Usability Engineering is a professional discipline that focuses on improving the usability of interactive systems. It draws on theories from computer science and psychology to define problems that occur during the use of such a system. Usability Engineering involves the testing of designs at various stages of the development process, with users or with usability experts. The history of usability engineering in this context dates back to the 1980s. In 1988, authors John Whiteside and John Bennett—of Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM, respectively—published material on the subject, isolating the early setting of goals, iterative evaluation, and prototyping as key activities. The usability expert Jakob Nielsen is a leader in the field of usability engineering. In his 1993 book Usability Engineering, Nielsen describes methods to use throughout a product development process—so designers can ensure they take into account the most important barriers to learnability, efficiency, memorability, error-free use, and subjective satisfaction before implementing the product. Nielsen’s work describes how to perform usability tests and how to use usability heuristics in the usability engineering lifecycle. Ensuring good usability via this process prevents problems in product adoption after release. Rather than focusing on finding solutions for usability problems—which is the focus of a UX or interaction designer—a usability engineer mainly concentrates on the research phase. In this sense, it is not strictly a design role, and many usability engineers have a background in computer science because of this. Despite this point, its connection to the design trade is absolutely crucial, not least as it delivers the framework by which designers can work so as to be sure that their products will connect properly with their target usership. Usability engineers sometimes work to shape an interface such that it adheres to accepted operational definitions of user requirements documentation. For example, the International Organization for Standardization approved definitions (see e.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related courses (2)
CS-213: Human computer interaction
La discipline de l'Interaction Homme-Machine (ou HCI : Human-Computer Interaction) vise à systématiquement placer le facteur humain dans la conception de systèmes interactifs.
CS-234: Technologies for democratic society
This course will offer students a broad but hands-on introduction to technologies of human self-organization.
Related lectures (30)
Usability Testing: Principles and Methods
Covers the principles and methods of usability testing, emphasizing the importance of testing software with future users and applying design principles.
Human-Computer Interaction: Synthesis
Explores the relevance of styles in human-computer interaction, visual perception, cognition, usability testing, games, data visualization, accessibility, extended reality, and more.
Design Principles: User Interface
Explores key design principles for user-friendly software, emphasizing consistency, feedback, aesthetics, and simplicity.
Show more
Related publications (30)

A mirror therapy system using virtual reality and an actuated exoskeleton for the recovery of hand motor impairments: a study of acceptability, usability, and embodiment

Luca Randazzo, Antonio Paolillo

Hand motor impairments are one of the main causes of disabilities worldwide. Rehabilitation procedures like mirror therapy are given crucial importance. In the traditional setup, the patient moves the healthy hand in front of a mirror; the view of the mirr ...
Berlin2023

Characterizing Swiss Alpine Lakes: from Wikipedia to Citizen Science

Yuanhui Lin

In Switzerland, there are more than 1500 lakes located above 2000 meters of altitude. In order to understand the ecological impacts of climate change on bacteria communities in these high mountain lakes, researchers in project 2000Lakes analyze their chemi ...
2022

BLURtooth: Exploiting Cross-Transport Key Derivation in Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low Energy

Mathias Josef Payer, Daniele Antonioli

Bluetooth is a pervasive wireless technology specified in an open standard. The standard defines Bluetooth Classic (BT) for high-throughput wireless services and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) very low-power ones. The standard also specifies security mechanism ...
ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY2022
Show more
Related concepts (6)
Usability
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, vehicle, or anything a human interacts with.
User interface design
User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicates to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design.
Human factors and ergonomics
Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors engineering or HFE) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment.
Show more

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.