Usability Engineering and User Experience Design

Usability Engineering and User Experience Design

Products that work well and are a pleasure to use

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Professional Training Usability And UX Design

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Department for Usability Engineering and User Experience Design

Fraunhofer FIT's department for Usability Engineering and User Experience Design offers research, consulting and training in the design of usable interactive products. We focus on the dialogue between the user and the product. Thus we make sure that the products meet the requirements of their users as much as possible. Products with this quality are not just a joy to their users. Vendors benefit from higher customer loyalty; online services see a higher conversion rate. Good usability reduces the risk of a new product failing in the market, and it also lowers support costs.

By developing usability guidelines and recommendations, we contribute our expertise to the usability experts groups at DIN and Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle (DAkkS) and to the German chapter of the Usability Professionals Association.

 

Training Usability And UX Design

Since the start of our training courses in 2009, several hundred participants completed the basic course and were awarded the Usability Engineer certificate.

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Requirements Engineering

Based on context and use scenarios, we develop requirements specifications for interactive systems, to optimise existing systems, to develop new ones or to trigger innovation processes. The validity of requirements from the users’ point of view is safeguarded by built-in feedback mechanisms even in context-of-use analyses.

Testing

In line with the development stage of your project, we design and carry out the tests mentioned below. In the analysis and interpretation of the results, we pinpoint usability deficits and suggest appropriate improvements.

  • Use tests
  • Expert evaluation
  • Concept test
  • Usability benchmarking
  • Wording test

Process Optimization

We consult on strategies and activities to introduce effective and successful usability engineering into existing design and development processes. We use interviews and document analyses in our process assessments that follow ISO 13407. Based on successful process models like CMM or SPiCE we identify activities whose improvement will make significant contributions to overall process optimisation and accompany the implementation of suggested changes. Our goal is to establish a lean and effective user-centred design process that merits a Fraunhofer certification.

Contact

Contact Press / Media

Dipl.-Kfm. Peter Hunkirchen

Head

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Schloss Birlinghoven
53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany

Phone +49 2241 14-3580

Fax +49 2241 14-42948

Contact Press / Media

Prof. Dr. Britta Essing

Head

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Schloss Birlinghoven
53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany

Phone +49 2241 14-3649

Fax +49 2241 14-3700

Andrea Bernards

Contact Press / Media

Andrea Bernards

Secretariat

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT
Schloss Birlinghoven
53757 Sankt Augustin, Germany

Phone +49 2241 14-3768

Fax +49 2241 14-3700