Scenario Based Ranking of Usability Attributes

Abstract

During the usability evaluation process, the impact and behavior of each usability attribute may vary in various software projects and thus instantiates to prioritize the usability attributes involved in the usable software. It has been observed that scenario based evaluation proves to be the best approach for dealing with software development related qualities. Scenarios may provide an excellent manner of synthesizing behavior of individual usability attribute in a common view facilitating easy assessment of these attributes. Therefore, scenarios have been used as the strong tool for evaluating some issues related to usability. In this paper, we propose a Scenario Based Ranking Method (SBRM) for computing the ranks of usability attributes. With user satisfaction/ acceptance being the primary measure, SBRM will prove to be a useful means for ranking usability attributes. It will be a step towards providing measures of usability, improvement in usable software development process subsequently. Especially, SBRM will be useful for incorporating usability attributes with preferences during the process of usable software development.