Understanding the context of design: towards tactical user centered design

ABSTRACT

It is widely recognized that system usability requires active involvement of end-users in all phases of software development, and there is currently a broad consensus among researchers and practitioners in the field as to what constitutes a good user-centered design process. Despite this, many systems development projects still fail when it comes to addressing usability issues and appropriately involving users in the design process. We find that a project's boundary conditions are becoming increasingly important for the potential impact of user-centered design activities, and hence the success of the end result of the project. We propose and define "context of design" as a concept to embrace the socio-technical system in which user-centered design takes place. The context of design includes, but is not limited to, the internal structure of the developer and the client organizations, contractual and tender issues, software engineering tools, and stakeholder agendas and relations. We illustrate the reasoning with various cases in which user-centered design has been constrained by factors in the context of design. We recommend that user-centered-design projects give priority to an early identification of factors in the context of design that pose risks to end-product usability. By analyzing the context of design for each project, we may be able to better tailor user-centered design activities to reach the goal of building a more usable end-result.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Legal Aspects, Management

Keywords:
context of design, obstacles, usability, user-centered design