Resumen
The article focuses on how detailed studies illustrate the diversity of ways to improve product quality by nurturing usability issues and focuses on three U.S. companies, International Business Machine Corp. (IBM), American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Microsoft Corp. Usability engineering and testing blossomed in the U.S. in the mid 1980's. At the time, testing was viewed as another variation of software quality assurance testing. In Scandinavia the approach to usability has different roots, involving users informally in the design process rather than having them participate in a formal usability program. In this article we provide an overview of the practices of usability groups in the three U.S. and the three Danish companies featured in this section. Based on their practices, the article discusses usability groups relations to developers and users and examine some differences between these groups and between countries. Danish companies, Bang & Olufsen (B&O), Danfoss and Kommunedata (KMD) were the first three companies to have lab facilities. As part of "Usability in Danish Industry," studies of usability practices have been conducted in 12 U.S. companies. Most of these studies have a duration of several days and are based upon observations of the work of usability specialists and interviews with a number of different people, including usability managers. The article discusses six different aspects of usability practice and in the accompanying tables provides a profile of the nature of usability practice at these six companies. Tables provide some basis for comparing companies, but since the article is not talking about a quantitative measurement with a fixed scale, there is no basis for an exact comparison