User-centered design focuses on constructing a user experience and environment with physical and virtual affordances that are manipulable, controllable, customizable, and adaptable from the essential perspective of the conceptual model of the user. This means both (a) the user’s own internal metamodel of their own goal-directed processes, activities, and contextual (i.e., sociopsychological and physical) environment, and (b) the designer’s representational model of the user-activity-environmental experience, with the former driving and superceding the latter in the design solution. Thus, the conceptual model of the user becomes the superordinate principle guiding the design process.
Published in Chapter:
Human-Factors Design for Public Information Technology
Vincent E. Lasnik (Independent Knowledge Architect, USA)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-857-4.ch059
Abstract
This chapter examines the realm of human-factors design for public information technology in the rapidly evolving postmodern knowledge age of the 21st century, with special focus on how new research and development into human cognition, perception, and performance capabilities is changing the design function for IT systems and products. Many “one size fits all” IT designs are neither adaptive nor adaptable—promulgating a top-down technological imperialism penetrating every aspect of their use. The communication, collaboration, and interaction infrastructure of IT organizations thus remains acutely challenged with enduring problems of usability, learnability, accessibility, and adaptability. As the function and form of products undergo increasingly rigorous scrutiny, one important design goal is emerging as a paramount priority: improving the usability of products, tools, and systems for all stakeholders across the enterprise. It is therefore important to briefly describe emerging human-factor design knowledge and practices applicable to organizations that invent, incubate, innovate, prototype, and drive the creation and application of public IT. The findings here suggest the most effective strategies to manage and augment user-centered design (UCD) endeavors across a wide array of public IT products and organizations.