Pervasive Themes in IT

User Centeredness And Advocacy

 Introduction
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An approach which views knowledge about users
and their involvement in the design process as a
central concern
It is an evidence-based approach informed by the
needs and understanding of a specific end-user
group.
User-centered design is an iterative design process
in which designers focus on the users and their
needs in each phase of the design process
It looks at the design of an IS to meet user needs
rather than teaching a user to adopt to it.
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 Introduction …
3

It discovers how a user looks for the information and

designs a system that conforms to the users’
searching behavior.
This implies, information system is designed to meet
user needs as opposed to the universal rules.
"You’ve got to start with the customer experience
and work backwards to the technology”, Steve Jobs
1997

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 Introduction …
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Therefore, The goal of User- Centered Design

(UCD) is:
 Put the user at the center of the design process

 It focuses on the usability of the product and the

evaluation of it
UCD plays a key role in achieving user engagement,
thus improving the likelihood of the intervention’s
effectiveness.

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 Introduction…
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Different users may require different types of IS

User-centeredness has aroused increasing attention
in the context of IT artifacts,
It has also led to the ISO 13407 standard on human-
centered design of interactive systems
Although the phrase “user-centered” emerged in the
human computer interaction (HCI) field, it can be
argued of having adopted ideas from different
sources, such as;
 socio-technical design, user participation,
participatory design and usability engineering.
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 Introduction…
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Alternatively, user centeredness can be interpreted

as a quantity rather than as a quality of systems
development methods.
 NB: An IT artifact is an entity/object
intentionally engineered to benefit certain
people with certain purposes and goals in
certain contexts.

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 Influential and Related Research Fields
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The intellectual roots of User-Centered Design

(UCD, also sometimes called User-Centered System
Design, UCSD) lie in several areas of basic and
applied research. These include;
 Cognitive and social psychology

 Linguistics

 Mathematics

 Computer science

 Engineering

 Human factors and ergonomics

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Influential and Related Research Fields…
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 Socio-technicalsystems design
 Scientific management

 Work, industrial, and occupational psychology

 Human relations

 Organizational behavior.

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 Influential and Related Research Fields…
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Ergonomics and Human Factors: maximizes

the safety and healthiness of work environments
and work practices to ensure the usability of tools,
devices, and artifacts in general.
 Ergonomics and HF are concerned with providing
a good fit between people and their work or leisure
environments.
Socio-Technical Systems Design: systems that
involve a complex interaction between humans,
machines, and the environmental aspects of the
work system
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 Influential and Related Research Fields…
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Cognitive Modeling and Programmable User

Models: an approximation of how people reason

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 Advocacy
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Advocacy means amplifying the voice

User Advocacy: promoting an alternate
stakeholder perspective of the system requirements
It is the use of resources and information to ensure
that user’s viewpoints are heard.
User advocacy refers to users’ actions of selling the
project’s merits to key stakeholders.
The advocate makes an argument based on data and
measurements from real users - not opinions

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 Advocacy…
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Advocacy is more often perceived as a systematic

process of influencing policies
It can facilitate a sense of ownership among key
client constituencies for project outcomes that will
lead to enhanced individual efforts.
Thus, user advocacy could influence stakeholder
support and, subsequently, the final project
outcomes.

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 Advocacy…
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Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to;

 User advocacy in building project success,
 Motivating the advocacy role, or
 Preparing the user to assume the advocacy role
through socialization functions such as training.

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 Advocacy Principles
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Participation: To include as many people as

possible in the process of design
 A deep sense of participation and communication
help promote solidarity
Communication: a willingness to share; to
learn; to reach out; and to speak.
 Advocacy is a communicative act and a set of
actions that involves communications designed
to promote social action
Legitimacy: it is both about ethics and politics.
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 Advocacy Principles …
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 Itis the sense of deep commitment,

accountability, communicability, and action that
help to derive legitimacy.

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 User-Centeredness
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Technology should be designed around the needs of

the user.
The UCD process begins at the concept generation
stage.
To do this, you need to understand users and what
they are trying to do- task analysis

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 User-Centeredness…
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Other important factors to consider may include ;

 The environment in which the application will be
used,
 The social or organizational culture of the user
group, potential cognitive biases, and
 The group’s preferred communication style.

