Representing structure in a software system design

Structure clearly undo stood and represented is a key tool in the design of any complex artifact Software systems ate among the most complex of all human artifacts The software designers essential product is not the software itself but the behaviours that it evokes in the problem world outside the compute; and the affordances it provides to its users The properties of the problem world and the users capacities to understand and exploit the system s complex functionality are them dome vital subjects for the designer s attention Causality is an important concern in a realistic system within the computer within the problem world and in their mutual interactions The compute! can process and manipulate information it can therefore embody useful representations of the problem woad of as users and even of itself adding further levels of structural complexity This paper discusses some aspects of structure and its representation arising from these concerns in software system design and offers some general observations relevant to other design fields The discussion is illustrated by the design task studied in the SPSD 2010 workshop that took place in February 2010 at UC Irvine CA USA (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All lights reserved