At the Information Exchange Platform held at STM on September 26, 2009, Mustafa BAYINDIR from the Software Department made a presentation on “Usability Engineering”.

In the presentation, Mustafa BAYINDIR said that simply defined, “usability” refers to how efficiently, effectively and easily specific users are able to use a product for specific purposes, and that in keeping with this definition, usability focuses on the actual user and the user’s environment. Saying that designs made with such a focus are called user-centred design, BAYINDIR added that Usability Engineering also includes the processes and activities required for user-centred design.

BAYINDIR expressed that the user-centred design process basically describes a repetitive process and in summary consists of repeating the processes of user surveys, prototype-based design and usability assessment.

Saying that the user-centred design process is documented with the ISO 13407 and ISO 18529 standards by the International Standards Organization (ISO), BAYINDIR highlighted that although these standards describe the same processes, ISO 18529 is more detailed compared to the other, and that both standards provide a general definition of the processes but do not include the methods to be used in the implementation of the processes.

Saying that the methods for implementing user-centred design processes are defined in detail in the literature, BAYINDIR gave examples to some methods used in Usability Engineering: interview – survey- observation for  ‘analyzing users and tasks’, prototyping used for ‘task analysis design’ and usability inspection or empirical usability testing used for ‘usability assessment’.

BAYINDIR ended his presentation saying that user-centred design processes have similarities with the product development processes used at STM and that the user-centred development processes are used integrated with processes in all software projects of STM.