A study into the usability of 3GPP technical specifications

Technical specifications are documents which provide detailed descriptions of technical requirements for a product, service, system, or material. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a collaboration driven organisation which emits technical specifications for cellular telecommunications technologies. This thesis studies the main usability issues of 3GPP technical specifications and investigates the prevalence of each of the usability issues identified. The research considers two user groups, specifications consumers and specifications producers. The former uses technical specifications as part of their work tasks. The latter contributes to the creation of the technical specifications. A mixed methods approach is used to answer the research question. Ten interviews are conducted, followed by a survey which received 85 responses. The main contribution of this thesis is that it uses scientific research methods to study the usability of 3GPP technical specifications. 29 usability issues are identified from the interview data via an affinity diagram. A subsequent survey investigates the prevalence of these issues. The findings suggest that specification producers are mostly hindered by 3GPP governance processes which impact their work and productivity. Specification consumers are more affected by the contents of the specifications, highlighting issues like a lack of illustrations and difficulty understanding the documents.