Requesting Utility in Usability -Perspectives from a large team software engineering project
2001 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor)
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Many companies invest large amount of money in developing new technology, without knowing how it will be used. To succeed in making these technologies useful it is necessary to understand the context that gives meaning to the artifact. In the case of generic products, especially in new domains, the context is not obvious. This bachelor thesis analyses what Usability Engineering, Participatory Design and Ethnography can contribute to the problem of learning about the context of usage for generic artifacts. Understanding and identifying details of context is considered to be important to achieve usability in software development. The experience is that most recommendations on usability methods concern situations of specific users in a specific context. In order to find important aspects of the real-world use of generic products, we suggest that ethnographic studies can be conducted in contexts where behaviors relevant to the design are thought to be found. The problem of not knowing the context was experienced in usability work practiced in a large software engineering project. The project task was to develop a web browser for Symbian's ?Quartz? reference design for handheld devices. Methods used were taken from participatory design and usability engineering.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2001. , p. 51
Keywords [en]
Usability, utility, large software engineering project, user-centred design, ISO 13407, ethnography, participatory design, usability engineering, PDA, web browser, Symbian
National Category
Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics Human Computer Interaction Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-4960Local ID: oai:bth.se:arkivex91DABC1C23F5D75AC1256A680038F57BOAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-4960DiVA, id: diva2:832315
Uppsok
Technology
Supervisors
2015-04-222001-06-112018-01-11Bibliographically approved