Evidence-Based Usability Engineering

Abstract

In this paper we propose an approach for the systematic integration of human-centered design (HCD) methods throughout the whole software development process called evidence-based usability engineering. We derive our approach from six claims that emphasize shortcomings and urgent requirements of current HCD practice. Instead of clinging to a fixed process model of the usability engineering process our approach advocates a paradigm of situated decision making. It enables software development teams to select optimal sets of HCD methods that match the engineering task at hand based on the cumulated experience of the software development organization. Qualitative and quantitative feedback on the efficiency of HCD methods is collected and integrated across project boundaries. Our approach is connected to existing process improvement frameworks such as UMM (Usability Maturity Model) via a meta-model. We present a first prototype of a novel kind of computer-aided usability engineering environment called ProUSE, that supports our evidence-based usability engineering approach.