … – Needed compilation and publish to local maven ● Improvement: – Write a script “installDev” that installs everything needed for a new dev
- 62. ● Task 5 “error management for event creation” – <5' – Correct answer
- 63. ● Task 6 “Reset password flow” – Stopped after 15' – Got around the middle of the flow ● Conclusion – Difficult to follow a more complex flow through an application – Need some way to provide this information fast (work in progress)
- 64. Open Questions ● What was your general impression of the design? – “very nice, easy to understand” ● What helped you understand? – “the names & the structure” ● What prevented you from understanding the reset password flow? – “difficult to follow”
- 65. Usability Tests - Conclusions ● Usability tests are very useful for improving productivity ● Every time you take 1' more to understand the code, you are not implementing a new feature ● (If you finish a feature faster, you have more time to read Quora :D)
- 66. Design Elements
- 67. Design Elements = Constrained Classes ● Constrained Classes = Higher Level design entities ● ~ design patterns (not quite)
- 68. Design Elements – Example from eventrix.co ● Controller ● Command Object ● Application Service ● Database Service (Command) ● Database Query ● View Model
- 69. Controller Responsibilities ● Delegate the operations on the request input ● Render the correct view / template / error Collaborators ● Command Objects ● Application Services ● View Models How To Test: Page Tests
- 70. Command Object Responsibilities ● Validate the request ● Delegate update / delete operations Collaborators ● Database Services ● Database Queries How To Test: Unit Tests
- 71. Application Service Responsibilities ● Complex logic ● Delegate all database operations Collaborators ● Database Services ● Database Queries How To Test: Unit Tests
- 72. Database Service (Command) Responsibilities ● Update / delete database data Collaborators ● GORM subsystem How To Test: Integration Tests With Real Database
- 73. Database Query Responsibilities ● Query database data Collaborators ● GORM subsystem How To Test: Integration Tests With Real Database
- 74. View Model Responsibilities ● Transform GORM entities into maps ready for rendering ● ! Limit the data returned to the view ● ! Separate as much as possible Collaborators ● Domain Model classes How To Test: Unit Tests
- 75. Design Elements Are Not Everything ● We discovered some more – e.g. multiple steps flow ● Utility classes
- 76. But they are ~90% of the code ● Typical use cases: – Request to create / update / delete something: controller → command object → database command → view model → controller render – Request to read something: controller → application service / db query → view model → controller render
- 77. Conclusions
- 78. What To Tell Managers Usable Software Design has the potential to bring four economical benefits: ● Faster integration of new developers in the team (learnability) ● Faster time to implement typical (not simple) tasks (efficiency) ● Making less mistakes (mistake-proofing) ● Feeling more motivated (satisfaction)
- 79. Recap ● The developer is the user of software design ● Usable software design means code structure that exhibits the qualities of usability: Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Error Treatment and Satisfaction ● Define the personas of your team ● Create a team agreement ● Start applying practices that help the agreement ● Run usability tests ● Identify design elements from your code to increase consistency ● This is just the beginning
- 80. My belief: YOU Deserve Better!
- 81. Tell me about your experiences alex.bolboaca @mozaicworks.com @alexboly mozaicworks.com/blog alexbolboaca.ro https://www.linkedin.com/in/ alexandrubolboaca/
- 82. Buy my book! Special price for you: https://leanpub.com/usablesoftwaredesign/c/thank-you-java-day-istanbul Pay as little as for two Turkish Pizzas
- 83. Q&A “The important thing is not to stop questioning”