Usability is becoming an important quality attribute in software development. Companies seeking to improve the usability of their products need to shift from a technology-centered development approach to a more user-centered one. This book offers comprehensive advice for those companies wanting to undertake such a challenge.

A straightforward tone is used, contributing positively to the book’s main focus: helping an organization that wants to institutionalize usability, following the lead of some person in a top position. Therefore, the book is directed mainly to executives willing to inject usability practices into their companies. It is also directed to usability practitioners wanting to push the usability agenda in their organizations, and, to a lesser extent, to software engineers with an interest in usability. For the latter, the book might not live up to expectations, since it does not address in-depth technical aspects such as,! for example, fitting with the overall software development process.

Schaffer’s work is based on the premise that an organization has already committed to the institutionalization of usability. Even if basic examples of why usability is important are included in the text, it relies mostly on the fact that the reader has been previously convinced of the importance of tackling usability in software development. When presenting advice for establishing the usability institutionalization process, it is implicitly assumed that the company undertaking such a process is willing to change its way of doing things to a large degree, so that it can turn to a user-centered perspective. The possibility of adopting a certain user-centeredness without abandoning most-valued current practices is not considered.

After an introductory chapter, the book is structured into four parts. In the first part, the startup of a process for usability institutionalization is tackled. The! main chapters of Part 2 are dedicated to the setup necessary for the success of such an endeavor, and Part 3 addresses organizational issues. The last part briefly discusses how to manage an established usability group, and presents a forecast of where the field is heading with regard to usability institutionalization.

The usability institutionalization method proposed relies heavily on user interface design standards as a tool for achieving consistency and repeatability in usability practices. Organizational issues are also emphasized. On the other hand, the integration of the usability methodology chosen with the software development process currently being used in the company is not addressed in depth.

The main shortcoming of this work, which is common in the software development field, is that the proposal is a guru’s word. The basic assumptions in the book are not presented explicitly, and the goodness of the proposal is backed just by the experience !of the author, and his company’s 20 years of experience. It looks like every author in the field has his or her own methodology, only backed by the word of its author. Given that state of things, it is very difficult for a reader in search of valuable knowledge to distinguish between sound proposals and fuzzy ones. Nevertheless, the author has actual experience in the field, and this may be enough for a majority of readers.

The work sometimes offers some quasi-obvious advice, and, taken separately, each piece of advice may look like just commonsense thinking, but the value of the book lies in its presentation of a related set of principles and actions to be applied when institutionalizing usability. The approach for gathering such information and presenting it to the reader is very sound, and, to the best of my knowledge, the final product is the most comprehensive text to date dedicated to the issue. In short, I would recommend this book as a useful resource for! the institutionalization of usability in a software development company, even if some issues are addressed in more depth than others.