Interactive A3 Architecture Overviews: Intuitive Functionalities for Effective Communication

The A3 Architecture Overviews introduced earlier provide a powerful communication medium in systems engineering and architecting. Intended originally for reverse architecting, they are now also applied for designing system architectures and for systems of systems. With the current development in user interaction and touch controlled interfaces, a new means of communicating in systems engineering opens: Interactive A3 Architecture Overviews. This paper gives an overview of the state of the art of A3 Architecture Overviews before we present an investigation into interactive possibilities and an evaluation of a demonstration using a proof of concept. The results of the demonstration with several experts are listed. The main conclusion is that Interactive A3 Architecture Overviews can convey more information, without impeding usability. We end with a proposal for further development.