Extending User-Centered Methods beyond Interface Design to Functional Definition

The contributions of human factors or usability practitioners to application development often begin with a functional specification handed down from an external source. User-centered design methods are commonly applied to how function is delivered but not what functions will be delivered. We in the Interactive Transaction Systems (ITS) group at the T.J. Watson Research Division of IBM have succeeded, during several application development efforts, in expanding the scope of our user-centered, iterative design approaches to include functional as well as interface definition for both software and hardware (kiosk/workstation) design. By learning our customer's business and owning the entire development process, we can better design our solutions to solve their problems (and their client's problems in the case of service industry solutions). We achieve this by including the functional definition in the first of four phases we have defined for all of our development projects. A significant facilitation for this in the arena of software development has been the CADT (Customer Access Development Toolset) development platform we use to build our applications. This set of tools for iterative application design and development gives us the flexibility to quickly and effectively address emerging functional requirements.