Software Design 2e - DIM

30The software design processFigure 2.2The major phases of the software design process.The initial ‘architectural model’ that is used to describe the intended form that asystem will take is generally highly abstract in its nature. The way that this is developedduring the process of designing was examined in an interesting study of the waysthat software designers work, made by Adelson and Soloway (1985). In their experiments,they studied the ways in which both experienced and inexperienced designersset about the task of forming their models when they were faced with a range ofdifferent problems. The experiments were based upon situations where a designer wasposed:nnna familiar problem;a problem that was unfamiliar in detail, but taken from a familiar domain; anda problem that was unfamiliar in all senses.The study was limited in scope, in that they looked at only a small number of subjects,and concentrated their study to a single specialized problem domain. Also, for practicalreasons, the problems themselves were relatively small in scale. However, theirfindings do seem to reflect more general experience with the software design process.Some key observations that were produced from this research included:nThe use of abstract ‘mental models’ by the designer to simulate the dynamicbehaviour of the eventual system that will be derived from the design.