| dc.description.abstract | This thesis seeks to identify reasons why HCI techniques are unsuitable for application
in real world design projects. User-oriented systems design and evaluation require
that many considerations such as the psychology of users, the applications and
target tasks be born in mind simultaneously. A selection of influential HCI design
and evaluative techniques from HCI research literature are reviewed and characterised
in terms of their analytic scope.
Two studies of systems designers' approaches to user-oriented design and evaluation
were carried out in order to gain a clearer picture of the design process as it occurs
in applied and commercial projects. It was found that designers frequently lack
adequate information about users, carrying Out, at best, informal user-evaluations of
prototypes. Most notably HCI design and evaluative techniques, of the type common
in the literature, are not being used in applied and commercial design practice.
They seem to be complex, often limited in scope, and possessed of inadequate or
unrepresentative views of the design process within which they might be applied. It
was noted that design practice is highly varied with only a small number of common
goal directed classes of activity being identified. These together with observed
user-oriented information sources and design constraints provide a useful schema
for viewing applied and commercial design practice.
A further study of HCI specialists' practice in commercial environments was undertaken,
in order to identify particular user-oriented design approaches and HCI techniques
suitable for application in practice. The specialists were able to describe
desirable, and undesirable properties of the techniques they used which made it possible
to identify a list of specific desirable features for HCI techniques. A framework
for assessing applicability of HCI techniques was developed from the findings
of the thesis. This is demonstrated using an example project from the design studies
and may prove valuable in supporting design, evaluation, critiquing and selection of
HCI techniques. | en_US |
