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Usability Management Maturity, Part 2:
Usability Techniques-What Can You Do?

Thyra L. Rauch

K52/062
IBM Corporation
3039 West Cornwallis Road
Durham, NC 27713
Tel: +1-919-254-6380
E-mail: thyra@vnet.ibm.com

George A. Flanagan

IBM Consulting Group
10508 Whitestone Road
Raleigh, NC 27615
Tel: +1-919-847-3954
E-mail: gaf@vnet.ibm.com

© ACM

Keywords:

Usability, software, human factors, methodologies, activities.

SUMMARY

This session is a follow-up to both the Special Interest Group (SIG) "Usability Management Maturity, Part 1, Self Assessment: How do you stack up?" held earlier today (an opportunity to self-assess the maturity of your organization's usability activities), and to the "Issues in Human Factors Organization and Practices" SIG held at CHI '94, at which interest was expressed in discussing ways to ascend the usability maturity scale. If you are from an organization with informal or no usability teams, then this is an opportunity to explore and discuss various tools and techniques (e.g. prototyping and user selection).

ISSUES AND GOALS

This SIG:
  1. Presents a mini-survey of usability techniques and approaches, many of which will be discussed in detail at the other CHI sessions
  2. Provides an opportunity for the participants to explore techniques that are available for relatively low-cost and little training

This session is not intended to be comprehensive or all- inclusive on usability tools and techniques, but instead to provide a starting point and ideas that the participants can take back with them. Ample time will be provided for Q & A and discussion; participants will be encouraged to:

  1. Share their own experiences of what worked and what didn't.
  2. Join in a discussion of ways to transform various activities and techniques to suit a variety of needs and affordability.

The goal of this SIG is for participants to leave with an expanded "toolkit" of methodologies and techniques available to them.