1 Case study: Are CUP attributes useful to developers?

In this paper a case study of a classification scheme for usability problems called CUP (Classification of Usability Problems) [1,3] is described. The individual attributes are analyzed according to how helpful they are for developers to understand, prioritize and fix a defect. Additionally factors are analysed that determine whether developers decide to fix a defect or not. The results show that developers found information on in what task the problem was found, the context in the UI (User Interface) where the problem was found and the description of the problem helpful in understanding, prioritizing and finding a solution to the problems. Other attributes like the severity rate was not rated helpful at all by one of the developers and only helpful for prioritizing the problem by the other developer. The developers had fixed 7 out of 53 problems two months after the usability tests and had decided not to fix 33 out of the 53 problems at that time. The 13 remaining problems were on schedule still 11 months after the usability tests. Furhter research is needed to understand what can be done to get higher success rate for the usability problems being solved by the developers