Antecipando a usabilidade nas fases iniciais do processo de desenvolvimento de software

Abstract

Recent researches tried to improve the degree of usability in the early stages of the application’s process development, the so called “Early Usability”. Part of the proposed technologies is intended to evaluate usability through models elaborated in the initial phases of the application development process. This type of technology aims to present a good level of efficiency and effectiveness, besides offering an user satisfaction and reducing development time. Other technologies create/design these models already targeting the usability of the final application. However, these technologies have been developed independently and for specific models, besides requiring a greater knowledge in usability on the part of those who apply them. Thus, in this research, we proposed a set of technologies (methods, techniques, tools, processes, among others) which assists in creating and evaluating models addressing the usability of the application with emphasis in the early stages of development process. This set of technologies allows the identification of a higher number of usability problems already in the early stages, compared to conventional approaches. In conventional approaches, the identification of usability problems is performed in independent models, that is, or it is performed in models specific to a particular context, such as web models, or it is performed when the software is ready. Therefore, the proposed set of technologies encompasses a higher number of models, is not context-specific, and supports software professionals with little usability knowledge to build/evaluate early-stage models. In addition, the set of technologies guides both software engineers and usability engineers to avoid usability problems more proactively in its development projects, because this professionals can build their models already aiming at the usability of the application. With this, we hope to improve the software quality and to decrease the cost of correcting usability problems before the source code is written.