I happen to work in a Full Fledged Usability project from client side in Bangalore for DELL (which is rare in Indian IT companies to do….). Like any other usability projects, there were lot of expectancy from both client and our company. Everyone including us were not sure what and how we will change? This is quite natural feeling in every other Usability projects, because the subject itself is very subjective. So now question arises how to fit USABILITY in SDLC ? That’s where we are struggling to answer and explain to our PM who knows ZERO about Usability, but since Client has asked him to prepare a Plan, he is expecting to do that in sync with development project.
Why we are struggling is that Usability cycle can never be planned for each person, as it is a group activity. Usability process involves speaking to users, preparing task lists and these are all group activity, but as our SDLC demands person hours be it any process or task, we are having a tough task ahead to convince our PM.
Hopefully we would come up with a beneficial and highly successful project so that we can set up an example for our company.
