Exporting usability knowledge into a small-sized software development organization - A pattern approach

Abstract

Frameworks and patterns on integrating usability activities into organizational work practices have been developed during the last years. However, usability and user-centered design activities remain fairly unknown to small-sized software development organizations. Empirical research on initiating usability activities in such organizational contexts is also limited to few cases. We present a case project in which our usability research team had six months to provide a small-sized software company with knowledge on how to improve usability of one of their products. Our approach is based on patterns of integration, on a selection of user-centered methods and on producing tailored usability artefacts. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.