Empowering software engineers in human-centered design

Usability is about to become the quality measure of today's interactive software including Web sites, and mobile appliances. User-centered design approach emerges from this need for developing more usable products. However, interactive systems are still designed and tested by software and computer engineers unfamiliar with UCD and the related usability engineering techniques. While most software developers may have been exposed with basic concepts such as GUI design guidelines, few developers are able to understand the human/user-centered design (UCD) toolbox at a level that allows them to incorporate it into the software development lifecycle. This paper describes an approach for skilling developers and students enrolled in an engineering program in critical user-centered design techniques and tools. The proposed approach starts from the analysis of the usability and software engineer's work context, identifies critical UCD skills and then associates relevant learning resources with each of the identified skills. Our approach suggests a list of patterns for facilitating the integration the UCD skills into the software engineering lifecycle.