Overview

Usability Engineering (UE) is a structured approach to developing usable user interface designs. UE helps integrate human-computer interaction (HCI) requirements and design approaches within development projects managed by software engineering (SE) methodologies. This course presents a requirements engineering (RE) approach to usability engineering.

Requirements Engineering (a sub discipline of Software Engineering) focuses on applying development processes and documenting information items that support these development processes in order to engineer large scale software projects and to provide information that readily supports further evolutionary development of these projects. While RE is most needed for large scale projects, its processes and information items can also be scaled down to smaller developments. This approach is being taken because it can be applied to all types and sizes of developments.

This class focuses on the needs of users and their tasks, which are at the heart of all systems development. It demonstrates how RE can be applied to engineering usable systems. While it does not deal with technical issues (such as program or database design and construction) it provides clear linkages to those SE activities, which also fit into the same overall life cycle.

In addition to providing students with an advanced understanding of UE and RE, this class introduces them to a variety of significant international standards in the fields of Software Engineering and of Ergonomics.

Learning Objectives

1. To identify opportunities for improving the usabillity and accessibility of existing and proposed systems
2. To apply the components of the definitions of usability and accessibility to evaluating and developing interactive systems
3. To apply usability methods in evaluating and developing interactive systems
4. To apply principles and other forms of ergonomic and user interface guidance to evaluating and developing interactive systems
5. To identify and analyze the various components of the overall context of use of an interactive system
6. To develop usability and accessibility specifications that can be used in evaluating and developing interactive systems
7. To identify techniques and technologies that can satisfy usability and accessibility specifications

Please contact Prof. Jim Carter <carter@cs.usask.ca>  if you are interested in further information about this class.