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User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach, Karel Vredenburg, Scott Isensee, and Carol Righi, Prentice Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River, NJ (2002). 247 pp. with CD-ROM. (ISBN 0-13-091295-6).
With the growth of consumer markets and increased competition for market share, it is hard these days not to encounter the term "usability" in the computer industry. In today's market, functionality and "speeds and feeds" are no longer sufficient conditions for the design of successful products. Even enterprise customers are no longer satisfied with raw power and lightning-fast performance in the designs of the systems and software they purchase. Functionality isn't enough; users are demanding that ease of use be designed into the products they buy. In fact, Boeing Corp. and a number of other companies recently announced that before they will purchase a product, they now require that vendors demonstrate the usability of their designs through usability testing. Similarly, EU (European Union) companies are looking for products that meet the ISO 9241-11 standard, which defines usability as "the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals in a specified context of use with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction."
User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach is an interesting history of the ways in which IBM responded to this evolution in the technology market. Its authors were all champions of UCD (User-Centered Design) throughout the 1990s. Karel Vredenburg was responsible for the development of IBM'S approach to UCD in the early 1990s. Scott Isensee and Carol Righi were significant contributors to revisions of the original approach and played leading roles in the development of educational programs aimed at spreading the UCD approach to product development throughout the company. The authors' emphasis on developing approaches to UCD and their experience offering training programs are noteworthy because they give the book its distinctive features.
User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach is...