Practical contributions

The main practical contribution of this dissertation is the implementation of a prototype as proof of concept for the proposed AUI services model. The second practical contribution is the

evaluation of the prototype. These contributions and the research questions they addressed will be discussed in the following sub-sections.

7.2.2.1 Development of a prototype as proof of concept

Research question addressed: R4 - How can an AUI be implemented using an SOA?

This research provided several practical contributions. The implementation of a proof of concept of an AUI service model serves to show that an AUI can be implemented using an SOA (Chapter 4). The prototype was implemented effectively to adhere to SOA principles outlined in Section 2.2.3. An analytical evaluation proves this (Section 6.3). Various technologies came together around the web services to realise the prototype, most notably the XML based web service standards, JavaScript for the UI interaction and C# for the service functionality.

Various web services were developed to provide functionality for contact centres (CC), which is the domain of the prototype. UIs were then generated for these web services to allow end-users to interact with them and complete the Call Logging task. The UI with which users would interact was design to be an AUI. The AUI services developed from the AUI service model in Chapter 4, provided this functionality by collecting user-interaction data, storing them in a user model, making inferences on this data and generating new UIs based on the inferences made.

The prototype consisted of three layers, the UI shell, the application web services and the AUI services. The UI shell provided a blank HTML template where the generated UI was injected to create a new UI. The application services provided discrete CC functionality while the AUI services provided the AUI functionality.

7.2.2.2 Evaluation of the prototype

This research set out to determine how to implement an AUI using SOA. Several objectives were also outlined to guide how this implementation was to be achieved. Research questions based on these objectives were formulated and they are:

 R5: Does the prototype indeed adhere to SOA design principles?

 R6: How effectively can an AUI be achieved in a SOA?

 R7: What is the usability of the generated user interface?

A three component evaluation strategy was devised to answer the research questions above and determine if the research objectives were achieved. This evaluation consisted of the following:

 An analytical evaluation: SOA is an architectural style and design paradigm. It advocates the development of application and system components as services. Erl (2008) proposes a set of SOA design principles for the development of SOA systems. In order to determine whether the prototype actually adhered to SOA design principles, it was evaluated against these principles using an analytical evaluation. The outcome of this analysis was that the AUI services model did indeed adhere to the SOA design principles as outlined by Erl (2008). This component thus answered the research question R5: Does the prototype indeed adhere to SOA design principles?

 Evaluation by Software Engineering Metrics: SOA is a distributed architecture, with many of the components of SOA system designed to run on different platforms and servers and probably in different locations. Distributed systems are innately complex, but the AUI services model cannot be overly complex, otherwise it introduces new issues such as barriers of entry for organisations seeking to use it. The crux of SOA is that its components are loosely coupled. A software engineering coupling metric was, therefore used to measure the coupling between the AUI services model. A high degree of coupling means that changes to one service affect other services in its environment; therefore a low degree of coupling is always desired. System complexity metrics were used to measure the complexity with which the functionality of the AUI services model was achieved.

Results showed that there was little coupling between the services and the prototype was implemented with little complexity. Therefore the research question R6: How effectively can an AUI be achieved in a SOA? was adequately answered.

 Usability Evaluation of the Generated UIs: This research implemented the AUI services model by taking advantage of a currently existing method for creating UIs that change, generating the UI. By generating the UI, changes to the UI could be created on-the-fly.

This approach implies that different adaptations can be included in the UI and the UI has control over very specific elements of the UI. Generating UIs however, does not always produce desirable results. Therefore, a usability evaluation was conducted to determine if the generated UIs allowed end-users to complete their tasks effectively and efficiently.

The evaluation consisted of a convenience sample of thirty participants selected because

they have profiles similar to that of novice CCAs. A biographical questionnaire was used to determine if participants were suitable participants (Appendix F). Each participant was evaluated in a controlled environment to avoid distractions. In addition, eye-tracking was used to confirm the results of the evaluation. The usability evaluation results and the eye-tracking results confirm that the participants completed the tasks in an effective and efficient manner, thus showing that the UI did in fact generate usable interfaces with which users could interact and also answering the research question R7: What is the usability of the generated user interface?

The test results of the main study in which the prototype was evaluated prove that an AUI can be effectively implemented using SOA.