When organizations purchase information systems from IT vendors, they produce formal calls for tender
(CFT) that specify, among other attributes, the required usability criteria of the systems. HCI research
has concentrated on the IS purchaser organizations’ view and studied usability practices and
criteria embedded into CFTs. However, IS vendors’ perspective is much less studied and especially
the effects of characteristics of CFTs on IS vendors’ usability practices remain unexplored. We participated
in a large tendering and experienced how the CFT introduced obstacles in the vendor’s usability
work that needed workarounds, which may decrease system usability in context after the tendering
and falsify the evaluation results of the purchaser. We identified obstacles arising from the tendering
context, evaluation practices and usability measures. The joint effect of detailed usability test tasks
and user performance measures published as well as a limited communication and time during the
process were experienced as the most problematic and counterproductive in vendor’s usability work.