User-Centered Design: A Source of Sustainable Competitiveness for Software SMEs
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School of Business |
Bachelor's thesis
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Date
2017
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Tieto- ja palvelujohtaminen
Language
en
Pages
20 + 6
Series
Abstract
As technology continues to become a more prominent part of our daily lives, the demand for different types of software systems continues to grow as well. Although discussion about the rise of technology often revolves around large, globalized companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, the majority of the businesses answering to the rising demand for software are small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs). These companies practice agile software development methods to develop software with smaller development teams to compete in the software market. The competitiveness of these companies is hindered however by the multitude of natural limitations that come with their smaller size, such as low financial capacities, and lower levels of overall expertise. The purpose of this thesis was to research the relationship between software SMEs and usercentered software design, and to arrive at a practical conclusion about how software SMEs could use this design method to sustain their competitiveness. The thesis first provided a literature review about the different limitations and advantages that are unique to software SMEs. The main limitations discussed in the review were a lacking ability to finance endeavors that failed to bring in immediate returns and the inability for developers to rely on the development practices found in literature. The review also discussed the strengths of being able to work in a smaller cohesive unit, and having an improved flow of ideas due to a more flexible company hierarchy. The literature review continued by defining and discussing the properties of user-centered design. This section of the literature review also went into subsections of discussing different aspects of the user-centered design process, such as its emphasis on contextual understanding, what makes it an iterative process, and usability testing. The section also reviewed the concept of discount usability engineering and the methods that it incorporates into the design process. The final part of the section introduces the concept of standardization as last resort method of design that larger companies are forced to use in their products. Once the literature review has provided the reader with material about software SMEs and the user-centered design process, the thesis introduces and explains a new problem centric design methodology that utilizes discount usability engineering to keep costs down. The thesis concludes that this methodology can provide software SMEs with a source of sustainable competitive advantage.Description
Thesis advisor
Kauppi, KatriKeywords
user-centered design, SME, usability, usability engineering