Guiding Designers to the World of Usability: Determining Usability Requirements Through Teamwork

A teamwork method for determining usability requirements based on the definition of usability of ISO 9241-11 is proposed. A usability specialist facilitates a software development team in determining usability requirements in a set of workshop sessions. The concrete outcome of the workshops is a set of measurable usability requirements (in a form of usability requirements table) which form design drivers for the later phases of software design. Another outcome of the workshops is of educational and motivational nature. We found that the workshops are effective training of usability and make the design team committed towards user-centered design. On the other hand, systematic determination of usability requirements following the definition of usability of ISO 9241-11 was found to be a complex process, and it is challenging to fully determine the usability requirements.