The interface should be the responsibility of

someone who can take the perspective of the user
and be a strong advocate.
This is not easy!
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 Task analysis
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Observes users in realistic settings doing particular

tasks
Goals of tasks analysis:
1. enables you to understand what the user has to do
and cope with
2. enables you to trace steps leading up to an error
and figure out why it occurred
3. enables you to see what parts of the task the user
spends the most time doing
 what is easy and what is hard
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 Goals of task analysis
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4. enables you to compare different users and

different methods for doing tasks
 Information system should be designed to meet the
information seeking and searching behavior of
users
 User study is;
 Usually a field study

 Determines both users and non-users

 Has to be carried out continuously

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 Tasks Analysis
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Tools used include human factors research

techniques such as;
 Interview- Users answer a list of oral questions

 Questionnaire- Users answer a list of written

questions
 Observation- The researcher physically observes
the users as they perform their regular jobs
 in-context field studies (ethnography),

 focus groups, taking notes on what users do,

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 Tasks Analysis…
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 havingthem “think out loud” while working,

These contribute to the user needs assessment

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 Objectives of UCD
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Define and prioritize usability values with

users: Identify users and how best to help them
Match task requirements to design: the
design should comprehend the realistic
requirements of the users' tasks.
Remove defects from the design, and from
the requirements: UCD realizes that there are
different sorts of defects and different costs in
identifying them.
 Defects are things wrong with the design

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 Objectives of UCD…
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Test against usability criteria: Usability is

about how the design supports the usability criteria.
Iterate design continuously to improve: this
aims to avoid evaluating parts of a design that may
be modified during iteration.

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 UCD Approach
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Early focus on user(s) and task(s): observe

users doing tasks, assess user cognitive and
behavioral characteristics.
Empirical measurement: Test the interface early
with real users who come in contact with the
interface on an everyday basis.
 Iterative design: get user feedback to refine the
design choices.
 After determining the users, tasks, and empirical
measurements to include, perform the following
iterative design steps:
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 UCD Approach
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 Design the user interface

 Test

 Analyze results
 Fix. Repeat

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 Principles of user-centered system design
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The design principles are used to focus the dev’t team

so as not to deviate from the UCD process.
• User focus - the goals of the activity, the users’ tasks
and needs should guide the development in the early
stages
• Active user involvement - representative users
should actively participate, early and continuously
throughout the entire development process.
• Evolutionary system development - the systems
development should be both iterative and incremental.

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 Principles of user-centered system design…
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• Simple design representations – the design must be
represented in such ways that it can be easily understood
by users and all stakeholders
• Prototyping – early and continuously, prototypes
should be used to visualize and evaluate ideas and design
solutions in cooperation with end users.
• Evaluate use in context – measurable usability goals
and design criteria should control the development
• A professional attitude – the development process
should be performed by effective multidisciplinary teams

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 Principles of user-centered system design.
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• Holistic design – all aspects that influence the

future use situation should be developed in parallel.
• Process customization – the User Centered
System Development process must be specific,
adapted and/or implemented locally in each
organization.
• Usability test – skilled usability experts should be
involved early and continuously throughout the
development lifecycle.

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 Who are the users
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Users might include:

 People who interact directly with the product or
system
 Their managers

 Those who receive products from the system

 System testers

 Those who purchase the system

 Those who make competitors for the system

 Those who will lose their jobs because of the system

 Lots of possible stakeholders!

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 Usability Test
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As the design cycle progresses, designs are evaluated

and refined iteratively with users, by way of
walkthroughs and usability testing.
Walkthrough: assisting participants to use an
application and also encourage them to think aloud
and provide feedback on the difficulties they
experience with the proposed workflow.
This feedback ensures that the performance of the
application matches the user requirements.

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 Usability Test…
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Usability testing: a representative user works

independently in a controlled environment through
a set of scenarios representing typical usage of the
system,
Can be done while simultaneously thinking aloud.

