Research On A Perceptual-Control-Based Agent Architecture Model For Increasing Usability Of Architecture And Software Development Environment

The rapid development of information technology makes the application of computers more and more popular, which makes the usability of software be becoming more and more important. Usability is the easy-to-use nature of software. The development of usability promotes the transition of user interface from command-line interface to graphics interface. The usability in this level focuses on providing users with correct graphical representation (that is correct "look and feel"), which is to hide the computer's physical structure and internal processing logic. Nowadays, usability focuses on providing users with task-oriented user interface that allows users to share control with systems at task level.The practical software architectures, according to "look and feel", are divided into different layers and components. However, the relation between share control and "look and feel" is orthogonal. That is, share control and "look and feel" are independent of each other. So, the current practical architectures are difficult to model the different usability requirements at the same time. This makes some usability requirements are built in different layers and components, which can increase the coupling between different components. Moreover, lots of usability requirements are discovered in the later stage of software development life cycle. The existing architecture models can't effectively support the dynamic modification and expansion of usability requirements in the process of iterative design.To solve the facing usability-problems in the process of software development, this thesis presents a perceptual-control-based agent architecture model (PCAA). This architecture adds a new layer, which is named perceptual-control layer, between the user interface and function core. The new layer uses perceptual-control agent to model the new-style usability requirements described above. The perceptual-control layer can also meet the dynamic expansion of usability requirements by adding new perceptual-control agents. The new architecture aims to support meeting usability requirements at architecture level, especially the new-style usability which is directly correlated with "share control". In addition, this architecture uses the user-task data-bus and applications data-bus to isolate the coupling between user interface and functionality core. We have designed and developed toolkits of user interface layer, perceptual-control layer and data-bus to enable designers to rapidly develop applications that are based on this architecture model.