Essay Example on HCI Approaches to Software Development to Improve Usability

Currently, the usability of a software system has been adopted as an important aspect of quality within the software engineering discipline. The advancement of the interaction between systems and humans is a demanding task and needs structured processes and methods for advancing and maintaining quality user interfaces. Incremental software development model is a present software engineering model that handles the development of domain-specific and formalized prototypes with the goal of creating a code base (Larman & Basili, 2003). In the incremental model, Iteration is a important aspect of used to integrate the various prototypes into a working software product (Pressman, 2005). Therefore, problem descriptions may be specified with additional precision and void of any redundancies. Moreover, the traceability of any changes alongside model reusability are supported using specific instrument chains for generation and transformation, Nonetheless, the Incremental model focuses on the user present at the initial analysis of the software. A summative or rather a formative assessment of the user interface is not specified.

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The design of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) addresses such continuous participation of the user in the course of the design and implementation processes. The software requirements and designs are refined utilizing an iterative outline and in addition an initial focus on the clients with their requirements, objectives and functionalities. Incorporating clients amid the entire development process empowers a consistent input and acceptance rather than assumptions and interpretations. Consequently, acquired bits of knowledge on requirement analysis as well as usability tests are generally determined in a narrative manner using situations, reports or storyboards rather than formalized models.

Moreover, HCD concentrates on the development of design models, however not on the incremental advancement of user interface components and the basic framework (Nielsen, 1994). Agile processes empower an incremental software development having a constantly executable part of the software product prepared to be reviewed by the client(Cockburn & Highsmith, 2001). As a result, inspection and transparency are two essential elements to make a common comprehension of the project an undertaking. Be that as it may, agile development is not focused on demonstrating client prerequisites and human conduct extensively (Sy, 2007). Having reviews with the client does not satisfy the desires of having an expansive analysis and assessment with different clients who are as of now working with a framework. Moreover, an efficient and recorded method for choices concerning the cooperation or the UI and in addition an orderly treatment of client criticism is absent.

In essence, two factors; the specification of the user interface and usability analysis, define both software development and usability; the user and their work, in the Incremental software development model. As with the specification of the requirements, it is essential to learn initially about the context of use alongside the users. This information may be collected at the same time when the project team begins learning about the project scope; either observation or interviewing users. Based on contextual information, the usability analysis document may be produced. This document contains the definition of the general types of users who would be using the software product, products context, deployment environment as well as the software usability requirements. This defines the premise on which the factors of usability of the software project are formulated. Prior to the writing of the project plan, the consideration of usability perspective and the user experience might also offer a detailed insight into what the software deliverable would be about.

Since the requirement specification characterizes what the product ought to be, it cannot contain definitions that are conflicting to the usability requirements of the product. The requirements detail of the product is in this manner situated to some degree on the usability evaluation report. This likewise gives a decent establishment to considering the usability later on in the project. A few parts of the requirement specification may rely on upon the user interface (UI) of the product, so the preparatory draft of the user interface design ought to be made together with the determination of the requirements (Gulliksen, Boivie & Goransson, 2006). This ought to contain the general user interface model and the expected work process for the clients of the item. On the off chance that UI is not designed at this stage, those composition the prerequisites determination will expect some user interface from the specialized viewpoint and it may not be in accordance with the usability requirements. Due to this, the individuals working on the user interface design need to team up with the team composing the requirements detail.

The most unmistakable part of software development ease of use is the user interface itself. This is characterized in the design of the user interface. As the design is entwined with the usage, it ought to be done in collaboration with those developing the implementation program. Along these lines the user interface designers get profitable input from the people doing the implementation (Lee & McCrickard, 2007). This avoids making a UI design that will be disposed of as difficult to execute. Nonetheless, when bargains must be made for usage, the better UI outline ideas ought to, by the by, be built into the client interface plan to further improvement.

The ease of user reviews and client interface design models are the fundamental building obstructs in restricting ease of use emphatically in the software project. Notwithstanding these essential models, there can likewise be different records concerning usability issues, for example, ease of use, heuristic assessment reports, test reports and so on. These models are typically composed on the premise of different ease of use assessments (Seffah, Gulliksen & Desmarais, 2005)

Approaches to usability design and analysis can be utilized to enhance the ease of use of the product under design. The most well-known analysis technique is presumably usability testing and prototype testing, which give significant knowledge on how the real clients understand the software system through the user interface (Goransson, Gulliksen & Boivie, 2004). This is critical in light of the fact that one of the key issues in ease of use is that individuals tend to think inside their own connection. While user interface designers and IT experts may comprehend an element as self-evident, the real users may not. Particularly testing with paper prototype testing can find huge surprising client conduct in an early phase of the design.

A firmly related issue is that user interface designers effortlessly become attached to own design and turn heedless to any misstep in their configuration. They may see how something works essentially in light of the fact that they were involved in its design and this is frequently difficult to take note (Rosson & Carroll, 2002). To conquer this, the most straightforward strategy is likely to hold peer reviews on the user interface. Peer review is directed by holding a meeting with other user interface architects irrelevant to the project. The interface is casually talked about together, with the fashioner introducing the interface to the others. The meeting requires a casual conceptualizing environment with the goal that it does not concentrate on what the designer has done wrong yet rather on how the design can be progressed.

References

Cockburn, A., & Highsmith J. (2001). Agile software development: The people factor. Computer, (11), 131-133.

Goransson, B., Gulliksen, J., & Boivie, I. (2004). The Usability Design ProcessIntegrating User-centered Systems Design in the Software Development Process Research Section.

Gulliksen, J., Boivie, I., & Goransson, B. (2006). Usability professionalscurrent practices and future development. Interacting with computers, 18(4), 568-600.

Larman, C., & Basili, V. R. (2003). Iterative and incremental development: A brief history. Computer, (6), 47-56.

Lee, J. C., & McCrickard, D. S. (2007). Towards extreme (ly) usable software: Exploring tensions between usability and agile software development. In Agile Conference (AGILE), 2007 (pp. 59-71). IEEE.

Nielsen, J. (1994). Usability engineering. Elsevier.

Pressman, R. S. (2005). Software engineering: a practitioner's approach. Palgrave Macmillan.

Rosson, M. B., & Carroll, J. M. (2002). Usability engineering: scenario-based development of human-computer interaction. Morgan Kaufmann.

Seffah, A., Gulliksen, J., & Desmarais, M. C. (Eds.). (2005). Human-Centered Software Engineering-Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle (Vol. 8). Science & Business Media.

Sy, D. (2007). Adapting usability investigations for agile user-centered design. Journal of usability Studies, 2(3), 112-132.