Although research and practice have shown that the success of a usability
engineering program depends on the identification and correction of usability problems,
these problems remain an underutilized source of information. Insufficient guidance
regarding the capture of usability problem data results in the loss of information during the
problem reporting phase as problem reports are often vague, imprecise, and incomplete. In
addition, the absence of a framework for understanding, comparing, categorizing, and
analyzing those problems, and their relationship to development context, not only
constrains product improvement, but hampers efforts to improve the user interface
development process.
A new taxonomic model (the Usability Problem Taxonomy) is presented which
contributes to both product and process improvement. The Usability Problem Taxonomy
(UPT) is used to classify and organize usability problems detected on interactive software
development projects. Individual UPT categories are associated with two aspects of
development context: developer roles and skills, and development activities, methods, and
techniques.
Two studies were conducted during the course of this research. The first study
showed that the UPT can be used to classify usability problems reliably. Findings
indicated that level of agreement among classifiers (beyond chance agreement) was
statistically significant. Findings in the second study led to the identification of roles and
activities that address individual UPT categories as well as those that do not.
Procedures for using the UPT in both product and process improvement are
outlined. Examples are presented that illustrate how the UPT can be used to generate
higher quality problem descriptions and to group those problem descriptions prior to
prioritization and correction. In addition, steps that guide developers in diagnosing
weaknesses in the current user interface development process are enumerated. Possible
improvement strategies are presented that focus on the selection of specific development
activities and team members appropriate for a given project.
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