Instructors
Natalia Juristo,
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Xavier
Ferre, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
Abstract
Usability is increasingly recognized as a quality attribute that one has to explicitly deal with during development. Nevertheless, usability techniques, when applied, are decoupled from the software development process. The host of techniques offered by the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) field make the task of selecting the most appropriate ones for a given project and organization a difficult task. Project managers and developers aiming to integrate usability practices into their software process have to face important challenges, as the techniques are not described in the frame of a software process as it is understood in SE (Software Engineering). Even when HCI experts (either in-house or from an external organization) are involved in the integration process, it is also a tough endeavour due to the strong differences in terminology and overall approach to software development between HCI and SE. In this tutorial we will present, from a SE viewpoint, which usability techniques can be most valuable to development teams with little or no previous usability experience, how a particular set of techniques can be selected according to the specific characteristics of the organization and project, and how usability techniques match with the activity groups in the development process.
Biographies
Dr. Natalia Juristo is Full Professor of Software Engineering with the Computing School (Univ. Politecnica de Madrid, Spain) since 1997. She has been the Director of the UPM MSc in Software Engineering for ten years. She has been fellow of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland and staff of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Italy, resident affiliate of the Software Engineering Institute at CMU (Pittsburgh, USA). She has been program chair for SEKE in 1997 and 2005 and for ISESE'04, and general chair for SEKE'01 and for SNPD'02. Prof. Juristo has been key speaker for CSEET'03. She has been guest editor of special issues in several journals. Dr. Juristo has been member of several editorial boards, including IEEE Software.
Dr. Xavier Ferre is Assistant Professor of Software Engineering with the Computing School at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in Spain since 1999. He has been a Visiting PhD Student at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) in Switzerland, and at the HCIL (Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory) at the University of Maryland (USA). He is a member of the ACM and its SIGCHI group. His primary research interest is the integration of Usability into Software Engineering development practices.
