Usability problems

The result of usability evaluations is often accentuated as a distinctive input for developers to improve the usability of a software system. On the other hand developers say that many of the results from the usability evaluations are issues already known to them. This paper presents a study of usability problems as developers perceive them in their own emerging software in relation to usability problems experienced by users in a usability evaluation. The results indicate that having developers explicating their expectation on emerging software can provide a low-cost identification of problem areas, whereas a full scale usability evaluation provides specific knowledge of usability problems and their severity.