I. INTRODUCTION
Service-oriented computing community proposes different definitions for a “service”, sometimes making this concept fuzzy. In a broad sense, Vargo and Lusch [1] defined a service as an application of specialized knowledge and skills, through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefits of an organization and its clients. A software as a service (SaaS) has been also defined differently. It can be seen then as specific arrangements of services (one or many interrelated services), data and resources needed to run these services. The goal is to create an added value for an organization while supporting business processes. SaaS has been also defined as softwaredistributed model, in which applications are hosted by a vendor or a service provider and made available to users over a network, typically the Internet. Users access services due to a thin client via a web browser.
Web services are one of the most promising examples of SaaS. Software developers and providers can offer their Web services through the Internet and other underlying networks. With the advent of the mobile age and persuasive devices, services are being accessible from anywhere, at any time and for everyone. Smartphones, interactive tablets, and other sensing-based gears are among the devices that features thousands of interactive services. Most of the traditional all-inone business applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) are also being more and more reengineered as SaaS [1].
One key characteristic of SaaS is that it increases drastically the number of users with varying needs and experiences. Supporting this wider range of customers or users
requires a heavy workload for customizing the services to specific devices and continuously changing stakeholders’needs and experiences.
As it will be discussed in this paper, service-oriented architecture (SOA) provides a little support to such problems. SOA-based applications are developed without taking into
account the needs of the large diversity of possible users and the wide variety of devices that may fail. To ensure that the move towards service-orientation is a positive change that
delivers on its promised benefits, it requires incorporating the user experience (UX) in the SOA. The objective of our ongoing research effort includes the understanding, definition
and categorization of SaaS from a human experience perspective – Who are the users and what are their experiences? This characterization is used to inform an extended SOA model supporting UX-driven design of SaaS for the largest variety of possible UX. Specific practical outcomes include:
- Review from the human perspective of the current state of art of SOA technologies and tools, including web services. The issue is to identify where human experiences are considered
- Investigate the possible contributions to SOA design principles from the human-computer interaction (HCI) design, UX design and the emerging service science, engineering and management (SSME) approaches, and to a certain extent design sciences ground in the management informati community
- Explore the wider implications of service design and management that may face the building of a community with interests in the huma an side of SaaS
- Build a revised list of design SOA principles including the quality attributes that reflect the user perspective such as usability, trust, and accessibility of SaaS
II. ABOUT USERS AND USER EXPERIENCES IN SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE ENGINEERING
UX and user involvement in developmennt are extremely important factors that determine the success of software products today [2]. The statement in the call of papers of this workshop also argues in this direction. For SaaS, this is even more crucial, because SaaS is created for human users, by human developers and it also includes humans, who will
customize, sell and improve it. Traditional software development has been driven by the needs of the delivered software to meet the requirements of stakeholders, those that
pay for the software. Although this may apply to SaaS, the people using, affected or affecting a service are not limited to those stakeholders, who only use it. SOA considers only the
relationships between developers or providers and user.