Introducing usability testing in the risk management process in software development

Human beings make errors and that is nothing that we can avoid completely. We can however lower the risk of people doing wrong in situations where, for example, medical devices are used. The overall objective of the research presented in this paper is to investigate how usability testing can contribute to software risk management process in the medical device domain. Experience has been collected from both the risk management process and usability testing in a development project of a medical device. It can be concluded that usability tests can give valuable input to the risk management process. Usability tests can indicate risks that are not identified in the risk management process and render the possibility to verify if risks with high risk value actually cause the presumed problems.