Work in progress - introducing usability concepts in early phases of software development

Usability is critical for the success of interactive software systems. However, usability evaluation is rarely taught as an indispensable element of the development process in software design courses. On analyzing usability errors students made in their programming projects, we found some usability errors, although revealed via the visual design of a user interface, resulting from earlier design decisions. It is beneficial to introduce usability concepts in early phases of software development. In this paper, we present an approach to integrating usability evaluation into behavioral modeling for interactive systems. Early usability evaluation is intended to help students obtain a better understanding on usability and encourage them to make conscious effort in seeking usability throughout the development process.