Cost-Justifying Usability (Interactive Technologies) [Hardcover]

Randolph G. Bias (Editor), Deborah J. Mayhew (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0120958104 | ISBN-13: 978-0120958108 | Publication Date: May 16, 1994

Today's increasingly competitive and fiscally constrained business environment is fostering the need to cut costs and justify expenditures. Usability engineering is not yet universally accepted, nor is it yet an integrated aspect of software engineering, and would-be usability champions need more help than ever to win the funding necessary to introduce and promote usability engineering techniques.
Cost-Justifying Usability is the first book to address pragmatically and in detail the question of how usability engineering professionals and their managers can cost-justify their proposals and efforts. The book offers specific techniques for quantifying costs and benefits, making a convincing and successful business case for investment in usability engineering.
This book comprises a thorough and well-integrated collection of chapters written by experienced and prominent usability experts. Taken together, these chapters provide readers with:
An overall framework for cost-justifying usability engineering programs that can be applied to any context
An examination of the unique factors and issues in cost-justifying usability efforts for three very different types of organizations: vendor companies, international development organizations, and contractor companies
Case studies of successful cost-justification efforts
A look at some special issues regarding cost-justification of usability, including"discount"usability engineering techniques, success factors for introducing usability engineering into development organizations, specialized tools for usability cost-justification, and a look to the future of usability engineering
Practical and effective insight for human factors professionals, interface designers, software development managers, and human factors educators

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Real practical advice on real practical methods and problems aboutnds and the frequent references to practical experience ring true. Both current and aspiring practitioners will find valuable material. Strong editing or team writing has produced a coherent book rather than a collection of papers; there is some lively debate between chapters, and little unjustified repetition."
--ERGONOMICS ABSTRACTS

From the Back Cover

Today's increasingly competitive and fiscally constrained business environment is fostering the need to cut costs and justify expenditures. Usability engineering is not yet universally accepted, nor is it yet an integrated aspect of software engineering, and would-be usability champions need more help than ever to win the funding necessary to introduce and promote usability engineering techniques.

Cost-Justifying Usability is the first book to address pragmatically and in detail the question of how usability engineering professionals and their managers can cost-justify their proposals and efforts. The book offers specific techniques for quantifying costs and benefits, making a convincing and successful business case for investment in usability engineering.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann (May 16, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0120958104
• ISBN-13: 978-0120958108
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,536,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Resource for defining the costs of poorly designed systems., August 5, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cost-Justifying Usability (Interactive Technologies) (Hardcover)

If you are looking for help with quantifying the cost of bad interface design and/or how poorly designed application costs the company money, then this is the book for you.

This book is practical and right on target for helping IT groups and customers understand the importance of systems that allow work to be completed efficiently. The authors do a great job quantifying the cost of poorly design, unusable system.

If you have ever tried to demonstrate to an IT group that it is more costly not to change the system, then this book will give you the strategy for showing how investing in system changes actually costs less in the short term, than in the long term.

End users will cheer anyone who applies the information in this book to the applications they use.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you need it, November 25, 2001

By 

Christina Wodtke "~christina~" (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cost-Justifying Usability (Interactive Technologies) (Hardcover)

Bite the bullet, buy the book. in these days of cut budgets, you must be able to justify your worth. There are formulas in this book that anyone designing software or digital products can use-- not just usability geeks. IA's, designers, GUI kids... time to learn the math.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bible of Usability ROI, January 8, 2003

By 

pech "food lover, mystery lover" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cost-Justifying Usability (Interactive Technologies) (Hardcover)

Everyone involved in usability needs a highlighted, or bookmarked iwth post-it notes, copy of this book. Its always powerful to back up how important usability is to others who are unfamiliar with its power, be it your team or a client, and this book shows you how to do figure out the return of investment with dollars, something everyone understands. Overall, it gets the point across by showing readers how to do it for themselves with formulas that are not all that difficult at all, and where to pull numbers from to calculate the ROI.