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Why are methods for incorporating user quality requirements and improving usability not more widely adopted? There is compelling evidence for the cost benefits of user centred design, development time can be reduced, sales increased, the productivity of users improved, and support and maintenance costs reduced. But although the process is supported by international standards it has been difficult to integrate into mainstream software development.
The EU INUSE and RESPECT projects developed a complete set of methods for incorporating user quality requirements in development, for testing usability and for assessing the usability maturity of organisations.
Our experience of using the methods will be described in the paper.
After application of the methods over a period of 12 months, LAHAV assessed the benefits. The conclusions were very positive. The paper will include the results of the second process improvement assessment.
Nigel Bevan is Research Manager at Serco Usability Services. He manages the EU T RUMP project described in this paper. He has developed and applied methods for usability and user centred design, and has been editor of several international standards for usability and software quality.
Itzhak Bogomolni leads software process improvement at the LAHAV division of IAI and has spent the last eight years working on process improvement activities. His previous experience was in development of embedded real time systems.
