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Basser Seminar Series

Usability and Software Architecture: Experience in Supporting the Mars Exploration Rover Mission

Len Bass, CMU, Software Engineering Institute

Please note different time and location:
Wednesday, 9. February 2005, 11am-1pm
NICTA, Australian Technology Park, Seminar Room, ATP Ground Floor, Bay 15 Locomotive Workshop, Eveleigh

Please RSVP to Elsa Colella by by Tuesday 8 February 2005.

Abstract

While the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity perform exploration on Mars, scientists located at Jet Propulsion Laboratory must interpret the data they are sent and decide what actions the rovers will perform on the next day. These actions must be done in real time since if the window of the Martian morning is missed, the rovers will not perform as much science as would be possible. The MERBoard is a collaborative white board developed by NASA Ames to support the scientists in their data analysis and decision making. It is critical that the MERBoard be as usable as possible to ensure that the scientists can perform data analysis and decision making efficiently.

I and my colleagues have recently been exploring the relationship between usability and software architecture and we intervened with the MERBoard developers to assist them in understanding those aspects of usability that depend heavily on software architectural decisions that are difficult to change. This talk will describe our intervention and how we are analyzing the data that we gathered about this intervention to determine the effectiveness of our intervention.

About the speaker

Dr Len Bass is a Senior Researcher at the Software Engineering Institute and currently a Visiting Researcher at NICTA. He has written two award winning books in software architecture as well as several other books and numerous papers in a wide variety of areas of computer science and software engineering. He is currently working on techniques for the methodological design of software architectures and to understand how to support usability through software architecture. He has been involved in the development of numerous different production or research software systems ranging from operating systems to database management systems to automotive systems.