Introduction to software engineering

Course Code: SE104

Target Group: Software Engineering
Instructor: Biniam Behailu

July, 2024
Chapter 5 Outline
Software Design
01 Software design principles

02 Business modeling

03 Process modeling

04 Building an object model using UML

05 Architectural design

06 User experience design

What is Software Design

 Once the requirements of a project are understood, the

transformation of requirements into a design begins.
 The requirements addressed the “What?”
o what the system is supposed to do?
o what are the constrains?

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What is Software Design

 Design addresses the “How?”

o How the system is decomposed into components
o How these components interface and interact
o How each individual component works, etc.

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What is Software Design

 Design is ……..
o A form of problem solving
o Developing Satisficing Artifacts
o Fitting Form to Context
o Tailoring Artifacts to Users’ Needs
o Problem Setting & Problem Solving
o Understanding & Developing
o Making choices in search of quality

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What is Software Design

 Software design is the process of defining the architecture,

components, interfaces, and other characteristics of a software
system or application.
 It involves making decisions about the high-level structure of the
software, as well as the detailed design of individual components
and their interactions.

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What is Software Design

 Software design is a process to transform user requirements into

some suitable form, which helps the programmer in software coding
and implementation.
 It is a bridge between requirements and coding.
 The process of conceptualizing how a software system will work
before it is implemented.

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What is Software Design

 During the software design phase, the design document is produced,

based on the customer requirements as documented in the SRS
document.
 Hence, this phase aims to transform the SRS document into a design
document.
 Software design is the first step in SDLC, which moves the
concentration from problem domain to solution domain.
 It tries to specify how to fulfill the requirements mentioned in SRS.

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What is Software Design

 Software design processes

o Understanding Requirements: gathering information about what the
software needs to accomplish, who will use it, and its functionalities.
o High-Level Design: here, the overall architecture of the software is defined.
Break down the functionalities into smaller, manageable modules.
o Detailed Design: Go deeper into each module, defining its internal
structure, data flow, and algorithms. This is like fleshing out the blueprint
with specific details.
o Documentation: We document the design decisions, making it easier for
programmers and future maintainers to understand the software.

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What is Software Design

 Therefore,
 Software design is the blueprint for building software. It translates
the broad ideas and functionalities (requirements) of a software
project into a clear roadmap for programmers to follow.
 Process of breaking down the system into components, defining
interfaces and defining components to a level of detail that enables
their construction.

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Activities of System design

 In particular, system design includes:

 The decomposition of the system into subsystems
 The selection of off-the-shelf and legacy components
 The mapping of subsystem to hardware
 The selection of a persistent data management infrastructure
 The selection of an access control policy
 The selection of a global control flow mechanism
 The handling of boundary conditions

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Software Design Principles

 Software design principles are a set of guidelines and best practices

that software developers follow to create …
 well-structured, maintainable, efficient, and scalable software
systems.
 These principles help developers write code that is …
 easy to understand, modify, and extend
 ultimately leading to improved software quality.

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Software Design Principles

 Suggestions for good design:

o Design must enable all requirements of the analysis model and
implicit needs of the customer to be met.
o Design must be readable and an understandable guide for coders,
testers and maintainers.
o The design should address the data, functional and behavioral
domains of implementation

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Software Design Principles

 Suggestions for good design:

o The process should consider various approaches based on
requirements.
o The design should be traceable to the requirements analysis model
o The design should not reinvent the wheel -- Reuse!
o Design should imitate the structure in the problem domain

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Software Design Principles (Problem Partitioning)

 Divide the problem into smaller pieces so that each piece can be captured
separately.
 For software design, the goal is to divide the problem into manageable
pieces.
 Benefits of Problem Partitioning
 Software is easy to understand

 Software becomes simple

 Software is easy to test

 Software is easy to modify

 Software is easy to maintain

 Software is easy to expand

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Software Design Principles (Abstraction)

 Hide the implementation details of components and expose only the

necessary interfaces, allowing for flexibility and easier maintenance
o Data Abstraction: Hiding the internal details of data structures
and focusing on their functionality.
o Procedural Abstraction: Encapsulating a sequence of steps into
reusable functions.
o Control Abstraction: A program control mechanism without
specifying internal details.

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Software Design Principles (Refinement)

 Refinement is a process where one or several instructions of the

program are decomposed into more detailed instructions.
 Stepwise refinement is a top down strategy
o Basic architecture is developed iteratively
o Step wise hierarchy is developed
 Forces a designer to develop low level details as the design progresses
o Design decisions at each stage

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Software Design Principles (Modularity)

 Software is divided into separately named and addressable

components called modules /components /subsystems
 Follows “divide and conquer” concept, a complex problem is broken
down into several manageable pieces
 A need to divide software into optimal sized modules.
 Reduces the design complexity and results in easier and faster
implementation by allowing parallel development of various parts of
a system.

