Chapter 8: User Function Requirement Patterns

Overview

User functions are so diverse that it's hard to identify categories that have enough in common to make it worthwhile to write requirement patterns for them. Patterns for two types of functions, the inquiry and report patterns, are presented here-plus a third on accessibility, which covers steps for making a system accessible by people with disabilities while at the same time improving usability for everyone. These three patterns are shown in Figure 8-1. More specialized user interface functions are described in many of the other requirement patterns in this book.

Figure 8-1: Requirement patterns in the user function domain

To work, our user interface functions need a user interface infrastructure (for example, a browser-based one that produces and delivers HTML pages to users). If our system has reports, it also needs a reporting infrastructure, which is too sophisticated for an organization to build for itself. The last two sections in this chapter summarize capabilities to ask for in these infrastructures.