An Effort-based Framework for Evaluating Software Usability Design

Date

2010-03-12

Authors

Tamir, Dan
Mueller, Carl J.
Komogortsev, Oleg

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Abstract

One of the major stakeholder complaints is the usability of software applications. Although there is a rich amount of material on good usability design and evaluation practice, software engineers may need an integrated framework facilitating effective quality assessment. A novel element of the framework, presented in this paper, is its effort-based measure of usability providing developers with an informative model to evaluate software quality, validate usability requirements, and identify missing functionality. Another innovative aspect of this framework is its focus on learning in the process of assessing usability measurements and building the evaluation process around Unified Modeling Languages Use Cases. The framework also provides for additional developer feedback through the notion of designer's and expert's effort representing effort necessary to complete a task. In this paper, we present an effort-based usability model in conjunction with a framework for designing and conducting the evaluation. Experimental results provide evidence of the frameworks utility.

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Keywords

software usability, software validation, software testing, software quality metric, Computer Science

Citation

Tamir, D., Mueller, C. J., & Komogortsev, O. V. (2010). An effort-based framework for evaluating software usability design (Report No. TXSTATE-CS-TR-2010-22). Texas State University-San Marcos, Department of Computer Science.

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