Integrating human factors and software development

Abstract

Approaches to integrating human factors or user interface knowledge and expertise with software development are still exploratory and evolving. The human-computer interface provides a broader range of user interface challenges than earlier technology, but human factors is only now starting to be widely recognized as a distinct discipline requiring integration with system development. Devoting human and computer resources to user interface enhancement has been considered a luxury, and in many places still is, but the falling cost of computational power and the growing user resistance to poor interfaces, as well as a rising need for product differentiation in the marketplace, insure that human factors will become a necessity where it has not already. The need to develop organizational approaches to support the integration of human factors or user interface expertise with product development is thus a relatively new concern. The integration problems that have been identified include some that are shared with more established support activities such as technical writing, and others that are particular to human factors or result from the relative unfamiliarity of the discipline.Approaches that have been taken to managing human factors resources in order to maximize influence on user interface development include: hiring human factors engineers or psychologists directly into development teams, concentrating human factors engineers in a support organization, making use of external consultants with user interface knowledge, placing a development group under the leadership of a human factors professional, and forming an educational center in which software engineers learn about human factors approaches. Below, each panelist focuses on the advantages of one particular approach.