Given that usability is one of the most important aspects of software quality, several methods have been developed in order to establish techniques capable of evaluating this attribute from early phases of the software development process. However, the choice of the most appropriate method for a particular scenario is still a difficult decision, due to the existence of a vast number of approaches that are described in the literature for this purpose. Therefore, a systematic mapping review was conducted in order to identify the most commonly used usability evaluation techniques in software developments. A total of 1169 studies were identified, of which only 215 studies were selected for this review. According to the analysis, most cases studies establish the use of usability questionnaires as assessment tool. In addition, health informatics and Web applications are the software domain and type of application that are frequently reported in these evaluations. This work has allowed to reach promising results in this area. It is intended to be a guide for specialists to support the choice of the most suitable method for a particular scenario.

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Usability testing is one of the most used methods to define the level of usability of a software product. However, there is always uncertainty to determine the best method that complements user testing in a depth usability assessment. Nowadays, the concern of many software developers is to identify an appropriate methodology, whose evaluation methods could be capable of measuring all usability aspects of a user interface. For this reason, we conducted a heuristic evaluation as a preliminary step to the implementation of a usability test, in order to determine in which extent these methods complement each other, and establish the gaps which are covered by each of them. The heuristic evaluation was performed by five specialists in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, who identified a total of fifty-nine usability problems in a transactional web site. Subsequently, a usability test was conducted with the participation of eight postgraduate students of a master's program in Informatics Engineering. The results show that most of the usability problems which were detected during the usability testing, had already been identified by the heuristic evaluation. Nevertheless, there were significant differences in the importance that was given to each problem. Usability experts emphasized in aspects that were not relevant to end users.

In this paper, we present the results of a systematic review involving the use of usability techniques in software developments where agile methodologies were used. The search strategy identified 307 studies, where only 32 were finally selected for the review. We found that complementary techniques are the most frequent techniques used with agile methodologies. In addition, most studies performed usability evaluations only during the implementation phase, and these evaluations were mostly constructed as elaborations of case studies.

The accelerated growth in exploiting vulnerabilities due to errors or failures in the software development process is a latent concern in the Software Industry. In this sense, this study aims to provide an overview of the Secure Software Development trends to help identify topics that have been extensively studied and those that still need to be. Therefore, in this paper, a systematic mapping review with PICo search strategies was conducted. A total of 867 papers were identified, of which only 528 papers were selected for this review. The main findings correspond to the Software Requirements Security, where the Elicitation and Misuse Cases reported more frequently. In Software Design Security, recurring themes are security in component-based software development, threat model, and security patterns. In the Software Construction Security, the most frequent topics are static code analysis and vulnerability detection. Finally, in Software Testing Security, the most frequent topics are vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. In conclusion, there is a diversity of methodologies, models, and tools with specific objectives in each secure software development stage.