The Need For Usability Risk Assessment Model

Usability is an important factor in ensuring development of quality and usable software product. Ignorance and unawareness about the concept of usability and failure to address usability during software development process has led to usability problems in software product. Many efforts has been suggested in literature to overcome usability problem in software products but current practices faces challenges in reducing these usability problems. Alternatively, the concept of risk management can be used to control usability problems even though these problems cannot be eliminated totally. The concept of risk management is important to deal with usability problem before it occurs. Unfortunately, there is still lack of proper definition of usability risk and a proper model to identify, analyze and prioritize potential usability risk during Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). This paper presents comprehensive study on the need for Usability Risk Assessment Model to reduce usability problems in software products.