Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques

Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques Catherine Courage and Kathy Baxter. 2005. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman Publishers. [ISBN 1-55860-935-0. 781 pages, including index. $59.95 USD (softcover).]

Usability testing is typically the focus of the user-centered design (UCD) processes used by many companies. Unfortunately, the user requirements gathering stage is often overlooked. An early focus on users ' and their tasks lessens the likelihood that unexpected issues will be discovered in the latter stages of the product development lifecycle. In Understanding your users, Catherine Courage and Kathy Baxter provide practical techniques for planning and conducting user requirements activities.

The book itself is well designed and attractive, with color coding to distinguish the chapters from each other. It is divided into five main parts:

* What you need to know before choosing an activity

* Get up and running

* The methods

* Wrapping up

* Appendixes

Each chapter is laid out similarly, so you can expect to get the same information for each of the user requirements methods described. For each method, the authors provide helpful reminders of previous steps in the process by referring to the applicable sections of earlier chapters. The case studies at the end of each chapter provide a look at each method as used by a variety of companies-their successes, as well as the lessons they learned in the process.

In Part...