The importance of human computer interaction in the development process of software projects

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the critical role of human-computer interaction in software development, showing that integrating HCI principles early improves software quality and user-friendliness.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of incorporating human-computer interaction considerations throughout the entire software development lifecycle, not just at later stages.

Findings

Early integration of HCI improves software quality.

Design methods considering HCI lead to more user-friendly software.

Applying HCI principles during development enhances project success.

Abstract

Today, software industry has a rapid growth. In order to resist the competition increased by this growth, software projects need to be developed with higher quality and especially user friendly. Therefore, the importance of human-computer interaction emerges clearly. In design and development phases of software projects, the properties of human which is an important agent for interaction -- such as behavioral, cognitive, perceptive, efficiency and physical factors have to be considered. This study aims to express the importance of developing softwares by taking into consideration the human-computer interaction applications. In this context, firstly a wide literature review is made to examine software development process and human-computer interaction in detail, the results obtained by using design methods in this process are explicated and the importance of said interaction is openly expressed with the exemplary applications in the literature. According to the results of the research, especially in software life cycle, it is observed that rules of interaction must be implemented before software development, however, these methods are usually included in software life cycle in the latter stages of software development process. This situation causes the developed softwares to be user unfriendly and of low quality. Furthermore, it is observed that when the design methods used in the scope of human-computer interaction are integrated into software development process during the life cycle, the developed projects are more successful, have better quality and are more user friendly.