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Product, process, and profit: the politics of usability in a software venture

Product, process, and profit: the politics of usability in a software venture In research and in practice,usability specialists commonly target the technology user-interfaces and help as the main arena for bringing about usability improvements. However, usability improvements depend on more than innovative and user-centered technical designs and implementations. Equally important for creating useful and usable software are the social and political forces that shape the development context. These forces give rise to leadership conflicts, factional disputes, renegade efforts, alliances and betrayals, all of which profoundly influence whether usability improvements will be supported and sustained within and across projects. This essay presents and analyzes a case history of a software start-up company in which usability achieved a Pyrrhic victory, triumphing only in the short run because of social and political forces. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png ACM Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) Association for Computing Machinery

Product, process, and profit: the politics of usability in a software venture

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Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by ACM Inc.
ISSN
1527-6805
DOI
10.1145/353927.353928
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In research and in practice,usability specialists commonly target the technology user-interfaces and help as the main arena for bringing about usability improvements. However, usability improvements depend on more than innovative and user-centered technical designs and implementations. Equally important for creating useful and usable software are the social and political forces that shape the development context. These forces give rise to leadership conflicts, factional disputes, renegade efforts, alliances and betrayals, all of which profoundly influence whether usability improvements will be supported and sustained within and across projects. This essay presents and analyzes a case history of a software start-up company in which usability achieved a Pyrrhic victory, triumphing only in the short run because of social and political forces.

Journal

ACM Journal of Computer Documentation (JCD) – Association for Computing Machinery

Published: Nov 20, 2000

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