Effects of project documents on product usability: a study of writing in software projects

We designed and piloted a technical communications course for software engineering majors offered concurrently with the upper level project course in software design. A third of the design course students jointly enrolled in the writing class. One goal of the collaborative courses was to use writing to improve the quality and usability of students' software. We studied the effects of writing on students' user centered beliefs and design practices and on the usability of their products through surveys, document analyses, expert reviews, and user test results. When possible, we compared the usability processes and products of teams who took and did not take the writing class. Our findings show that the synergy resulting from this interdisciplinary approach effectively sensitized students to user centered design, instilled in them a commitment to it, and helped them develop usable products.