“American industry and government will become even more productive if they take advantage of usability engineering techniques.” Al Gore, 1998 [45, p. 1] Have businesses responded to advice of the former US Vice-President? Was he correct in linking usability engineering  Continue Reading »

Consider the example of the Swatch watch [1]. By 1983, the Swiss watchmaking industry’s worldwide market share had dropped from 50% to 12%, largely due to competition from inexpensive quartz watches manufactured in Asia. Swatch saved the Swiss watchmaking industry  Continue Reading »

Increasing Sales By Improving Product Appeal UXE methods create products with marketing appeal because customers prefer products that look good, that get the job done, that are easy to use, and that others are using. In short, customers prefer products  Continue Reading »

The average software application has 40 usability-related design flaws. If UXE methods are applied from the beginning of the design process, the cost of UXE returns a benefit of over 700% in efficiency improvements. [65]. Field studies have demonstrated the  Continue Reading »

The short answer to the question above is “early in the development project.” For maximum ROI, user research methods must be implemented at the beginning of the project so that user requirements are well defined before design begins. UX evaluation  Continue Reading »