Editing Usability engineering (section)

{{More footnotes needed|date=December 2024}}

'''Usability engineering''' is a professional discipline that focuses on improving the [[usability]] of interactive systems. It draws on theories from [[computer science]] and [[psychology]] to define problems that occur during the use of such a system. Usability Engineering involves the testing of designs at various stages of the development process, with users or with usability experts. The history of usability engineering in this context dates back to the 1980s. In 1988, authors [https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/author/john-whiteside John Whiteside] and [https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/author/john-bennett John Bennett]—of [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] and [[IBM]], respectively—published material on the subject, isolating the early setting of goals, iterative evaluation, and [[Prototype|prototyping]] as key activities. The usability expert [[Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)|Jakob Nielsen]] is a leader in the field of usability engineering. In his 1993 book ''[https://www.nngroup.com/books/usability-engineering/ Usability Engineering]'', [[Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)|Nielsen]] describes methods to use throughout a product development process—so designers can ensure they take into account the most important barriers to [[learnability]], [[efficiency]], memorability, error-free use, and subjective satisfaction ''before'' implementing the product. Nielsen’s work describes how to perform [[Usability testing|usability tests]] and how to use usability ''[[Heuristic|heuristics]]'' in the usability engineering lifecycle. Ensuring good usability via this process prevents problems in product adoption after release. Rather than focusing on finding solutions for usability problems—which is the focus of a [[User experience|UX]] or [[Interaction design|interaction designer]]—a usability engineer mainly concentrates on the ''research phase''. In this sense, it is not strictly a design role, and many usability engineers have a background in computer science because of this. Despite this point, its connection to the design trade is absolutely crucial, not least as it delivers the framework by which designers can work so as to be sure that their products will connect properly with their target usership.<ref>{{Cite web |title=What is Usability Engineering? |url=https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/usability-engineering |access-date=2023-08-19 |website=The Interaction Design Foundation |language=en}}</ref>