Daphe Ogle's presentation on Designing a User-Centered Sakai Tool. The full slide set is available in [foo.ppt]

Exercpt

I borrowed this user-centered design process diagram from Cooper.com, Alan Cooper's software consulting firm.

Some of you may have heard of Alan Cooper, he's a recognized guru in software design and usability. He's written books like "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" and "About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design", also well recognized in the field. Although there are many variations of this process, I think this does a good job of covering the overall idea.

Research is spending time with stakeholders and users, interviewing them and watching them do work. Modeling is creating models that describe what you've learned in your research. This is an easy step to skip but is extremely valuable in helping us keep focused in our design. I'll talk more about this in a minute.
Requirements definition takes modeling to the next step to decide what the tool needs to provide users at a high level.

Framework definition describes the details of the user interaction and system requirements Design includes, detailed task flow and mocking up what the tool will be Development support includes communication the system in way that make sense to the development team.

At face value this process can seem a little overwhelming. The first 5 phases are prior to any coding. That's why it's important to be flexible and decide what is important for a specific project. A good way to "make mistakes faster" and move through this process quickly is to time box activities.

Most of the time the goal isn't perfection but to be agile and continue to learn more as you move through the process. You'll see IDEO go through a similar process in a 24 hour period in the video we'll be showing.