A usability study of the "Tksee" software exploration tool.

Abstract

This research project explores effects of not having considered usability when assessing the functionality of a software system. Also, it experiments with the introduction of usability into latter stages of software projects in which developers are new to usability. A particular software project confronting that scenario is used to explore these issues. The selected project had created a program comprehension tool that had been given to a group of users for some time. For that reason, this research also explores challenges posed to studying the usability of program comprehension tools. A usability study is designed in order to perform the research. Three techniques are applied in the study: (a) heuristic evaluation, (b) user and task analysis and (c) thinking aloud usability testing. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)