Usability, Concurrent Engineering and Mobile Phone Development

The technical complexity of mobile phones continually increases due to the introduction of new functions and technologies. The development organisations face an increasing challenge in making the products usable and useful. If for any reason an organisation does not apply user-centred design during the product development phase, the usability engineers may encounter problems in doing their daily work efficiently and effectively. A practical solution is to adapt usability engineering to the specific product development process by applying standard project practices, planning and risk management. We study how usability engineering can be integrated with the Concurrent Engineering development process and fast development cycles.