Usability Measurements in an Undergraduate Programming Course

Usability is an often neglected component of software design. Usability principles are usually relegated to advanced courses in Human Factors or User Interface design, without consideration for the impact they have on program functionality. Using an analysis methodology, usability principles are identified for integration into an existing computer science course. The key feature of this integration is that it must take place without displacing any material currently taught in the course. In other words, students are being implicitly taught usability through their normal instruction in programming functionality. The experiment performed on an introductory level computer science course showed a significant improvement in usability in student projects without impacting functionality. This paper describes the analysis and methodology, the usability principle selected and the impact they had on the students' projects. The results of this study indicate that usability instruction can be introduced into an existing computer science course, usability of student programs can be improved, and no existing material need be displaced.