Designing for usability: Human factors in a large software development organization

Bellcore has recently initiated a concerted program to introduce user-centered design practices into its software development cycle. It has been found that the challenges include organization, management, and technical issues. The authors describe some of their experience and conclusions to date that might be generalized to other organizations of a similar size. They believe that the key ingredients for the success achieved to date are top management´s recognition that usability is a quality issue, company-wide coordination of human-factors resources, and the opportunity to demonstrate the value of user-centered design in the context of some key projects