User-Centered Design Stories

Justifying, developing, and starting a UCD Program; Raising awareness and educating others in the work enviornment; Hiring UCD professionals; Estimating and pricing a UCD effort; Selecting appropriate user research methodologies; Selecting appropriate evaluation methodologies; Designing a user iterface; Designing user help; Web site information architecture; Addressing accessibility issues (i.e. designing for those with disabilities); Applying UCD to middleware/products with no obvious user interface; Managing the politics of UCD in the Workplace; Recruiting for a UCD effort; Developing and delivering UCD training; Interplay of the business model/business requirements and user requirements; Cost-Justifying a UCD effort.

User-Centered Design Stories is the first user-centered design casebook with cases covering the key tasks and issues facing UCD practitioners today. Intended for both students and practitioners, this book follows the Harvard Case study method, where the reader is placed in the role of the decision-maker in a real-life professional situation.

In this book, the reader is asked to analyze dozens of UCD work situations and propose solutions for the problem set. The problems posed in the cases cover a wide variety of key tasks and issues faced by practitioners, including those related to organizational/managerial topics, UCD methods and processes, and technical/ project issues.

The benefit of the casebook and its organization is that it offers new practitioners (as well as experienced practitioners working in new settings) valuable practice in decision-making that cannot be obtained by simply reading a book or attending a seminar.

• The first User-Centered Design Casebook, with cases covering the key tasks and issues facing UCD practitioners today.
• Each chapter based on real world cases with complex problems, giving readers as close to a real-world experience as possible.
• Offers "the things you don't learn in school," such as innovative and hybrid solutions that were actually used on the problems discussed.

This is a book for aspiring user-centered design (interaction design) practitioners as well as those with some experience, regardless of how they are and were trained. The market includes those with job titles such as user interface designer, interaction designer, usability engineer, information architect, technical writer, and similar titles--for those working on any type of product: web-based applications, web sites, commercial software, or electronic devices/information appliances.