PROCEEDINGS of the HUMAN FACTORS SOCIETY 34th ANNUAL MEETING-I990 CosUustifying Human Factors Support- A Framework

This paper is part of a symposium on Cost-Justifying Human Factors Support. The preceding paper sets the stage for and motivates the topic. This paper provides a broad framework for performing a costhenefit analysis for any collection of (or any single) human factors tasks and activities that might be added to a development project. Although the emphasis is on software human factors, the framework would apply equally well t o hardware human factors projects. The perspectives of both vendor companies and internal data processing organizations serving internal users are taken into account. Other papers in the symposium offer particular case histories supporting the costhenefit approach outlined here, and offer a manager's perspective on the costhenefit analysis technique. A Cost/Benefit Analysis is a matter of calculating the expected costs of an effort and estimating the potential benefits, in order to determine if the potential benefits outweigh the expected costs. The cost of human factors contributions is easy to calculate. There are a wide variety of human factors activities that can be considered in a software development project. These include:- developing a user profile- performing a task analysis- setting usability goals- setting up a usability lab- writing a style guide- conducting design walkthroughs- conducting paper and pencil simulation- developing prototypes- performing formal usability tests on prototypes- redesigning prototypes in response to testing data. testing With a little experience, one can estimate quite accurately the number of hours of time required for each type of activity, as well as additional expenses such as equipment. For example, the cost of running a usability test on a prototype might be calculated as follows