Evaluating a Usability Capability Assessment

ISO 13407 standard [1] defines a set of User-Centered Design (UCD) activities and principles through which usable systems can be developed. Still there exist quite a few organizations, which systematically and consciously apply UCD in their product development. Usability capability is a characteristic of a development organization that determines its ability to constantly develop products with high level usability. There have been developed usability capability models, which help to assess areas in the development organization that have impact on its usability capability. The maturest one is the model TR ISO 18529 [2]. [3] KESSU-project aims at improving usability capability of development organizations (see www.kessu.oulu.fi). At first we have conducted usability capability assessments in the organizations. We have noticed that further development of the assessment approach is really needed. The existing literature concerning usability capability assessments is mainly concerned about presenting the structure of the models (constructs and their relationships) and guidelines how to perform assessements (procedures). 'Usability capability model' is anyhow an artifact. Papers concerned with the models seldom approach the models according to the principles of constructive research. One research activity of the constructive research is evaluation [4]. In this experiment we especially concentrated on this activity.