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Software Design Principles (Modularity)

Advantages
 Reduce system complexity.
 Enable division of work for a team and individuals.
 Allow subsystem to be replaced/modified with out affecting the other
subsystem

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Software Design Principles (Encapsulation/Information Hiding )

 Grouping and packaging the elements and internal details of an

abstraction and making those details inaccessible
 Modules are characterized by design decisions that are hidden from
others
 Modules communicate only through well defined interfaces
 Enforce access constraints to local entities and those visible through
interfaces
 Very important for accommodating change and reducing coupling

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Software Design Principles (Cohesion)

 Cohesion is a measure that defines the degree of intra-dependability

within elements of a module.
 It refers to the degree to which elements within a module work
together to fulfill a single, well-defined purpose.
 Thus, cohesion measures the strength of relationships between
pieces of functionality within a given module.
 For example, in highly cohesive systems, functionality is strongly
related.
 Cohesion is an ordinal type of measurement and is generally
described as "high cohesion" or "low cohesion"
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Software Design Principles (Cohesion)

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Software Design Principles (Cohesion)

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Software Design Principles (Coupling)

 Coupling refers to the degree of interdependence between software

modules.
 High coupling means that modules are closely connected and
changes in one module may affect other modules.
 Low coupling means that modules are independent, and changes in
one module have little impact on other modules.

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Software Design Principles (Coupling)

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Software Design Principles (Coupling)

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Software Design Principles (Coupling vs Cohesion)

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Software Design Principles (Coupling vs Cohesion)

Coupling Cohesion
• Coupling is also called Inter-Module • Cohesion is also called Intra-Module Binding.
Binding.
• Coupling shows the relationships between • Cohesion shows the relationship within the module.
modules.
• Coupling shows the relative independence • Cohesion shows the module’s
between the modules. relative functional strength.

• While creating, you should aim for low • While creating you should aim for high cohesion, i.e.,
coupling, i.e., dependency among modules a cohesive component/ module focuses on a single
should be less. function (i.e., single-mindedness) with little
interaction with other modules of the system.
• In coupling, modules are linked to the other • In cohesion, the module focuses on a single thing.
modules.

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Design Strategies

 Top-down Approach: This approach

starts with the identification of the
main components and then
decomposing them into their more
detailed sub-components.
 Top-down design is more suitable
when the software solution needs
to be designed from scratch and
specific details are unknown.

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Design Strategies

 Bottom-up Approach: A bottom-up

approach begins with the lower
details and moves towards up the
hierarchy.
 This approach is suitable in case of
an existing system.
 The bottom up design model starts
with most specific and basic
components.

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Design Strategies

bottom-up top-down

 Hybrid Design: Normally a mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches

are used
o Top-down design is almost always needed to give the system a good
structure.
o Bottom-up design is normally useful so that reusable components can
be created.
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Design strategies

 Modular Design: Breaks down a system  Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA):

into independent modules, enhancing Structures applications as a collection of
maintainability and scalability. services, allowing for integration and
interoperability across different systems.
 Object-Oriented Design: Uses objects
that encapsulate data and behavior,  Microservices: Splits applications into
promoting reuse and flexibility. small, independent services that can be
developed and deployed separately,
 Layered Architecture: Organizes software enhancing flexibility and scalability.
into layers (e.g., presentation, business  Model-View-Controller (MVC): Separates
logic, data), separating concerns and the application into three interconnected
improving manageability. components, improving separation of
concerns and testability.
 Component-Based Design: Focuses on
building software from interchangeable  Event-Driven Architecture: Uses events to
components, increasing reusability. trigger communication between
components, enhancing responsiveness
and decoupling.
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Business Modeling

 Focuses on how a business creates, delivers, and captures value.

 It defines the core functionalities, stakeholders (customers,
employees), and revenue streams.
 Understanding the business model is essential for designing software
that aligns with the company's goals.
 This involves showing the steps involved in a business process, like
order fulfillment or customer service.

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Business Modeling

 It visualizes the flow of information, decisions, and tasks within the

process.
 Process models help identify inefficiencies and areas for
improvement, informing software design to automate or streamline
these processes.

