CS610 Research Methods
Richard Halstead-Nussloch

Case Studies, Comparison Studies, Usability Testing, and Software Quality Testing

Case Studies

• Definition/Information Goals
  • Intensive analysis
  • Individual unit
• Time scope
  • Retrospective
  • Prospective
• Importance
  • Widely applied
  • Often misused

Comparison Studies

• Definition/Information Goals
  • Placing together two or more items or products
  • Establish similarities and dissimilarities
• Comparison versus
  • Case-Multiple units/Comp needs measurements
  • Experiment-Products compared Vs. Parameters
• Importance
  • Mainstay of CS research

Usability Test

• Definition/Information Goals
  • Case, comparison, quality test
  • Involves measures and criteria of usability
• Importance
  • If software or a product can not be used, it is not useful

Software Quality Tests

• Involves both formal and empirical methods
• Definition/Information Goals
  • Case, comparison, quality test
  • Involves measures and criteria of code quality
  • Often performed against requirements or standards
• Importance
  • Enables iterative engineering of software

Code Behavior Studies

• Definition/Information Goals
  • Case and comparison studies
  • Expand knowledge of language/development environment capabilities
  • Can I/we do that in language X?
• Importance
  • Enables using small prototypes to scale up to large systems