Enhancing the Effectiveness of Usability Evaluation by Automated Heuristic Evaluation System

Usability defects test escapee can have a negative impact on the success of software. It is quite common for projects to have a tight timeline. For these projects, it is crucial to ensure there are effective processes in place. One way to ensure project success is to improve the manual processes of the usability inspection via automation. An automated usability tool will enable the evaluator to reduce manual processes and focus on capturing more defects in a shorter period of time. Thus improving the effectiveness of the usability inspection and minimizing defects escapee. There exist many usability testing and inspection methods. The scope of this paper is on the Heuristic Evaluation (HE) procedures automation. The Usability Management System (UMS) was developed to automate as many manual steps as possible throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC). It is important for the various teams within the organization to understand the benefits of automation. The results show that with the help of automation more usability defects can be detected. Hence, enhancing the effectiveness of usability evaluation by an automated Heuristic Evaluation System is feasible.