Effective user involvement in product development by improving the analysis of user needs

Abstract

User involvement has been shown to be beneficial in the development of useful and usable systems. The trend of software development becoming a product-oriented activity creates challenges to user involvement. Field studies appear a promising approach, but the analysis of the gathered user needs has been shown to be demanding. This study presents, on the basis of seven case studies, an early user-involvement process showing how user needs can be analysed and how the input to product development can be identified. In addition, the process is tested in two industrial cases with interviews and a questionnaire. The results show that the process supports effective early user involvement; the resulted requirements were evaluated as being more successful and their quality as better than average. However, the case studies show that user involvement not only provides useful information about users' needs but also increases the understanding of users' values.

As características dos usuários do produto: uma ferramente para auxiliar na condução do envolvimento do usuário no PDP

“…Para a autora Kujala (2008), o envolvimento do usuário no desenvolvimento de produtos é descrito como o contato direto da equipe de desenvolvimento com o usuário. A autoria define que o envolvimento do usuário é um conceito vago e coberto por diversas abordagens teóricas, os quais ela destaca: Participatory Design, estudos etnográficos, Design Centrado no Usuário e estudos de contexto de uso do produto.…”

Designing Simulation-Based Training for Prehospital Emergency Care: Participation from a Participant Perspective

“…The importance of taking users' perspectives into consideration has been known for more than 30 years, and ever since Gould and Lewis [17] introduced the three fundamental principles of user-centered design, usability experts and others have struggled to address them, not least the principle "early focus on users and tasks" [17, p. 300]. Failing to understand the users has repeatedly been reported as a reason to failed system development projects [6], [7], [16], [18].…”

“…Involving users is also important for other reasons, such as democratic empowerment that allows them to take active part in decision-making that influence them and their work, as well as competence development and learning [7], [20].…”

“…Hence, user participation should take place in a way that gives high value to the project and the final product as well as makes everyone involved feel comfortable in the situation [7].…”

“…Users 1 can participate in a wide variety of way along several dimensions, e.g., as purely informants, full members of the project team, in parts of, or during the whole process [7]. One way of doing this is through participatory design (PD) [8].…”