Att utföra användarcentrerat arbete med små medel

Sammanfattning: Usability is a field within systems development which doesn’t get the attention it might deserve. Above all, it’s considered time consuming and expensive by many people in the industry. The current information regarding low-cost alternatives to achieve a more usable system seems to be almost non-existent. This might lead to the difficult choice of ignoring usability aspects or placing large resources into looking in to all usability aspects. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if it is feasible to pick and choose between well known usability methods and principles in a way you see fit to work user centered with small means. To investigate this, I’ve been looking into commonly appearing usability methods and guidelines to implement some of them to an existing system. The case study, which I’ve been doing, is divided into the following smaller pieces; Identifying the starting point and problem areas, making user observations, performing a Heuristic evaluation, making improvement suggestions by doing a prototype, conducting user tests on the prototype. The result of this study shows that it can be feasible to pick and choose from existing usability methods to perform work aiming to improve the usability in an existing system. It also shows that working with usability doesn’t always have to demand huge resources and how general methods can be applied to a specific case.