Usability and UX practices in small enterprises

Abstract

The role of small and medium enterprises (SME), especially small businesses, has significantly increased in the developing of interactive applications. Given the relevance of these companies in the market, the adoption of usability and user experience (UX) practices in these organizations is fundamental for the improvement of interactive systems. This paper performed a survey with 26 Brazilian small businesses of software about their Usability and UX practices. The results showed that Usability Tests and Heuristic Evaluation were the evaluation methods most frequently reported to be used by the surveyed companies. Although the results suggest an improvement in the adoption of usability and UX practices, they also show the need for significant improvement in training and awareness of the importance of usability and UX and appropriating techniques and practices in the context of small businesses. Our results showed a low use of accessibility evaluation methods, such as tests with disabled users (no mention) or even the use of automated tools to check initial aspects of accessibility (mentioned by only 3.85% of respondents) by the companies surveyed. It also showed that the companies surveyed relies many times on professionals of low experience for the conduction of Usability Tests and Heuristic Evaluation.