A methodology for usability evaluation of corporate memory design reuse systems

Improving and supporting the process of design knowledge reuse in engineering design can increase productivity, improve the quality of designs, and lead to greater corporate competitive advantage. Whereas internal knowledge reuse from one’s personal experiences is very effective, external knowledge reuse from an external digital or paper archive often fails. Based on a formalization of the internal reuse process from ethnographic studies, a prototype system, CoMem (Corporate Memory) is presented, which supports the reuse process, particularly the steps of finding and understanding. This paper presents a usability testing framework and methodology for the evaluation of reuse systems such as CoMem. The two pertinent variables are (1) the type of finding task, and (2) the size of the repository. Preliminary results from the evaluation of CoMem are resented as an example of the application of this framework for studying and assessing corporate memory design reuse systems.