Workshops

What is the evidence for the cost benefits of usability? How easy is it to generalize existing evidence for cost-benefits to other organizations and products? What type of evidence is most convincing when cost justifying usability? The workshop will draft guidelines for when and how to make a cost benefit case.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

The workshop will address two issues:

• Review of existing information for the cost-benefits of usability and user centred design
• Identify how to present a cost-benefit case

Requirements

The workshop will start by defining the requirements for cost benefit information. Who are the stakeholders and what are their needs?

1. To what extent can cost-benefit information influence decision-making in product development?
2. What type of cost-benefit information would be influential?
3. Personal experiences of making the business case for usability.

Review and categorize existing evidence for cost benefits

This will include an affinity diagramming exercise. Possible categories include type of industry, product type, development environment, culture etc.

Example cost benefit cases

The workshop will divide into 2 or more teams (depending on numbers) to generate examples of cost benefit cases for use in specific scenarios.

Plan workshop outputs for different audiences

The workshop will divide into groups to produce outlines of each workshop output, identify needs for more work, and agree a timetable for future actions.

PARTICIPANT SELECTION CRITERIA

Participants will be selected who can make a constructive contribution to one or more of the topics covered by the workshop.

W1 – Usability Cost Benefits: Nigel Bevan's position paper

Applying to Participate in This Workshop

The workshop is a closed session that requires an approved position paper: for example ideas for making cost benefit cases, suggestions for the type of cost-benefit information that would be influential in decision-making, or experience of making a business case for usability work. Send your position paper (which will typically be 2 to 3 pages) to Nigel Bevan,

nbevan@usability.serco.com. Please contact Nigel in advance if you have any preliminary enquiries or would like to discuss a potential contribution.

Position papers received by March 24 will be accepted or rejected by March 31, in time for you to register before the early registration deadline on April 2. Position papers received by May 5 will be accepted or rejected by May 12, in time for the May 14 registration discount. Papers received after May 12 will be evaluated at the facilitator's discretion. If you want to register early for UPA and have not completed your position paper by these deadlines, you may register for the rest of the conference and add the workshop fee later.

PRE-WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT ACTIVITIES

Each participant will submit a position paper based on their experience of usability costs benefits and business cases. They will review all submitted material in advance of the workshop.

PRE-WORKSHOP FACILITATION ACTIVITIES

All existing literature on the topic will be collated and summarized. The references and where possible the text will be circulated. Other people who have worked in this area will be specifically invited to attend the workshop. A co-facilitator will be selected.

POST-CONFERENCE DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS

Workshop outputs will include, a conference poster, a paper for User Experience, a publicly available web site of resources, and planning for a presentation or tutorial at UPA 2005.

POST-CONFERENCE ACTIVITIES

This will depend on what issues are identified by the workshop as requiring further work.

FACILITATORS

Nigel Bevan

Research Manager

Serco Usability Services

Dr Nigel Bevan is Research Manager at Serco Usability Services. He has first degrees in physics and psychology, and a PhD in man-machine interaction. He provides consultancy and training in usability and user centred design.

Nigel was technical co-ordinator of the EU MUSiC (Measurement of Usability in Context) project that produced methods for usability measurement. These methods have since been widely applied commercially. He was manager of the INUSE and RESPECT projects that set up a network of Usability Support Centres around Europe, the TRUMP project that incorporated user centred design into the development processes of two large organisations, and calculated the cost benefits. He also managed the UsabilityNet project that has established a web site of usability resources, including cost-benefit information.

He participates in several international standards groups where he has introduced the concept of quality in use. He contributed to ISO 13407 and the Common Industry Format, edited ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability), ISO/IEC 14598-1 (Evaluation of software quality - General guide), ISO/IEC 9126-1 (Software product quality model) and ISO/IEC 9126-4 (Quality in use metrics). He currently edits ISO/IEC25030 (Quality requirements) , ISO 20282-2 (Usability of everyday products), and the new Common Industry Format for usability requirements.

Nigel has given tutorials on usability, user centred design and requirements at international conferences including the Usability Professionals Association, CHI, Interact, HCI International and software quality and software engineering conferences.

He is a Board member of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and a council member of the UK UPA.

Stephanie Rosenbaum
President
Tec-Ed, Inc.

Stephanie Rosenbaum is founder and president of Tec-Ed, Inc., a 15-person firm specializing in usability research and information design. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Tec-Ed maintains offices in Palo Alto, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Rochester, New York. Tec-Ed clients include AOL, Cisco Systems, eBay, NIH, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo!, and a wide variety of smaller firms.

A member of ACM SIGCHI, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the Usability Professionals' Association, as well as a Fellow and Exemplar of the Society for Technical Communication, Stephanie is a past vice-chair of ACM SIGDOC and headed the STC's Research Grants Committee for five years. Stephanie was awarded a Millennium Medal in 2000 by the IEEE; her many publications include a chapter in the Copenhagen Business School Press volume, Software Design and Usability. Her research background includes anthropology studies at Columbia University and experimental psychology research for the University of California at Berkeley.

Stephanie moderated a panel on "Measuring Return on Investment for Usability" at the UPA 2002 Conference and facilitated a workshop on "Measuring Usability ROI to Justify Usability Investments" at the UPA 2003 Conference. With Chauncey Wilson, she is currently co-authoring a chapter on "Internal, Social, and External ROI: Practical Issues for UCD Teams" for the forthcoming second edition of Cost-Justifying Usability (Bias & Mayhew).