Comparação entre métodos de avaliação de IHC durante o projeto de um sistema jurídico para smartphone

Abstract

Quality and time are important factors in software development process, because we expect to deliver a high quality product with acceptable cost and deadline. These factors are even more relevant to innovative environments and small businesses, like a startup. Many companies still don’t carry out activities to improve quality of use of software they had developed. Lack of knowledge of HCI evaluation methods and expectation of large increase in coast and deadlines have been arguments to maintain the current culture in some companies. This work compares three HCI evaluation methods well known in literature: heuristic evaluation, communicability evaluation and usability testing. We investigate how they contribute to designer’s work during conception of their interaction and user interface solution. We compared the activities, time of execution, used materials, profile and number of involved evaluators and users, results and difficulties of evaluators during the execution of methods. This comparison was made by a designer as part of SoftUrbano’s juridical system for smartphone. The results can better inform professionals about the HCI evaluation practice and contribute to changing the software development culture in many companies, especially small businesses and startups.