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Improving and Mediating Software-to-Usability Engineering Communication

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Abstract

In the last five years, many software development teams have tried to integrate the user-centred design techniques into their software engineering lifecycles, in particular in the use case driven software engineering lifecycle. However, because of lack of understanding and communication between two diverse teams and cultures, they often run into problems. One problem arises from the fact that the software engineeringcommunity has their own techniques and tools for managing the whole development lifecycle including usability issues, and it is not clear where exactly in this usability engineering techniques should be placed and integrated with existing software engineering methods to maximise benefits gained from both. This paper identifies the principles of a cost- effectivecommunication line between human factors/usability specialists and software development teams. It also describes a tool that can help to understand, define and improve thiscommunication line while facilitating the integration of usability in the software development lifecycle. As a case study, we will consider two popular requirements engineering processes: user-centred requirements process as defined in ISO 13407 and implemented in RESPECT and the use case driven requirements process as defined and implemented in the Rational Unified Process.

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag London

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Antunes, H., Seffah, A., Radhakrishnan, T., Pestina, S. (2001). Improving and Mediating Software-to-Usability Engineering Communication. In: Blandford, A., Vanderdonckt, J., Gray, P. (eds) People and Computers XV—Interaction without Frontiers. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0353-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0353-0_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-85233-515-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-0353-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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