A Study on Usability Awareness in Local IT Industry

Usability awareness receives more consideration by industry professionals and researchers throughout the world, but it is limited in Pakistan. This study reports survey results of the current state of usability awareness in the local Information Technology (IT) industry. Forty participants – IT practitioners from IT industry – were involved in the study. We used Usability Maturity Model (UMM) and content analysis methodology to discover the current status of usability awareness. The results indicate that 1) almost half (18 out of 40) of the participants were unaware of the term usability and related concepts, 2) there is shortage of HCI/Usability professionals in organizations, 3) most of the software companies were at unrecognized level of UMM and 4) they were also not interested in usability because of limited or no budget for it. The study also reveals a gap between usability awareness and its perceived usefulness among IT professionals.

@article{Ashraf2018,
  title     = {A Study on Usability Awareness in Local IT Industry},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {9},
  number    = {5},
  year      = {2018},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Mahmood Ashraf and Lal Khan and Muhammad Tahir and Ahmed Alghamdi and Mohammed Alqarni and Thabit Sabbah and Muzafar Khan},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2018.090555},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2018.090555}
}