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About 10,000 papers for “software usability”

Software usability

Brad Mehlenbacher · 1993

The objective of this paper is to bring users to the foreground of on-going system and documentation development effortsbydoing five things(1) outlining existing methods to eliat user reactions to dtware; (2)describinghow todesigninformal usability tests employing each method; (3) discussing the slmngthsand weahessesof each method given the time and resource constraints facing technical communicatorwmdsoftwaredesigners;(4) recommending times during the software development cycle, when certain methods are particularly fruitful in providing valuable design feedback, and; (5) pmVidinganextensivebibliographyonusability testing methods.

Cited by 28

Measuring software usability

Hanan Hayat, Russell Lock, Ian Murray · Loughborough University Institutional Repository (Loughborough University) · 2015

In recent years the increasingly competitive nature of the software industry has led to greater emphasis on software quality, causing software developing organizations to shift their attention towards usability, which is recognized as one of the key characteristics of software quality.The growing importance attached to software usability has resulted in a plethora of different usability conceptualisations that have led to considerable variation in testing methods throughout industry.These organizations, however, are struggling with usability testing due to the difficulties they face in choosing appropriate usability evaluation methods.This is in part due to the diversity of these testing methods and the increasingly distinctive types of software and software development life cycles.This paper will critically explore the commonly used standardized survey-based usability evaluation methods: SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory), WAMMI (Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory) and TAM (Technology Acceptance Model).Additionally, a contrasting usability evaluation method 'Think Aloud' will be discussed, which is a laboratory based rather than field based usability test.The paper will then outline a possible route to ensuring organisations apply the right evaluation process for their individual development context.Finally, the paper will provide recommendations for future research areas, including the formal definition of usability concepts, existing usability evaluation methods and application to common software development lifecycles.

Cited by 7Open access

Usability and software architecture

Bonnie E. John, Len Bass · Behaviour and Information Technology · 2001

The role of software architecture with respect to usability has evolved over the past 20 years. The architectures of the 1980s and early 1990s assumed that usability was primarily a property of the presentation of information. Therefore, simply separating the presentation from the dialogue and application made it easy to modify that presentation after user testing. A more popular belief in the 1990s was that usability concerns greatly affected system functionality as well as the presentation. This emphasis took attention away from architectural support (beyond separation). Achieving the correct functionality for a given system became paramount. It is our observation that even if presentation and functionality of a system are well designed, the usability of a system can be greatly compromised if the underlying architecture does not support human concerns beyond modifiability. This paper will present a new role for software architecture in usability, preliminary research and practice stemming from this role and a research agenda for the future.

Cited by 35

Evaluation of Software Usability

T Andre, R Williges, H Hartson et al. · 2006

Usability is a measure of interface quality that refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which users can perform tasks with a tool. Evaluating usability is now considered an essential part of the system development process and a variety of methods and have been developed to support the human factors professional in this work.

Cited by 12Open access

Software Usability Assessment Guide.

Glade M. Bishop, Raymond J. Moffett, Rebecca Lickiss et al. · 1993

Abstract : This guide shows independent operational evaluators and operational testers how to measure the usability (or User Friendliness) of computer software components that require human interaction. It shows how to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of human interactions with the software components of any weapon, equipment, computer, or information mission area system. The methodology in the guide can be applied during any phase of the Acquisition Process. It also addresses the inherent trainability of software components. It covers interfaces, preparation of questionnaires and other dat collection instruments, data analysis, and the development of Usability Profiles to describe all the software interfaces of a system. It contains lists of questionnaire and checklist items, and examples of questionnaires, used to gather data on User Friendliness and human factors (or MANPRINT)

Cited by 0

Usability And Software Sustainability

Gunter, Dan · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2018

In this position paper, we describe some challenges and concomitant opportunities for introducing usability research and practices into the effort to improve software sustainability.

Cited by 0Open access

Mathematical software usability testing.

Rondeau, Andrew Donald., Silva, Julio Cesar. · Digital WPI · 2001

The usability of Maple and MathCAD is measured via test scores, time, and happiness. It is also measured qualitatively via a user's ability to learn to perform fundamental mathematical operations, to use previously learned skills and online help to answer complex questions; the users' computer, mathematical and mathematics via computer experience is also considered. Twenty-six students were tested on both programs. The results suggest that Maple is overall more usable and requires less improvement to increase its usability.

Cited by 0Open access

Usability through Software Design

Laura Carvajal, Ana M. Moreno, Marı́a-Isabel Sánchez-Segura et al. · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · 2013

Over the past two decades, the HCI community has proposed specific features that software applications should include to overcome some of the most common usability problems. However, incorporating such usability features into software applications may not be a straightforward process for software developers who have not been trained in usability (i.e., determining when, how, and why usability features should been considered). We have defined a set of usability guidelines for software development to help software engineers incorporate particular usability features into their applications. In this paper, we focus on the software design artifacts provided by the guidelines. We detail the structure of the proposed design artifacts and how they should be used according to the software development process and software architecture used in each application. We have tested our guidelines in an academic setting. Preliminary validation shows that the use of the guidelines reduces development time, improves the quality of the resulting designs, and significantly decreases the perceived complexity of the usability features from the developers' perspective.

