Classification Scheme of Usability Problems : Literature Review and New Conceptual Framework
Dong-Han Ham · Journal of the Korea society of IT services · 2008
It is widely known that usability is a critical quality attribute of IT systems. Many studies have developed various methods for finding out usability problems. Usability professionals have emphasized that usability should be integrated into the development life cycle in order to maximize the usability of systems with minimal cost. To achieve this, it is essential to classify usability problems systematically and connect them into the activities of designing user interfaces and tasks. However, there is a lack of framework or method for these two problems and thus remains a challengeable research issue. As a beginning study, this paper proposes a conceptual framework for addressing the two issues. We firstly summarize usability-related studies so far, including usability factors and evaluation methods. Secondly, we review seven approaches to identifying and classifying usability problems. Based on this review and opinions of usability engineers in real industry as well as the review results, this paper proposes a framework comprising three viewpoints, from which more sound classification scheme of usability problems can be inductively developed.