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Abstract. Agile methods have proven their worth in keeping a development team focused on producing high-quality code quickly. But these methods generally have little to say about how to incorporate user-centered design techniques. Also the question has been raised whether agile methods can scale up to larger systems design. In this paper we show how one user-centered design method, Contextual Design (CD), forms a natural fit with agile methods and recount our experience with such combined projects.

A new computer system changes how its customers work. Designing such a system requires indnrate knowledge of customers' wor"k and motives to ensure that the system supports them well. The creation of a new system implicitly means designing the new work practice it will support.Because .system design is so intimately involved with how people work, designers need better approaches to gathering customer requirements.' The current interest in participatory design, ethnographic techniques, and field research techniques grows out of the recognition that traditional interviewing and surveying techniques are not adeqtiate for designing today's applications. These new approaches seek to improve COMMUMICJITIONS OP THB ACM Mav 1993/Vol. 38. No. 5 4 5 About the Authors: HUGH R. BE'YER is Co-founder of InContext Enterprises, Inc., a firm specializitig in coaching teams in ctistotiier-centered prodtict and strategy design. Current research interests incltide the tise of explicit customer-centered systems design to drive object-oriented methods,

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