Usability Evaluation Driven by Cooperative Software Description Framework

The usability problems of CSCW system mainly come from two aspects of limitation. On the higher level, it lacks sufficient simulation of the use-context influenced by social, political and organizational features; on the lower level, it lacks suitable measurement and description of basic collaborative behavior happened in common cooperative activities. However, the traditional task-based user interface models and Discount Usability Inspection methods can not address the above problems. Therefore, an overall framework for describing CSCW system was proposed in this paper from the perspective of usability evaluation. This framework covers all aspects in understanding the use-context, so that it is very helpful to better instruct low-cost usability walkthrough technique in the early stage of software development cycle to detect usability problems.