Concepedia

The usability design process – integrating user‐centered systems design in the software development process

Bengt Göransson, Jan Gulliksen, Inger Boivie

Software Process Improvement and Practice · 2003 · 99 citations · 28 references

TL;DR

The article reviews efforts to bridge gaps between software engineering and HCI, highlighting critical issues that must be resolved to reconcile the two fields. The authors argue that user‑centered systems design must be tightly integrated into software development and propose the usability design process as a solution. The usability design process combines usability engineering with interaction design, emphasizing extensive active user involvement throughout an iterative development cycle, and the authors illustrate its steps with real‑life examples. The authors demonstrate how the usability design process can be implemented within the commercial Rational Unified Process (RUP) framework. © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract This article reviews current efforts in bridging the gaps between software engineering and Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and describes some critical issues that must be resolved in order to reconcile some of the differences between the two fields. We argue that user‐centered systems design (UCSD) must be tightly integrated in the software development process and suggest the usability design process as a way of doing this. The usability design process is a UCSD approach for developing usable interactive systems, combining usability engineering with interaction design, and emphasizing extensive active user involvement throughout the iterative process. We outline the usability design process and illustrate the steps in the process with examples from real‐life design cases. Finally, we provide an example of how the usability design process can be implemented in a commercial software‐development process, Rational Unified Process ™ (RUP). Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.