Usability testing: A software engineering perspective

Abstract

Background: Software development methodologies adapt customer collaboration in the software development. Because of this, end users of the software participate in the usability testing to give their feedback to the analysts. Objective: The goal of this paper is to explore the design issues of the usability testing from the user's perspective. Method: We followed a systematic approach from the software engineering perspective in preparing the artifacts and conducting the usability testing by defining suitable metrics in a case study. Results: We identified several design issues while performing the usability testing. Metric values and hit-rates of design issues are presented. We also highlighted our lessons learned and recommendations based on our study. Limitations: Our case study is medium sized and results may not be applicable to the industry applications. However, the lessons learned and recommendations from this study are applicable. Conclusion: Users cannot finish complex tasks with no unanswered questions and the identified design issues help in improving user interfaces.