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Building an Object Model Using UML
 Building an object model using UML involves creating diagrams that represent the
structure and relationships of objects in a system class diagram, the steps:-
 Identify Classes: Determine the key objects in your system (e.g., Student, Course,
Instructor).
 Define Attributes and Methods: For each class, list the attributes (e.g., name, ID) and
methods (e.g., enrollInCourse()).
 Establish Relationships: Define associations between classes (e.g., Student enrolls in
Course). Use UML notation to show relationships like inheritance, association, and
aggregation.
 Use UML Diagrams: Class Diagram: Shows classes, attributes, methods, and relationships.
 Object Diagram: Represents instances of classes and their relationships at a specific time.
 Add Multiplicity: Indicate how many instances of one class can relate to instances of
another class (e.g., one-to-many).

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Building an Object Model Using UML

Classes are composed of three things

• A name
• Attribute
• Operations

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Architectural Design

 The high-level structure and organization of a software system.

 It deals with core components, their interactions, and the overall
system's qualities.
 This high-level view defines the overall structure of the software
system.

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Architectural Design

 It focuses on:
o Decisions: Key choices about technologies, data management
strategies, and communication protocols.
o System Organization: How the system is broken down into major
subsystems like user interface, data storage, and business logic.
o Modular Decomposition: Decomposing subsystems into smaller,
well-defined modules with clear interfaces.
o Flow and Control: Defining how data flows through the system
and how control is transferred between modules.
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Architectural Design

 There are many architectural styles. Here are some common ones
that can be used as a basis for the architecture of some systems
 Model/View/Controller (MVC)
 Client/Server (2-tier, 3-tier)
 Microservices architecture
 Serverless Architecture (Cloud environments)
 Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) etc…

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Architectural Design

 Model/View/Controller(MVC) - subsystems are classified into three

different types:
o model subsystems - responsible for maintaining domain knowledge,
o view subsystems - responsible for displaying it to user, and
o controller subsystems - responsible for managing sequence of
interactions with user, notifying views of changes in the model.
 MVC architectures are well suited for interactive systems, especially when
multiple views of the same model are needed.
 MVC can be used for maintaining consistency across distributed data.
 Most of the frameworks like Laravel, Django, Ruby on Rails, Spring, ASP.net
are based on MVC architectire
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Architectural Design

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Architectural Design

 Client/server architecture – One or more servers provide services to

instances of other subsystems called clients, which are responsible for
interacting with user.
 The clients are responsible for receiving inputs from the user,
performing range checks, and initiating database transactions once all
necessary data are collected.
 The server is then responsible for performing the transaction and
guaranteeing the integrity of the data.

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Architectural Design

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Architectural Design

 3- Tier Architecture: Is an architecture style, where an application consists

of 3 hierarchically ordered subsystems.
 A UI, Middleware and Database system
 The middleware subsystem services data requests b/n the UI and Database
system
 Example:- a 3- Tier architectural style are often used for the development
of web application:
o The web browser- implements the UI
o The web server- serves requests from the web browser
o The DB Server- manages and provides access to the persistent data
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Architectural Design

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Architectural & System Characteristics (Design Goals)

 Performance  Backward-compatibility
 Security  Cost-effectiveness
 Safety  Robustness
 Availability  High-performance
 Maintainability  Reuse of components

The design goals are derived from the nonfunctional requirements

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User Interface (UI) Design

 UI design focuses on the visual and interactive elements of a

product's interface.
 This includes layout, typography, color schemes, buttons, menus,
and other on-screen controls.
 The goal of UI design is to make the interface aesthetically pleasing
and easy for users to navigate.

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User Experience (UX) Design

 UX design focuses on the overall experience a user has when

interacting with a product.
 This includes aspects like information architecture, user research,
interaction design, and usability testing.
 The goal of UX design is to ensure the product meets the user's
needs and expectations.

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Principles of Good UI/UX Design

 Clarity: Ensure the interface is easy to understand and use.

 Consistency: Maintain a coherent and predictable design language
throughout.
 Responsiveness: Optimize the design for various screen sizes and
device types.
 Accessibility: Ensure the interface is usable by people with
disabilities.
 Emotional Appeal: Create a visually pleasing and enjoyable user
experience.
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Creating a Data Model

 Data Model is the overall structure and organization of data within a

system, defining entities, relationships, and rules.
 An Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a visual representation of a
data model, illustrating entities, attributes, and relationships between
them
 This involves defining the structure of data used by the software.
 Focuses on how data is stored and related in the database.
 Represents tables, columns, and relationships between tables.

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Creating a Data Model

 It specifies:

 Data Entities: The types of data the system needs to manage (e.g.,
customers, products, orders).  rectangle

 Attributes: The specific properties associated with each entity (e.g.,

customer name, product price).  eclipse

 Relationships: How these entities are related to each other (e.g., a

customer can place many orders).  diamond-shaped box

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ER Diagram Example

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 THANK YOU
?
""Elegant software design harmonizes
function, efficiency, and aesthetics for
a delightful user experience."
Emily Chung, Software Architect

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