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Usability Evaluation of Software Tools for Engineering Design

Part of: Design Management

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Helena Hashemi Farzaneh  and
Lorenz Neuner

Abstract

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Much of the work in design research focusses on the development of methods and tools to support engineering designers. Many of these tools are nowadays implemented in software. Due to the strongly growing use of computers and smart devices in the last two decades, the expectations of users increased dramatically. In particular users expect good usability, for example little effort for learning to apply the software. Therefore, the usability evaluation of design software tools is crucial. A software tool with bad usability will not be used in industrial practice. Recommendations for usability evaluation of software often stem from the field of Human Computer Interaction. The aim of this paper is to tailor these general approaches to the specific needs of engineering design. In addition, we propose a method to analyse the results of the evaluation and to derive suggestions for improving the design software tool. We apply the usability evaluation method on a use case - the KoMBi software tool for bio-inspired design. The case study provides additional insights with regards to problem, causes and improvement categories.

Keywords

User centred designComputational design methodsEvaluationBio-inspired design / biomimetics
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 1303 - 1312
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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