User-centred design practice and adoption in smaller ICT companies in Eastern Finland: an interview study Online publication date: Sat, 28-Mar-2015
by Roman Bednarik; Janne Krohns
International Journal of Business Information Systems (IJBIS), Vol. 18, No. 3, 2015
Abstract: We map the state of the practice of user-centred design in industrial settings. We evaluated the level of adoption of user-centred approaches in small IT companies at the Eastern Finland border area. We focus on the perception of UCD, on the methods employed and on the adoption level. A set of interviews with 12 IT companies revealed a tension between perception of user needs as an important factor of a product and a lack of need-assessment knowledge and processes. Most of the companies gather at least some form of information about users and use cases, but often more efficient methods to elicit and process these requirements are unknown or not employed. Our results show how the low UCD adoption affects operation of IT business: we discovered critical misunderstandings of the concepts of user and customer, and we report on how efficiency is crucial in terms of time to finish the project, and how finances needed to implement UCD are an important issue.
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