Making a difference : a survey of the usability profession in Sweden

• Poor usability in interactive systems/products is still a major problem for users and buyers, despite efforts made by an increasing number of usability professionals. How come this is so and what are the main obstacles to usability work? In this paper we report the results of a survey of usability professionals in Sweden, conducted in 2003. The survey identified, e.g. their background and experiences, the type of employment, organization, and products/systems, the software development process being used and some key success factors for usability work. The results indicate, among other things, that management support and project management support are essential for the usability worker. Moreover, they face problems such as, usability and user involvement having low priority in the projects.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Människa-datorinteraktion (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Human Computer Interaction (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Usability

software development

usability professionals

UCD methods

development processes

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)