SOFTWARE USABILITY EVALUATION - An Empirical Study

Tereza G. Kirner, Alessandra V. Saraiva

2007

Abstract

This article presents an empirical study performed to evaluate the usability of a software applied to the agri-livestock area. The evaluation plan was prepared with basis on the Goal-Question-Metrics paradigm. The research was performed in a government department of São Paulo state, in Brazil, and the subjects were professionals that give assistance to small rural properties in the planning, execution and control of agri-livestock activities, which can be supported by software systems. Usability is concerned with the suitability of the software for its users, defined in this work through the following attributes: easiness of understanding, easiness of learning, operationability, software attractiveness and user satisfaction, and usefulness and accomplishment of the goals. The preparation and execution of the empirical study are described and the data analysis and conclusions are presented. The obtained results indicate a satisfactory level of usability for the considered software. Besides evaluating the software, the study aim to contribute to the detailing of a process, based on GQM, to perform usability evaluations. The work also represents a contribution to the software quality improvement, primarily to those systems applied to agri-livestock tasks.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

G. Kirner T. and V. Saraiva A. (2007). SOFTWARE USABILITY EVALUATION - An Empirical Study . In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS, ISBN 978-972-8865-90-0, pages 459-465. DOI: 10.5220/0002352004590465

in Bibtex Style

@conference{iceis07,
author={Tereza G. Kirner and Alessandra V. Saraiva},
title={SOFTWARE USABILITY EVALUATION - An Empirical Study},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS,},
year={2007},
pages={459-465},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002352004590465},
isbn={978-972-8865-90-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Volume 3: ICEIS,
TI - SOFTWARE USABILITY EVALUATION - An Empirical Study
SN - 978-972-8865-90-0
AU - G. Kirner T.
AU - V. Saraiva A.
PY - 2007
SP - 459
EP - 465
DO - 10.5220/0002352004590465