Can team communication obscure severe usability problems?

Abstract

Team communication is a significant topic of study in the psychological literature, but it is a less researched area in relation to software usability. In this article, as part of a larger research project, we investigated team communication to explore the relationship between usability problems and team communication patterns. The research question was examined in two laboratory experiments as part of a collaborative software evaluation process. For sequential analysis of team communication transcripts, we created a custom code system based on previous literature. The results confirm that teams that experience special types of usability problem show different communicational patterns from teams that experience no such problems. The results also show high reliability of the new code system. Further research is needed to explore the relationship between usability problems and team communication patterns in different settings.