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Chapter 2. State of the Art of Application Development Processes
of scope. As such, scenarios are mainly seen as an instrument to share developers’
and users’ views among each other. If future scenarios can be created both develop-
ers and users can agree on, scenarios o er a solid basis for mediation between both
parties.
Personas is a technique that creates and uses fictional users
[
Grudin and Pruitt
2002
]
. Concrete representations of fictional users aim at social and political con-
sciousness. User are not actively involved during the development, but are ‘simu-
lated’ by prototypical personas. These should create a stronger focus on users and
work settings, better utilize our mind’s powerful ability to extrapolate, make as-
sumptions more explicit, become a medium for communication and focus on specific
target audiences. However, the pending danger is that personas might be overused
and represent rather the developers view about the user’s needs instead of the actual
needs themselves.
Discussion
User-centered design has a strong emphasis on the user. This o ers a good basis
for developing applications which are demanded by specific target groups. Various
methodologies have been developed that o er systematic approaches to involve users
and listen to the users even in early development phases. However, as the review
of the previous methodologies has shown, the development of radical innovations is
usually beyond the scope of user-centered design. The user is mostly the end-user
with specific needs which should be solved and nothing more. Stimulation of the
user was seen at the extreme character and action relabeling method. The provi-
sion of exploration for the user is actively promoted by Empathic Design. Iterative
procedures are established in user-centered design which also induce rapid develop-
ments. The use of toolboxes exists in form of theories and principles as shown in
Section 2.2.3.
2.2.5 Participatory Design
The paradigm of participatory design provides developers of hard- and software with
a set of theories and practices. It studies how end-users in particular can become
full participants of the entire development process
[
Greenbaum and Kyng 1991,
Muller, M. J. and Kuhn, S. 1993, Schuler and Namioka 1993
]
. The basic assumption
is that the provision of tools will make workers more e cient in doing their jobs
instead of replacing workers by automating their tasks: users are experts, tools
should be designed for the context in which they will be used. This requires methods
for observing and interviewing end-users, play-acting a work situation for the design
phase, and iterative development.
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