Usability engineering

Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human-computer interaction and specifically with devising human-computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving efficiency and elegance in interface design.

Several broad disciplines including Psychology, Human Factors and Cognitive Science subsume usability engineering, but the theoretical foundations of the field come from more specific domains: human perception and action; human cognition; behavioral research methodologies; and, to a lesser extent, quantitative and statistical analysis techniques.

When usability engineering began to emerge as a distinct area of professional practice in the mid-to late 1980s, many usability engineers had a background in Computer Science or in a sub-field of Psychology such as Perception, Cognition or Human Factors. Today, these academic areas still serve as springboards for the professional practitioner of usability engineering, but Cognitive Science departments and academic programs in Human-Computer Interaction now also produce their share of practitioners in the field.

The term usability engineering (in contrast to interaction design and user experience design) implies more of a focus on assessing and making recommendations to improve usability than it does on design. However, Usability Engineers may still engage in design to some extent, particularly through the design of wire-frames or other prototypes.

Usability engineers sometimes work to shape an interface such that it adheres to accepted operational definitions of user requirements documentation. For example, the International Organisation for Standardisation-approved definitions (see e.g., ISO 9241 part 11) usability are held by some to be a context-, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specific users should be able to perform tasks. Advocates of this approach engage in task analysis, then prototype interface design, and usability testing on those designs. On the basis of such tests, the technology is potentially re-designed if necessary.

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