Abstract

Our research investigates how to integrate usability concerns into the software development lifecycle and in particular how to improve the communication between usability and software engineers. In the last few years, many software development teams have tried to integrate user-centered design techniques into their software engineering lifecycle. However, because of lack of understanding and communication between two diverse teams, they often run into problems. One problem arises from the fact that the software engineering teams have their own techniques and tools for managing the whole development lifecycle including usability issues, and it is not clear where exactly in this usability engineering techniques should be placed and integrated with existing software engineering methods to maximize benefits gained from both. Several research attempts have been done to reconcile the user-centered design approach and traditional software engineering methods. The optimal methodology is therefore a tailored one, catering to the needs of each project and team. Our research, rather than investigating, how to alleviate the usability concerns of adapted software development lifecycle, focuses on the communication between usability engineers and developers. To motivate our investigations, we first examine two popular requirement-engineering processes: RESPECT and the use-case driven process, as defined in the Rational Unified Process framework. This discussion allows us to identify milestones of a relevant communication between members of the software development team and usability specialists. Finally, we describe a tool which aims to assist both software and usability engineers to mediate their communication.