Usability and Usefulness in Software Architecture tools

Model upgrade tool for Architecture models: RTM version is out!

Jens Jacobsen — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:58:00 GMT

Hi all,

Yay! Visual Studio 2010 RTM is shipping today! If you have UML models, Sequence or Layer diagrams created in Beta2 or RC that you want to upgrade to RTM, then I have good news. The model upgrade tool has been updated to support RTM.

Note that there's actually only one format change between RC and RTM. The only change was in the Work item links from our diagrams and model elements. So if you used work item links in your RC models, then grab the tool and upgrade them. If you have no work item links, then sit back and relax. Your models will open and work just fine in RTM, without running the tool.

Now, if you have Beta2 models, then the tool is definitely needed. There were a number of changes between Beta2 and RTM, and you should run the model upgrade tool to enable your models to open in RTM.

You can find the tool here:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/eb401aac-2926-4043-b355-7d2ede848541

Please let me know if you find any issues with the tool, or if you have other questions regarding upgrades!

Cheers,

--Jens

Tip of the week: Reconnecting connectors in UML and Layer designers

Jens Jacobsen — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:29:00 GMT

Let's say that your design is evolving, and a relationship that was correct before, now needs to go to another shape. In beta 1 you'd have to delete it and create a new one. That is no longer the case. You can now reconnect a relationship by pressing the Ctrl key and moving one of the ends to its new target. Let me demonstrate:

Let's say that I have decided that Customer should no longer be associated with OrderItem directly, but rather with Order, so I want to move the endpoint from OrderItem to Order.

Hover the mouse over a relationship. You see that you get the standard "move" cursor. But that is not the one that's going to do it for us...

Instead, move the cursor towards the end of the relationship. When you get to the right area, the cursor will change into a black move cursor. This is the one that we want!

Now Press the Ctrl key

Then press down the mouse button

Start dragging

Now you're dragging the connection!

Drag it to the new shape you'd like to connect to and let go:

So there! We have moved our connector. And in case you wonder, you can move either end of the connection.

What's the catch?

Well, no catch, but an unfortunate gap: This does not fully work in the Sequence diagram. We hope to fix that in a future release. What you can do, is to drag and drop messages to reorder them, but unfortunately you can't change which Lifeline a message connects to.

The big picture: Supporting explorative design.

The reason we put this feature in, was mainly to support "explorative" use of the architecture designers. This is where you use the designer as a thinking tool, adding new elements, changing them as your thoughts take new paths, etc.

I have a few questions about this scenario. I'd love to hear from any of you who use architectural designers in this way, or who have tried and stopped doing it.

· What features in a designer makes it easier to create designs in an explorative/incremental way?

· What makes it hard to do that?

· Are there things in our tools that are missing or that are getting in your way when trying this?

Any comments or questions are welcome!

Next week I'll continue with another tip and more questions :-)

Have a nice week until then,

--Jens

Welcome - And some thoughts about architecture tool usability

Jens Jacobsen — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:47:00 GMT

My name is Jens Jacobsen, I'm a program manager on the team that creates the architecture tools in Visual Studio Ultimate. Welcome to my blog!

Usability of architecture tools

As a former usability engineer, my main focus in this blog will be on the usability of the Visual Studio Architecture tools. I wanted to start a blog with two purposes:

· To share with you and hopefully discuss with you some of the designs you see in Beta2 of the product.

· To learn from you where we went wrong, what we're missing, and what we're doing right. Thus, any comment on the user experience of the Visual Studio Architecture tools are very welcome.

Now, what do I mean by usability? One of the earliest and best definitions of the space comes from Ben Schneiderman. He divides usability into 5 areas:

· Ease of learning

· High speed of user task performance

· Subjective user satisfaction

· Low user error rate

· User retention over time

Let's look at each of them, and what they may mean for architecture tools and ours specifically:

Ease of learning

Here I'm thinking about the ability for you or your team to take up and use our tools with a minimum of confusion and productivity loss. Things that we think drive this are:

· Consistency with the UML standard and typical modeling tool gestures. This obviously helps users transition from other modeling tools

· Consistency across designers, so that your learning transfers between them.

· Simplicity. Many users have told us that the complexity of some of the existing modeling tools make it hard for a team of inexperienced modelers to be productive with them. Are we being successful here? In some cases, it seems we are. We're getting good feedback on the Layer designer, for example, that it is very easy for a whole team to take up and use, but we're very curious to have feedback on the general learnability of our designers.

Getting it done fast - High speed of user task performance

In some cases, architectural design is a contemplative process, and the time spent actively using the tool is miniscule compared to the thinking time. In those cases the efficiency of the tool is secondary. But more often, when the going is good and the ideas are flowing freely, you want to get them "on paper" as quickly as possible, and then it is important that the tool doesn't get in your way. A lot of my initial posts are going to be about small tips that makes it a bit quicker to use our tools.

Avoiding errors (and saving the day when they occur)

Hah! Gotcha! Sometimes you make a mistake and a tool formerly snickers at you, forcing you to do large amounts of work to get it right again. This can be damaging for a design tool, where you want to stay in your flow and work creatively, knowing that you can change things later. On the other hand we don't want to be flexible to a point of confusing and overwhelming the user.

A lot of the work we've done since we had initial working bits, has been to add more flexibility to the experience, allowing you to explore different paths in your design without paying too high a price. Have we gone far enough? We'd love to hear from you.

The feel good factor - Subjective user satisfaction

I have recently been re-introduced to Legos, and I have to say that it is not hardship at all to join my kids in playing with them. I even find myself sneaking over to the Lego bins when they aren't around! Part of the reason is the very pleasant way that these things snap together. It just makes it that much more enjoyable. (As opposed to building IKEA furniture, maybe?)

There is definitely a parallel to that in architecture tools. Beyond the utility of the tool, there are other reasons why you might decide to draw a diagram in VS and not on your whiteboard or on paper. Is it a pleasure to grab a class shape and move it to where you want it? Does relationships snap to their shapes in a good way? Does the output look good? Let us know how you feel.

User retention over time

Ideally, as a user, you won't have to learn our tool from scratch every time you take a break for a week or two. Visual cues such as icons, and general consistency tend to improve this aspect, while non-standard UI and poor helper text tend to hurt it.

If you find yourself repeatedly looking for the same thing, then we've failed on this, and I'd love to hear about it!

Usefulness of architecture tools

Now, after all this talk about usability, I have to say a few words about usefulness. While I will start out talking mostly about usability, I'm also interested in how the tools fit your needs. Did we miss a key feature to complete your workflow? Do you have new ideas for how modeling tools can be helpful?

Yell at me!

So there. Got the philosophy off my chest. Next week, I'll start a series of posts where I talk about small tips and tricks that we hope make our tools easier and more efficient to use.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear any comments about your experiences with Beta2 so far, and how the initial learning experience has been. Yelling is OK!

Thanks,

--Jens