Cited by 63

focus usability engineering Usability Basics for Software Developers

This Tutorial, Xavier Ferré, Natalia Juristo et al. · 2008

examines the relationship between usability and the user interface and discusses how the usability process follows a design-evaluateredesign cycle. It also discusses some management issues an organization must face when applying usability techniques.

Cited by 0

focus usability engineering Usability Basics for Software Developers

Xavier Ferré, Natalia Juristo, Larry Constantine · 2011

In recent years, software system usability has made some interesting advances, with more and more organizations starting to take usability seriously. 1 Unfortunately, the average developer has not adopted these new concepts, so the usability level of software products has not improved. This tutorial examines the relationship between usability and the user interface and discusses how the usability process follows a design-evaluateredesign cycle. It also

Cited by 0

Usability Perspective in Software Quality

Michalis Xenos · 2001

This paper presents usability perspective in the most frequently used models of software quality characteristics, namely FCM, CSQ and ISO 9126. Fur- thermore, it discuses the requirements, in terms of usability, in ISO 9001 quality as- surance international standard (using the ISO 9000-3 guidelines for software as well), in Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards and in Capability Maturity Model. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that usability forms part of the overall framework of software quality and to underline the importance of usability into software quality models and standards.

Cited by 13

Software Design Guidelines for Usability

Carvajal García, Laura Elena, Moreno Sánchez-Capuchino, Ana María · UPM Digital Archive (Technical University of Madrid) · 2011

For years, the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) community has crafted usability guidelines that clearly define what
characteristics a software system should have in order to be easy to use. However, in the Software Engineering (SE)
community keep falling short of successfully incorporating these recommendations into software projects. From a SE
perspective, the process of incorporating usability features into software is not always straightforward, as a large number
of these features have heavy implications in the underlying software architecture. For example, successfully including an
“undo” feature in an application requires the design and implementation of many complex interrelated data structures and
functionalities. Our work is focused upon providing developers with a set of software design patterns to assist them in the
process of designing more usable software. This would contribute to the proper inclusion of specific usability features
with high impact on the software design. Preliminary validation data show that usage of the guidelines also has positive
effects on development time and overall software design quality.

Cited by 0Open access

Improving open source software usability

Luyin Zhao, Fadi P. Deek · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2005

Usability of open source systems is becoming a relevant topic for investigation given the proliferation of open source software. General assumptions do not favor a positive relationship between the existing open source development model and good usability due to a host of social context reasons. In this paper we provide empirical evidence on this issue through a case study using an open source project called Ganttproject. Results point to likely deficiencies in the open source model. An analysis of this phenomena and some potential solutions for improving open source usability are proposed.

Cited by 33Open access

Usability-Oriented Software Development Process

Laura Elena Carvajal García · 2012

Usability is the capability of the software product to be understood, learned, used and attractive to the user, when used under specified conditions. Many studies demonstrate the benefits of usability, yet to this day software products continue to exhibit consistently low levels of this quality attribute. Furthermore, poor usability in software systems contributes largely to software failing in actual use. One of the main disciplines involved in usability is that of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Over the past two decades the HCI community has proposed specific features that should be present in applications to improve their usability, yet incorporating them into software continues to be far from trivial for software developers. These difficulties are due to multiple factors, including the high level of abstraction at which these HCI recommendations are made and how far removed they are from actual software implementation. In order to bridge this gap, the Software Engineering community has long proposed software design solutions to help developers include usability features into software, however, the problem remains an open research question. This doctoral thesis addresses the problem of helping software developers include specific usability features into their applications by providing them with a structured and tangible guidance in the form of a process, which we have termed the Usability-Oriented Software Development Process. This process is supported by a set of Software Usability Guidelines that help developers to incorporate a set of eleven usability features with high impact on software design. After developing the Usability-oriented Software Development Process and the Software Usability Guidelines, they have been validated across multiple academic projects and proven to help software developers to include such usability features into their software applications. In doing so, their use significantly reduced development time and improved the quality of the resulting designs of these projects. Furthermore, in this work we propose a software tool to automate the application of the proposed process. In sum, this work contributes to the integration of the Software Engineering and HCI disciplines providing a framework that helps software developers to create usable applications in an efficient way.

Cited by 5Open access

MANAGEMENT TOOL OF SOFTWARE USABILITY

Гученко, Інна Володимирівна; Національний авіаційний університет · Problems of a systemic approach to the economy enterprises (National Aviation University, Ukraine, Kyiv) · 2011

Cited by 0Open access

Usability Patterns in Software Architecture

Eelke Folmer, Jan Bosch · 2003

Over the years the software engineering community has increasingly realized the important role software architecture plays in fulfilling the quality requirements of a system. Practice shows that for current software systems, most usability issues are still only detected during testing and deployment. To improve the usability of a software system, usability patterns can be applied. However, too often software systems prove to be inflexible towards such modifications which lead to potentially prohibitively high costs for implementing them afterwards. The reason for this shortcoming is that the software architecture of a system restricts certain usability patterns from being implemented after implementation. Several of these usability patterns are "architecture sensitive", such modifications are costly to implement due through their structural impact on the system. Our research has identified several usability patterns that require architectural support. We argue the importance of the relation between usability and software architecture. Software engineers and usability engineers should be aware of the importance of this relation. The framework which illustrates this relation can be used as a source to inform architecture design for usability.

Cited by 17