Designing SAA Applications and User Interfaces

This paper describes a framework for developing applications that conform to Systems Application Architecture (SAA). The paper shows a high-level approach to creating a design; it gives examples of early modeling work with the user interface; and it appraises SAA through the eyes of several system designers. The usability of user interfaces has been evaluated through the modeling of office tasks. That experience is described, showing the influence of the SAA Common User Access (CUA) on the model and the influence of the model on CUA. Discussed is a design for distributed applications that fit within the SAA framework and the influence of SAA on the design of integrated distributed applications.