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I am attending the Delphi Business and Process Innovation Summit this week and blogging as I go. Next up was Sarah Bloomer on "User Centered Design for Process Redesign". Sarah started off pointing out that system design is process design and that when designing a system or a process you're designing your business. She reminded us that user-centric design is not about focus groups or asking them to design the UI but engaging them in driving the design process because users are not software designers so can't design for you, only with you.

Users have knowledge, goals, job needs, context of use and, in addition, there are company goals and corporate culture that might be in conflict. User centered design involves "Observe and Analyze", "Design and Iterate", Evaluate and Refine", repeat. This must be done in collaboration with users. In particular the context of use - how and where people use it - will be key and is often the hardest to bring in. Contextual studies are about seeing how people perform their tasks in the real-world. This kind of information complements the formal requirements and fills in the gaps missed by other techniques such as their workarounds and job aids.

Sarah made some great points in her discussion of user-centered design:

• She pointed out that one should remember that the end customer has objectives as well as the person using the software e.g. in call center the customer gets an experience too.
• Her process involved doing both current and "blue sky" workflow analysis and then come up with a composite "realistic" to-be process and I thought that was a nice idea.
• Like me she likes personas - check out Alan Coopers site for more on personas - and had a good suggestion about wrapping stories/scenarios around a persona - check out this blog about story-telling in this context too.
• The kind of environment (noisy, busy, peaceful, home office) and tasks being performed make a big difference.
• User-centered design must consider the actual work environment as part of the process as where people work matters - what notes do they have on the wall? To what do they refer constantly and so on.
• Paper-prototypes can be more accessible for users than software, even prototype code
• Try and include direct users and those who benefit for the execution of the process to make sure they will get their benefit out of the new process

One more session...

Posted by jtaylor in Business Process Management |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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