Redesign workshop:Involving software developers actively in usability engineering

In practical usability engineering feedback is only useful if it cost effectively leads to design changes. Several studies have looked into different feedback formats when passing on usability problems to software developers. Research has shown positive results both when providing developers with redesign proposals, and when actively involving software developers in the redesign process. Through facilitation and lecturing in interaction design provided by usability specialists, we wanted to further explorer potential advantages of actively involving developers in a collaborative redesign process. The leading question was: “Can software developers contribute actively to alternative redesign suggestions?” Under the guidance of usability specialists, we found that the developers were able to constructively reconsider the existing design based on a top down approach. In this paper we report a hands-on approach towards running such a redesign workshop