Evaluation of Exor's Work Process : Methods and Models of Usage-Centered Design
Petter Höglund · KTH Publication Database DiVA (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) · 2009
These days the usability of software has risen to become one of the most important aspects of a system. The importance of software usability will grow since more and more laymen will use software in any form in their everyday life. The functionality of the software will still be as important, but what good is functionality without people being able to use it easily? A lot of software clearly has usability issues which, in business, cost money both in terms of time inefficiency and health related problems due to inefficient tools. Usage-centered design aims to solve these issues by applying a systematic model driven design approach. The usage-centered design approach is driven by three simple and highly related abstract models: the role model, the task model and the content model. This thesis is an evaluation of the work process of a small IT company called Exor located in Uppsala, Sweden. The criteria for the evaluation are taken from the methods and models of usage-centered design. The evaluation was done to see if, and in that case what Exor could do differently to improve usability in their software. It was found that Exor possibly could improve the way they incorporate the realusers in the design process. Furthermore Exor should allow more time to be spent on constructing models before programming starts. Another big factor is the way Exor uses prototypes, a different approach would be beneficial according to usage-centered design.