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User-Centered Design Process
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Basic Concept in the User Centered Approach
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The most basic concept/idea in the user-centered

approach is information need.
The following defines the basic concept of information
need.
Information Want: The user provides
information about what he/she thinks they need.
 The idea is given before he/she uses the
information system.
Information Need: This provides information
that is objectively needed to solve the problem.
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 Basic Concept in the User Centered
Approach Cont…
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 This assumes that through problem analysis and

scientific means, it is possible to determine
information that is possible to make decision.
Information Demand: The information the
user says he/she needs.
Information Use: Defines information need
according to how information is used.
Information impact: Concerned with
information part that affects decision

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 Analysis of the Variations of User-
Centeredness
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• Four dimensions of user-centeredness inductively

exist
1. User-centeredness as user focus
2. User-centeredness as work-centeredness
3. User-centeredness as user participation
4. User-centeredness as system personalization
• The following analysis will proceed along these four
dimensions.

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 User-centeredness as user focus
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User centeredness as a focus starts with individual

user, proceeding afterwards to foci on average,
typical or fictive user.
Overall, a system that takes into consideration
every individual users’ capabilities and fully
satisfies each user’s individual needs can be
considered as an ideal of user-centered design.
An individual user’s needs for a system is
determined by the user’s activity or
Work to be supported by the system and by
his/her personal preferences or characteristics.
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 User-centeredness as user focus
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When the system has one or only a few users, it is

easier to satisfy fully each user’s individual needs.
Practically, satisfying each user’s individual needs
is difficult to achieve for two major reasons;
 Firstly, many systems form platforms for
communication, co-ordination, co-operation and
control of distributed activities carried out by a
number of users.
 In this case each user needs and preferences
cannot be fully satisfied
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 User-centeredness as user focus
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Therefore, users must be prepared to make
compromises in the interest of uniformity and
compatibility of the system.
 Secondly, a system may have a huge number of
globally distributed users, many of which cannot
be accessed when designing the system.
 Accordingly, the system may be designed for an
average or fictive user.

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 User-centeredness as work-centeredness
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• An alternative perspective of understanding the

relationship between people, technology, work
requirements and organizational constraints is
work settings,
• This is where people are actors in situations,
with a set of skills and shared practices based on
work experience with others.
• Understanding users’ work activities and the
context of use has become a central focus of user-
centered design
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 User-centeredness as work-centeredness
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Keeping in mind the variety of potential users, it is

not always so obvious what sort of representations
are understandable to users.
One representational formalism meaningful to one
group may be totally incomprehensible to another
Finally, power and politics are important aspects to
be considered.
Even though we wish systems to be more user-
centered, we cannot forget the political milieu, in
which the systems development takes place.
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 User-centeredness as user participation
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Most of the participative design projects have

been small, stand-alone applications of IT with
low organizational complexity and
• Many information and software systems are large
and complex, however, so that all prospective
users, even if they are known in advance, cannot
participate directly.
• In their case participation may be representative

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 User-centeredness as user participation
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Software systems are developed in a product

development context.
They may have millions of potential users and
Often the prospective users are not known during
the development.
Especially in this context usability specialists are
assumed to “represent” the users in the
development.

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 User-centeredness as personalization
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Personalization, i.e. the possibility that the

designed system can adapt or be adapted to the user
while used,
This is one option to remedy the situation.
The diversity of users, the difficulty to involve them
in the design process especially in the product
development context, and users’ learning
experience makes it difficult to design the systems
to fit each user.

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 User-centeredness as personalization
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Adaptability allows the user to change the system

according to his/her preferences
Adaptable personalization can be seen as a partial
materialization again of the idea of end user
development as an ultimate form of user
participation

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 Discussions
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As has been argued, user-centeredness can be

perceived to denote a user focus, but user focus can
be limited to focus on typical, average or fictive
user.
Even though ideal, focusing on each individual user
may not be possible in practice, since typically
systems are developed for large, geographically and
organizationally distributed user populations.

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 Discussions
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User-centeredness can denote work-centeredness,
when the interest lies in the work and in the worker
as a user,
 Not in the individual user as a human being.

User-centeredness can also be interpreted as user

participation,
 There is a multitude of views of what user
participation is and how it should be accomplished.
 In certain situations the prospective users can all
participate directly in the process.

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 Discussions
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 In many cases only selected user representatives

are involved
A personalized system adapts or allows to adapt
the system’s content structure, presentation form
and functionality to each user’s characteristics, use
behavior and usage environment.

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