The importance of human-computer interaction in the development process of software projects

Abstract

<p>Today, software industry has a rapid growth. In order to resist the competition increased by this growth, software projects ne0ed to be developed with higher quality and especially user friendly. Therefore, the importance of human-computer interaction emerges clearly. In design and development phases of software projects, the properties of human –which is an important agent for interaction- such as behavioral, cognitive, perceptive, efficiency and physical factors have to be considered. This study aims to express the importance of developing softwares by taking into consideration the human-computer interaction applications. In this context, firstly a wide literature review is made to examine software development process and human-computer interaction in detail, the results obtained by using design methods in this process are explicated and the importance of said interaction is openly expressed with the exemplary applications in the literature. According to the results of the research, especially in software life cycle, it is observed that rules of interaction must be implemented before software development, however, these methods are usually included in software life cycle in the latter stages of software development process. This situation causes the developed softwares to be user unfriendly and of low quality. Furthermore, it is observed that when the design methods used in the scope of human-computer interaction are integrated into software development process during the life cycle, the developed projects are more successful, have better quality and are more user friendly.</p><p> Keywords: Human-computer interaction, software projects, life cycle, software design.</p>