Chapter 2: Information Architecture for Use Case Elaboration

Overview

Success or failure of a project is dependent on several factors. At the outset, the single overwhelming factor is the ability to comprehensively define the behavior of the system as desired by its consumers. A large number of projects have seen their demise as a result of unstructured approach toward defining requirements. Traceability is the key word here. The use case model of Chapter 1 is a living document with built-in traceability. Any evolution of the system will be based on those use cases. At all times, the use cases will comprehensively reflect the behavior of the system. In this chapter, we will elaborate the use cases and be more explicit in expressing the user interaction and associated transactional semantics. We begin by answering the following questions:

• How do we articulate the user interaction semantics?

• How do we articulate the interactions between the use case and other parts of the system or external systems?

• How do we visualize these interactions?

• What information is exchanged during these interactions? How is this information affecting page transitions?

• How do we understand all possible flow of events?

To answer all of the preceding questions, we create an information architecture. Information architecture constitutes schemes for organizing, labeling, navigating, indexing, and searching content; these aspects converge into a storyboard that is the first mockup or prototypical view of the UI. The navigation semantics of UI is explained using a site flow that clearly articulates the page transitions associated with user actions. The information architecture is therefore very significant in defining system behavior from a UI perspective; this behavior is incorporated for comprehensively defining the detailed use cases of the system. The topic of information architecture is discussed in several books; we will keep our discussion limited to evolving the sample GreaterCause application and highlight a few important concepts of information architecture.