The traditional view of software architecture typically places humans outside the system and in the system’s environment. In this talk I argue that there are benefits in shifting this view by bringing humans into an architectural design as first-class entities. The resulting architectural designs can then much better exploit human-system synergies that are required by today’s increasingly autonomous, self-adaptive, and AI-driven systems. We will illustrate the ideas by examining case studies in which this approach has been used to provide formal human-system architectural models that attempt to maximize the respective strengths of both humans and systems. We also highlight some of the key challenges and potential directions for research in maturing these ideas.

About speaker: David Garlan is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include software architecture, self-adaptive and autonomous systems, formal methods, and cyber-physical systems. He is recognized as one of the founders of the field of software architecture, and in particular, formal representation and analysis of architectural designs. He has received a Stevens Award Citation for “fundamental contributions to the development and understanding of software architecture as a discipline in software engineering,” an Outstanding Research award from ACM SIGSOFT for “significant and lasting software engineering research contributions through the development and promotion of software architecture,” an Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, an IEEE TCSE Distinguished Education Award, and a Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM.