This chapter provides an overview of UCD — the practice of eliciting and incorporating user charac- teristics throughout the design process. While the UCD process is appropriately applied to systems embodying a range of technical sophistication (including no technology) with which people interact, this chapter will focus on UCD in the context of IT systems in organizations. The underlying principles of UCD are propagated through a variety of documented and tested methods that involve the user throughout the design and implementation of a new system. Readers will be provided with a
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justification for the importance of UCD and some common strategies for incorporating accurate infor- mation about users and their work.
The term user-centered design first emerged in the mid 1980s and is often attributed to Norman’s (1988) renowned book,The Psychology of Everyday Things(later reissued with the title:The Design of Everyday Things) (Norman, 1988, 2002). UCD was embraced by the human – computer interaction (HCI) discipline as the foundation for usable, useful, and successful interfaces.The Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction, more recently, defines UCD as a “broad term, used to describe the process in which end users influence how a design takes shape” (Bainbridge, 2004, p. 763). UCD directs focus of the design process to the users’ role in the interactions between man and machine, and the resulting dynamics that ensue with the work, environment, and organization.
Changes and modifications are introduced to the UCD process by designers in reaction to an evolving network of users, goals, environments, technologies, and associated constraints with which the design must operate. This improvisational approach aims to achieve a balanced harmony of interactions between users, goals, context and constraints, and to avoid dissonance within the network that could impede productivity. UCD embodies a set of design strategies and information gathering techniques and tools that are perceived as personalized rather than controlling. The vehicle to achieve this level of usability and usefulness is the multifaceted task of understanding the users, the work context, and the tasks to be accomplished (Karat et al., 2000).
In truth, the specific set of techniques used for UCD depends on the specific combination of circum- stances and constraints related to the users, work, and organization associated with the given project (Mao et al., 2001; Marcus, 2005). It is only through practice in developing and hands on experience in implementing these techniques that designers acquire their own combinations of tools and techniques optimal for the constraints and requirements of the target problem and goals. Those who are highly skilled in UCD demonstrate the ability to adapt techniques to the constraints of a given domain and situation. UCD is an exercise in improvization of the well-established, tested techniques used to acquire and integrate user characteristics, in order to adapt these techniques concurrently as the requirements of the design evolve. As such, this chapter provides a high-level roadmap for the UCD process, and introduces readers to fundamental methods for incorporating the user into the UCD process. An operational definition is provided of UCD, followed by two sections, which emphasize common methods of user involvement in the design process. The first section details requirements gathering, and the second underscores user involvement in the testing and evaluation of designs and prototypes.
7.2.1 Use of UCD
UCD has been applied in a variety of domains from aviation to HCI. The general UCD guidelines and techniques are constantly revised to sufficiently account for the domain and context-specific goals, characterizations of the user, and organization, beyond those accounted for the general “good design”
principles developed and introduced by Nielsen (1994), Norman (1988, 2002), and Shneiderman (1998). While UCD initially focused on the design of computer interfaces and technical interfaces, more recently it has been given much attention to the fields of bioinformatics, health systems, children’s applications, and designing for individuals with limited abilities.
Table 7.1 features examples of several domains that have applied UCD. Often, the result of extending UCD to other domains is a new set of guidelines aimed at standardizing the UCD approach across a given domain. The negative outcome of this includes the influx of guidelines, standards, and require- ments in both literature and legal initiatives, which creates an additional burden on the design team.
Rarely (if ever) do the guidelines specify, for practical situationshowdesign teams should apply them in the design process. Largely, designers are just given several lists of “rules” for the design, but no means by which to obey these rules (Cassim and Dong, 2003; Koubek et al., 2003; Law, 2001; Lebbon and Coleman, 2003).
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7.2.1.1 The UCD Process
For practical purposes, the discussion of UCD practices will be couched within the generally-accepted vision of iterative software-based system development, the usability engineering lifecycle (Mayhew, 1999, 2003). The usability engineering lifecycle represents a structured and systematic approach to apply- ing usability and UCD principles during the system (or interface or product) development process.
TABLE 7.1 Examples of Recent Application Domains of the UCD Process
Domain Title UCD Notions
Bioinformatics Beyond power: making bioinformatics tools user-centered (Javahery et al., 2004)
The efficacy of bioinformatics in health care is influenced by the degree to which tools are adopted, and their long-term reliability.
UCD methods can inform systems that are more easily used by novices, while enhancing the skills of subject matter experts. In a domain with a notoriously high cost of personnel, UCD can help to optimize how efficiently tasks are accomplished Intra-organizational
learning
Intranets and intra-organizational learning, (Emery et al., 2004)
The evolution and matriculation of knowledge through an organization is often indicative of an organization’s long-term
sustainability. Intranets are a central repository for this knowledge, and can facilitate intra-organizational learning.
UCD processes, when followed in the design of IT such as intranets, can result in tools that best champion the learning styles of a given organization, and the individual knowledge of workers as well Health care A user-centered framework for redesigning
health care interfaces (Johnson et al., 2005)
The rapid proliferation of health care interfaces into the field has resulted in a considerable number of usability problems.
Therefore, current interfaces need to be redesigned, in consideration of UCD processes in order to retrofit these interfaces to better meet the user and task
requirements Accessible technology User-sensitive inclusive design: in search of a
new paradigm (Newell and Gregor, 2000)
UCD needs to make special consideration for users with extraordinary characteristics (a.k.a. disabilities) and users who are ordinary, but the context within which they operate is extraordinary (e.g., noisy, poor lighting, stressful). Through UCD, designers can determine the potential user population to fit into these special circumstances.
Incorporating UCD and inclusive design can result in systems that are usable by a greater number of people
Design for children KidReporter: a user requirements gathering technique for designing for children (Bekker et al., 2003)
UCD techniques for working with children need to be motivating and stimulating, yet appropriate for the children’s cognitive skill level. Special consideration is given to the consistency of answers solicited from children during the UCD process. Strategies for overcoming unpredictability of the children involved in UCD include the collection of information from several sources (or children) to increase reliability
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Readers unfamiliar with this vision of product development should refer to Mayhew (1999, 2003) for further details.
UCD focuses on incorporating the user, task, and environment into the design process. While the user lies at the center of the design process, they are part of an intricate network consisting of workplace-, environment-, and organization-related factors. Critical information about the users is gathered and applied in the formulation of design requirements, as well as the continued evaluation of design alterna- tives and final implementation. Figure 7.2 illustrates this high level conceptualization of UCD.
Eason (1995) describes three overarching goals of UCD, which include: (1) the translation of articu- lated user/context/work needs into overall product requirements and design specifications; (2) the pro- duction of several design options; and (3) the evaluation of the degree to which the design options fulfill the requirements. With this view of the system design (or redesign) and development process in mind, the primary activities of UCD can be divided into two phases. The first phase involves the front-end development of an appropriate understanding and representation of the system users, their goals, their need, their work tools, and their work (i.e., “understanding the work system”). The second phase involves the back-end testing and evaluation of proposed design solutions to examine and validate this front-end work and its interpretation (i.e., “testing and evaluation”). These two primary phases of the UCD process are shaded in Figure 7.2.
UCD mandates that inquiries be made into user and work conditions. In order to create appropriate systems for users, the needs of the users should be at the forefront of the process (Sugar, 2001). This
FIGURE 7.2 Illustration of the UCD process and the key steps of user input or feedback.
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facilitates the derivation of design goals, creates a formal account of the design’s requirements, and trans- lates these into a tangible list of specifications, or action items to inform design. Intuitively, the next step in UCD is the application of the specifications to the actual system design. Once system designs have been developed through a process of prototyping, these potential designs will be tested and evaluated for their appropriateness, utility, and usability. Finally, when a good design results, a full working system will be implemented and released.
Additionally, as can be seen in Figure 7.2, this process is highly iterative with continual verification and validation of decisions and progress along the path to implementing designs. As has been commonly out- lined in the usability engineering or design “lifecycles” (see Mayhew, 1999; e.g., Nielsen, 1993; Samaras and Horst, 2005), there are several feedback loops in the process, often heavily involving users as sources for validation and testing. While this concept of iterative design will not be heavily discussed in this chapter, it is one of the cornerstone principles of UCD and the software and usability engineering lifecycles.
7.2.1.2 User Involvement in UCD: The Fundamental Principle
As shown in Figure 7.2, users should be heavily involved directly in the collection of information (i.e., understanding the work system) to inform the design requirements and specifications, and again in the evaluation and testing of the design. Depending on the preferences of the UCD team and the UCD methods they utilize, along with other practical considerations (e.g., time, resources, organizational priorities, etc.), users may also be involved, albeit to a lesser extent, in directly participating in the design of the system (e.g., participatory design) and through user feedback after the final implementation.
