The usability of a functional model to select and integrate commercial off-the-shelf components

One of the most critical processes in component-based system development (CBSD) is the selection of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components that meet the user's requirements and expectations. Many published development schemes have considered the functional requirements of the selection process, but these schemes have ignored its usability requirements. This was acceptable to many recent industrial enterprises needing to meet the time-to-market constraint. Users' taste today seeks the latest electronic systems that offer enjoyable and user-friendly experiences and many industrial enterprises are aware of this trend. Thus, we have proposed a Selection Process Approach (SPA) that addresses the usability requirements early in development in response to satisfying the users' tastes in electronic systems, especially those of children and teenagers from our region. We have formulated the selection and integration of COTS components to build a new computer system as an optimization problem, where the objective is to minimize the overall cost of developing COTS-based computers, subject to their usability and functional constraints. Moreover, we have employed Simulated Annealing (SA) within the SPA to search the repository of COTS libraries to select and integrate components for application-specific computers. After the SPA executes the optimization process, it has the capability to illustrate the COTS-based computer in a hierarchical representation through its custom-made graphical user interface (GUI). Our computational results demonstrate the feasibility of the coded SPA to find solutions with a 50% reduction in the total development cost while satisfying the usability and functional constraints.