Integration of Usability Techniques into the Software Development Process

Software development organisations are paying more and more attention to the usability of their software products. To raise the usability level of the software product, it is necessary to employ usability techniques, but their use is far from straightforward since they are not, in most cases, integrated with the software engineering development processes. Offering average software developers a way to integrate usability activities and techniques into their existing software development process can bridge the gap between usability and software engineering practice. The only requirement is for the existing process to be based on iterative refinement. We present a handy grouping of usability techniques as increments that developers can introduce into their software development process. We have arrived at this result by surveying the usability literature, adapting usability concepts to software engineering terminology, and examining the development time constraints on the application of usability activities and techniques.