This practical, hands-on tutorial will cover techniques for convincing management or potential clients of the value of usability, in terms each group understands. It will examine what is required to develop a usability strategy for a whole organisation to finding data to convince stakeholders of a single usability activity. Keywords Strategic usability, usability strategies, cost-justification, communicating usability data. Copyright on this material is held by the authors. It is an ongoing source of frustration for usability professionals to continuously have to justify the value of their activities.
Usability has yet to gain wide acceptance in software development practises.
IT departments, business areas and users each have different, often seemingly conflicting, agendas. They are measured differently, focus on different objectives and view the organisation from different perspectives. Usability is successfully integrated into an organisation when a strategy is developed which leads to key usability benefits and supports overall business objectives. Organisational usability looks at people, processes and tools across an organisation, analysing organisational needs, business objectives and culture. This information reveals barriers and opportunities which can hinder or facilitate usability acceptance.