Modeling Usage: Techniques and Tools

Usage modeling seeks to provide end users with a usable - that is, effective, efficient, and satisfactory - interactive product. In a usage-centered development process, users must understand what they need to perform their work tasks. Various techniques exist for collecting and documenting what is understood about the user and future system usage. From the wealth of techniques, we´ve chosen three because they directly describe human-computer interaction, are widely used, and represent rather generic techniques integrated in mainstream (for example, object- oriented or agile) software development. In this paper, we present these techniques in widely used formats. The range of possible (formal) representations - such as diagrams or in formal languages that support these techniques in the later stages of development.