Systematic guidance on usability methods in user-centered software development

Abstract

In order to ensure usability, it is necessary to schedule activities and methods to be applied throughout different stages of the development process. There exists a substantial number of usability methods to be applied in user-centered software development. However, the application of each usability method largely depends on specific constraints that should be closely considered. Even so, these constraints are not always known beforehand, remaining unidentified or under uncertainty at early stages of the project. Objective: This paper presents an approach to automatically recommend 43 usability methods depending on the project's stage and constraints. Our approach deals with uncertainty to recommend usability methods regardless of the completeness of the information available, which makes it suitable for enhancing initial scheduling. Besides, a supporting tool intended to schedule and guide on usability methods is presented in order to systematize the recommendation mechanism. Method: To validate our approach, we present two application scenarios demonstrating the suitability of the mechanism, including also an expert analysis to observe the recommendation appropriateness in terms of recommendation gap. Also, a user testing was accomplished to evaluate the usability of the approach with key users. Results: A low recommendation gap was observed (< 2.5%) and, according to the results obtained in the user testing, high percentage values for usefulness (82.38%) and satisfaction (87.89%) were obtained. The user evaluation also reported high values concerning other dimensions such as ease of use (89.00%) and ease of learning (92.38%). Conclusions: Results obtained helped answer main research questions, demonstrating that it is possible to create a mechanism to recommend usability methods according to a software project's constraints, even under uncertainty, and also affirm that it is possible to systemize the recommendations with a scheduling tool being satisfactory for key stakeholders, denoting acceptable levels of recommendation appropriateness, usefulness, and overall usability.

Analysis and measurement of internal usability metrics through code annotations

“…Internal quality metrics are important as they are related to other usability measures. In general, usability is affected by functional and non-functional requirements, thus it should be measured at the source-code level as well in order to assure usability during all the development process (Cayola andMacías 2018, Sánchez andMacías 2017).…”

Interactive Spatial Web-Applications as New Means of Support for Urban Decision-Making Processes

“…Usability is considered to be one of the most important quality factors for either success or failure of web-applications ( (Fernandez et al, 2011), (Mvungi and Tossy, 2015), (Cayola and Macías, 2018)). (Nielsen, Jakob, 2012) clearly state if a website is difficult to use or the information is hard to read, people leave, because "There's no such thing as a user reading a website manual".…”

Usability heuristics for the set‐top box and TV interfaces

“…Usability is a “quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use” (Nielsen, 2003). According to ISO 9241 (2018), usability is a more comprehensive concept than “ease of use and user friendless.” Usability is relevant to “become effective, efficient, and satisfied—in regular ongoing use, when starting to use a system, with the system on each reuse, and by people with the widest range of capabilities.” The integration of usability principles in certain stages of the development process may increase the quality and the acceptance of a newly innovated system (Cayola & Macias, 2018; Nielsen, 2003). Especially, integrating usability factors into the software in design, development, or evaluation may reduce rework at the later stages of the design process.…”

“…Especially, integrating usability factors into the software in design, development, or evaluation may reduce rework at the later stages of the design process. On the contrary, software developers generally ignore usability principles and concern about technical issues of software such as techniques, methods, or tools (Cayola & Macias, 2018; Juristo et al, 2007). A usability heuristics list specific to STB&TV interfaces may guide software developers in constructing a usable interface because general‐purpose heuristics are not sufficient for specific domains, such as interactive television, virtual world, and so forth (Jimenez et al, 2017).…”