Involvement of the users in the formulation of system design requirements and the subsequent testing and evaluations of the system leads to more effective, efficient, and safe systems and contributes to the perceived success and acceptance by the actual users. Noyes and Barber (1999) summarized these steps, which are the fundamental components of UCD: (1) designing to accommodate the physical and cognitive capabilities of the users; and (2) designing to accommodate for the work that is required.
That said, the scope of the UCD process is constantly evolving during the design and evaluation activities, soliciting user opinions, understanding work needs and expectations, designing to accommodate the work activities, and designing to accommodate user abilities. The involvement of users helps to assess the impact of a new design with respect to not only the system or interface, but also to the related job aspects such as staffing levels, allocation of tasks, new policies, and training (Kontogiannis and Embrey, 1997).
The inclusion of users in the design process should not be accomplished arbitrarily. It requires delib- erate coordination and well-calculated timing. Intuitively the quality of the information collected (and the subsequent quality of the design) is a function of the timing in the design process at which the user is involved and the extent of their involvement. Consideration of UCD factors too late in the design process can prove costly. Adjusting for problems in the development phase is estimated to cost ten times more than during the design phase, and the cost of fixing a problem in the postimplementation phase can cost 100 times more than during the design phase (Johnson et al., 2005). A poorly implemented system can be costly in terms of productivity — it has been estimated that a poorly designed system, when implemented can cause employees to spend upto 40% of their time asking each other how to use the system to do tasks (Hackos and Redish, 1998).
In terms of the degree to which users should be involved in the UCD process, it is important to remem- ber that users are not necessarily a part of the design and development team, but rather a rich source of information, by which decisions in UCD are influenced. It is upto the design team to integrate the infor- mation collected during observations of the users with additional information retrieved about the organ- ization, tasks, and stakeholders. However, using only what end-users convey as important is likely to introduce substantial bias and incomplete assumptions in the design, as the users tend to be insufficiently articulate in the explicit communication of their needs and typically have a restricted view of their work within the perspective of the entire organization, often proposing solutions to problems, which can be solved by more effective means (Newell and Gregor, 2000).
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The UCD approach just looks beyond principles of physical design — beyond traditional ergonomics
— to consider more fundamental issues such as the structure of information presented, the degree of process automation, implications of skill transfer and retention, and training requirements. If operators and supervisors are involved only at the later phases of the design process, then the final product may be difficult to learn, and incompatible with the existing well-established working practices, while also trig- gering increases in vigilance tasks and diminished user acceptance and trust (Kontogiannis and Embrey, 1997).
The result is a set of integrated techniques, which combine users’ assertions with observations across several levels of the organization, and several classes of users and stakeholders. Damodaran (1996) has suggested a well-defined taxonomy of the roles of individuals involved in the design process and the identification and selection of the most representative users from the organization. In fact, users should be identified at several levels from within an organization, ranging from end users to middle- and top-level management. This focus on all stakeholders is because the outcomes of technical design decisions may have profound implications on job design, and subsequently working life (Damodaran, 1996; Damodaran et al., 1980).
7.2.2 Summary
This chapter will focus on the inclusion of users at the two phases in the design process during which user feedback can have the greatest influence on its eventual success. This includes, as illustrated by Figure 7.2, understanding the work system and the testing and evaluation of designs and prototypes. The integration of specifications into tangible designs will briefly be touched on, as a more complete explanation is out of the scope of a manuscript of this length. The actual design production step is best learnt through practice and case studies of the experiences of others. In a study of the efficacy of novice designers to UCD, Sugar (2001) investigated the challenges that novice designers face in the application of UCD principles and guidelines. These designers were observed to have incomplete mental models of the translation of requirements into creative design solutions and tended to focus on overt observations of user needs.
In this chapter, readers will be provided with guidance on how to incorporate users into and leverage their knowledge and insight during the UCD process. UCD is partly a structured methodology and partly a skillful improvization. Readers should recognize the importance of practical experience and reviewing actual design case studies, both grounded in empirically validated guidelines and underlying philos- ophies of UCD in order to achieve effective designs. In UCD, those designing the system are responsible for: (1) facilitating the task or work for the user; (2) ensuring that the user can use the product as it was intended to be; and (3) making certain that the training and learning required to use the product is minimized.