Reducing the gap between HCI research and software development teams in Iceland

• Main Author: Marta Kristín Lárusdóttir
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Usability; User Centered Design. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 [User Interfaces] User-centered design; Theory and methods; Prototyping; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.85.1632; http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/hcid/files/Larusdottir.pdf

This paper reports a recent study on the use of User Centered Design (UCD) methods in seven Icelandic companies developing software. Contextual Interviews (CI) were used to gather detailed data on how developers co-operate with users during the software development. Afterwards structured interviews were conducted to gather broader information on the UCD methods usage and background information. Using Contextual Interviews for data gathering was very successful when used in its original form, but the method had to be adjusted in some cases because the developers thought that the situation, when cooperating with users was too delicate to add an observer to the scene.