Measuring software usability

In recent years the increasingly competitive nature of the software industry has led to greater emphasis on software quality, causing software developing organizations to shift their attention towards usability, which is recognized as one of the key characteristics of software quality. The growing importance attached to software usability has resulted in a plethora of different usability conceptualisations that have led to considerable variation in testing methods throughout industry. These organizations, however, are struggling with usability testing due to the difficulties they face in choosing appropriate usability evaluation methods. This is in part due to the diversity of these testing methods and the increasingly distinctive types of software and software development life cycles. This paper will critically explore the commonly used standardized survey-based usability evaluation methods: SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory), WAMMI (Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory) and TAM (Technology Acceptance Model). Additionally, a contrasting usability evaluation method ‘Think Aloud’ will be discussed, which is a laboratory based rather than field based usability test. The paper will then outline a possible route to ensuring organisations apply the right evaluation process for their individual development context. Finally, the paper will provide recommendations for future research areas, including the formal definition of usability concepts, existing usability evaluation methods and application to common software development lifecycles

The role of health data standards in developing countries

Healthcare organizations have recognized that there are potential limitations with their clinical information systems. Interoperability barriers between different systems have resulted in medical information being collected by different people or systems which has made it difficult to understand, compare and exchange. There are many health data standards to try and overcome these issues, but in many developing countries these have not been adopted. This paper investigates health data standards and their roles in Saudi tertiary hospitals and provides insights into the issues, and recommendations which can be used by academics and practitioners to develop the planning of health data standards

Employees' responsibilities in a knowledge retention strategy: a Ugandan case study

When people join organisations, they come with their experiences, skills and expertise and they gain further knowledge as they execute their duties. Employees may write reports, research papers, and books; others may capture their expertise in expert systems. However, whatever is captured in these forms is modest compared to employees’ total knowledge. When they leave their employment, they carry with them most of their knowledge, resulting in loss of organisational intellectual asset and erosion of organisational memory thus negatively impacting on learning and innovation. Tacit knowledge is more vulnerable than explicit knowledge to being lost. An exploratory study was conducted in the Ugandan National Agricultural Research organisation (NARO) to identify strategies that can be implemented to minimise loss of tacit knowledge. One of the research questions this study addressed was ‘how can individual employees help NARO to minimise knowledge loss?’ This paper presents results from thirty six focus groups and highlights mandatory retirement, resignation, termination of contract, death, and absconding as the major reasons for tacit knowledge being lost from the organisation; it also identifies eight responsibilities for individual employees in minimising knowledge loss from the organisation. These responsibilities are: develop a spirit and attitude to sharing knowledge; capture and document processes, experiences and results; mentoring others and willingness to learn; being result-oriented and having passion for the job; be an effective team player; seek opportunities to acquire and improve knowledge; being open, transparent and trusted; and applying acquired knowledge. Whereas the authors acknowledge that management is responsible for ensuring that individual employees exercise their responsibilities in helping the organisation to minimise knowledge loss, it is not a focus of this paper to present and discuss such management responsibilities. Undertaking the responsibilities effectively requires an enabling organisational environment. Such an environment is likely to encourage employees to engage themselves in a positive behaviour of knowledge sharing so that even when an employee who is knowledgeable in a particular aspect leaves the organisation there will be some other employees with such expertise if it is shared within organisational teams or employee groups