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User-centered Design: An Integrated Approach. Karel Vredenburg, Scott Isensee, and Carol Righi. 2002. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR. [ISBN 0-13-091295-6. 246 pages, including index and CD-ROM. $47.00 USD (softcover).]
You know the products you write about have usability problems, but conducting usability tests on your coffee break isn't getting you very far toward solving those problems. You know that your company needs more user input and that the input must feed directly into product design and development, but where do you start?
Consider reading User-centered design: An integrated approach. Written for user-centered design (UCD) enthusiasts and practitioners, it offers practical advice on preparing for, deploying, and optimizing a UCD approach within an organization. It describes a completely user-driven, rather than a traditional technology-driven, approach to product design and development.
Four of the book's five chapters are relevant either to those who are new to UCD or to those trying to start a UCD program within their organization. The first chapter, "Taking stock," helps you assess the current state of user-centered design within an organization. It describes the difference between the technology- and user-driven approaches, lists key success factors, and provides responses to the common excuses for not implementing a user-driven approach.
Readers more interested in conducting user interviews or usability tests may be tempted to skip this chapter. Don't! This chapter's emphasis on creating a solid foundation for user-centered design within the organization is one of the book's strengths. Ignoring the advice offered in this chapter-preparing the organization, educating management, developing the right complement of skills, and so on-may be detrimental to the success of your UCD projects.
The second chapter introduces the integrated UCD approach that is the subject of the rest of the book....