Usability engineering - Usability engineering is a process for defining, measuring, and thereby improving, the usability of products. Usability engineering evolved because of a need to move usability from the realm of personal opinion to an attribute that is quantifiable like other engineering attributes. The basic usability engineering process has seven steps (Good, Spine, Whiteside, and George, 1986)
Usability engineering is flexible in both its application and methodology. It can be applied to new versions of existing products, new products which will be entering a market against established competitors, or to entirely new and innovative products. Usability engineering does not specify particular methods for defining goals, testing products, or incorporating user-derived feedback into the development process. Usability engineers can choose the methods that fit best into their development environments and budgets. The sine qua non of usability engineering is that it provides quantitative results that can be compared to explicit usability goals. |