Inspection is a fundamental means of achieving software usability. Past research showed that the current usability inspection techniques were rather ine ective. We developed perspective-based usability inspection, which divides the large variety of usability issues along di erent perspectives and focuses each inspection session on one perspective. We conducted a controlled experiment to study i...

This chapter introduces the concept of usability and provides examples of how usability has been used in digital library evaluations. Usability is a user-centered evaluation and has a theoretical base in human-computer interaction. The most concise definition of usability is “fit for use.” The dimensions of usability may also include usefulness, usableness, ease of use, effectiveness, efficienc...

The goal of this study is to identify issues and actors with a relation to usability in the product development of consumer electronics. Literature regarding the practice of usability has been analysed for issues and actors in product development that are thought to influence usability. In addition four usability professionals in consumer electronics (in different positions and companies) were ...

The goal of muchwork in virtual environments VEs to date has been to produce innovative visual aural and haptic technology until recently there has been very little user centered usability focused research in VEs However there is beginning to be at least some awareness of the need for usability engineering within the VE community mostly addressing particular parts of the VE usability space This...

Inspection is a fundamental means of achieving software usability. Past research showed that during usability inspection the success rate (percentage of problems detected) of each individual inspector was rather low. We developed perspective-based usability inspection, which divides the large variety of usability issues along di erent perspectives and focuses each inspection session on one pers...

Usability can be defined as a measure of the ease with which a system can be learned or used, its safety, effectiveness and efficiency, and the attitudes of its users towards it. While usability has gained popularity in IT and has seen some applications in product development, where it brings strong advantages, industry by far does not exploit the full potential of usability. In the process ind...

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 integra...

Usability is an essential quality of software systems. Many techniques have so far been projected for usability evaluation but they are not well integrated and fail to ensure all the aspects of usability. The inception of usability evaluation methods (UEMs) to assess and improve usability in such systems has led to a variety of alternative methodologies and a general lack of understanding of th...

Usability is an important quality requirement for many of the today software applications, where the complexity of modern user interfaces and the quick reaction required by users demanding highly usable software. However, usability is many times poorly addressed as usability requirements often require an additional implementation effort. In addition, usability is sometimes rarely described in t...

Usability is one of the key quality attributes in software development. The content of this paper is part of the research conducted within the European Union IST STATUS project, related to the development of techniques and procedures for improving usability of software architecture designs. In this paper, we will focus on the possible improvement of usability at software design time. For this p...