Consequences of the Lack of the Non-Functional Requirement Usability in an Information Systems

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Autores: Simone Bacellar Leal Ferreira & Julio César Sampaio do Prado Leite

Publicado em: Anais da conferência CLADEA – Conselho Latino Americano das Escolas de Administração, Porto Alegre

Ano: 2002

Information is the blood of modern organizations. It permeates the organization in several distinctive ways, and more and more, it is a key factor not only in terms of competitiveness but also in terms of public perception. The Internet revolution has made all organizations aware that their information is not only important for internal but also for external consumption. Information system processes and distributes the information among people in an organization. They are designed with the purpose of establishing a productive interaction between the system and their users in order to increase people’s productivity while performing their tasks. Due to the great value of information, the user interface becomes an important part of information systems. It is the visible part of the system and where the dialogue between man and machine is established. It is necessary to design user-friendly interfaces, that is, interfaces that are easy to use. To be friendly, an interface must suit each user’s need and satisfy his/her expectations. To obtain such systems´ interfaces, the designers must take in consideration the non functional requirement (NFR) usability at the system definition. These requirements, related to data input and to the display of information, assure that the information given is complete, correct and not ambiguous. Failure to take NFRs in consideration has been reported in the literature. In this article we show how the lack of consideration of the NFR usability interferes on the quality of a product.  We define the non-functional requirements and then analyze how some examples are used in a famous commercial site, sears.com. These requirements allow the designer to use facilities that improve the system ’s efficacy.

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