Research on heuristic evaluation in recent years has focused on improving its effectiveness and efficiency with respect to user testing. The aim of this paper is to refine a research agenda for comparing and contrasting evaluation methods. To reach this goal, a framework is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of support for structured usability problem reporting. This paper reports on an empirical study of this framework that compares two sets of heuristics, Nielsen's heuristics and the cognitive principles of Gerhardt-Powals, and two media of reporting a usability problem, i.e. either using a web tool or paper. The study found that there were no significant differences between any of the four groups in effectiveness, efficiency and inter-evaluator reliability. A more significant contribution of this research is that the framework used for the experiments proved successful and should be reusable by other researchers because of its thorough structure.

Abstract. Agile software development processes are becoming more common, but this does not mean that the user perspective in the development is catered for. It has its challenges to integrate the users' aspects in Scrum projects in practice. In order to better understand these challenges we have interviewed IT professionals using Scrum focusing on four different areas: responsibility for the user perspective, emphasis on usability and user experience through documentation, usability activities with users and the organisational and contextual settings for emphasizing the user perspective. Results show that the responsibility for the user perspective is unclear in Scrum projects, and that often the user perspective is neither discussed nor described in the projects. However, the user perspective is often present through informal feedback used to understand the context of use and inform design for example. Finally the paper presents implications for working with the user perspective in Scrum projects.

Two project management approaches, Agile and Lean, have increasingly been adopted in recent years for software development. Meanwhile, in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX) has become central in research and practice. The new hybrids between the two fields-Agile UX and Lean UX-were born a few years ago. As Agile, Lean, and UX have different principles and practices, one can query whether the couplings are well justified and whether Agile or Lean is more compatible with UX work. We have conducted a conceptual analysis and tended to conclude that Lean instantiated as Kanban fits UX work better than Agile instantiated as Scrum. To explore further our claim, we performed a secondary data analysis of 10 semistructured interviews with practitioners working with Scrum and Kanban in different sectors (Study 1). This study enabled us to gain insights into the applications of the two processes in real-life cases, their strengths and weaknesses, and factors influencing the practicality of implementing them. Both processes seem not favorable for UX work in practice. Among others, one intriguing observation is loose adherence to the related guidelines and principles. A query derived from the analyses of the interviews is that "customer," as compared with "user," has more frequently been referred to by our interviewees, irrespective of the process they adopted. We have then been motivated to investigate this issue, using a web-based survey with another batch of practitioners (N = 73) in the software industry (Study 2). Results of the survey indicate that the practitioners in general had a reasonable understanding of the concepts "user" and "customer," although a minority tended to treat them as synonyms. Limitations of the current studies and implications for future work are discussed.

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Abstract. Over the past decades, usability techniques have been introduced into software development practices. At the same time many software development teams have started to use the agile development process -Scrum -to plan and organize their software projects. The focus of this study is to explore how usability techniques are integrated during software development in Scrum projects. The most commonly used usability technique in Scrum projects is workshops, followed by lo-fi prototyping, interviews and meetings with users, all used by more than half of the participants. The technique that is most frequently used is lo-fi prototyping used by more than half of the participants two to four times a month. All these usability techniques are informal, meaning that these techniques can be used quickly without much preparation. Formal usability evaluation with users is a highly ranked technique by the participants but not commonly used by them.

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) practice has emerged as a research domain in the HCI field and is growing. The need to transfer HCI practices to the industry began significantly with the works of Nielsen on usability engineering. To date, methods, and techniques for designing, evaluating and implementing interactive systems for human use have continued to emerge. It is, therefore, justified to conduct a systematic mapping study to determine the landscape of HCI practice research. A Systematic Mapping Study method was used to map 142 studies according to research type, topic, and contribution. These were then analyzed to determine an overview of HCI practice research. The objective was to analyze studies on HCI practice and present prominent issues that characterize the HCI practice research landscape. Secondly, to identify pressing challenges regarding HCI practices in software/systems development companies. The results show that HCI practice research has steadily increased since 2012. The majority of the studies explored focused on evaluation research that largely contributed to evaluation methods or processes. Most of the studies were on design tools and techniques, design methods and contexts, design work and organizational culture, and collaboration and team communication. Interviews, case studies, and survey methods have been prominently used as research methods. HCI techniques are mostly used during the initial phase of development, and during evaluation. HCI practice challenges in companies are mostly process-related and on performance of usability and UX activities. The major challenge seems to be to find a way to collect and incorporate user feedback in a timely manner, especially in agile processes. There are areas identified in this study as needing more research.

Digitalising patient-centric services to address society’s challenges with an ageing population and healthcare provision is by many seen as important. Studying the effects of the digitalisation on the work engagement of the users of the new systems is vital in this context, especially since previous research has established that the work engagement at work in healthcare is problematic. Work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, affective-motivational state of work related well being, as is closely connected to the experience of resources and demands in the work context. These resources can be for example digital support, experienced demands or empowerment whereas exhaustion is connected to work demand in a workplace. This study contributes to knowledge about the effects of digitalisation on work engagement and exhaustion in the context of patient-centred services and eHealth. Contextual interviews were conducted on site for 5 h with nurses using a new chat function and using telephone for medical advice to patients. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with all the nurses participating in this digitalisation project to gather more insights into their work engagement in the two work situations. Results were analysed in different themes of areas affected by the digitalisation in the two overarching themes: job demands and job resources. The results show that the change to a chat function when communicating with advice seekers had connection to work engagement in several ways. The nurses experienced less time pressure and emotional pressure, but also a loss of job control and feedback from colleagues working from home.