Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

The figures of reported health problems in computer-supported, administrative, work are alarmingly high and increasing. The main health problems are visual discomfort, repetitive strain injuries (RSI) and stress-related disorders. Some important risk factors are poor workstation design, constrained work postures, repetitive work and long hours of computer use every day. Others are high demands, poor control over workload and work pace and poor relations to management and colleagues. There is also evidence that poor design and usability of the computer systems as well as technical problems with the computer add to the pressure perceived by the user, which may in its turn cause stress-related disorders.

Systems (software) development is often technology-driven and the design and contents of the resulting system shapes the work situation, including factors affecting the users' health and well-being. There are numerous examples in the literature describing how poorly designed systems fail to support the real work practices, introducing new ones that are inadequate and more time-consuming. Thus these, supposedly supporting, computer systems get in the way of efficient and effective work, adding a burden on the workers rather than helping them out.

This thesis tries to describe some of the relations between the systems development process and users' health complaints, in a work context. I also discuss whether or not the concepts of usability and user experience can be used to address users' health issues in the systems development process. The main results indicate that although usability must be addressed, it is not sufficient. Occupational health issues must be explicitly integrated in systems development, and be given priority. This thesis also describes some potential methods and techniques for doing that.

This paper reports on an evaluation of the usability designer role as applied in two Swedish systems development organisations. The role was initially defined by us, but evolved in these two organisations. We conducted interviews with usability designers, project managers and a user representative. Our main research question was whether or not the introduction of a usability designer has been successful in terms of changes in the systems development process and the impact the role has had on products, projects and organisations. To some extent, the role has met our expectations and intentions for instance, in helping the usability designers shift their focus towards design, and assume some kind of "users' advocate" role. But in other ways, the role "failed". The usability designers in our study are still facing the kind of problems and obstacles that usability professionals have always had to deal with.

In trying to understand the problem of poor usability in

computer-supported work, this article looks at management

and their perspective on usability in a public authority.

What are their underlying basic values, assumptions and

attitudes? Why do managers interpret usability as they do,

and what are the consequences for the organization and for

usability? The empirical basis is an interpretive case study

where 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

Results indicate that usability is interpreted differently,

depending on the formal roles of informants. Furthermore, a

majority of the informants express personal, but limited,

responsibility for usability. Moreover, we found that basic

values are based on an instrumental view of work where

efficiency and economy are important constituents. We

identified that even though users participate in IT

development, they have no formal responsibility or

authority. They have become IT workers in that they

perform highly technical tasks such as integral testing.

The usability concept has now received such a wide recognition in information technology (IT) development that working with usability can be regarded as a profession in its own right. In recent research projects, we have surveyed and studied usability work on an individual level in a number of Swedish development organisations, including success factors and obstacles. What we have seen relates to the individual usability professional and her background and experiences, the organisation in which she operates, the development process, communication and communication means, and finally the attitudes and basic values held by the people involved.

In this paper, we compile and reflect on selected findings from different studies on usability work in practical systems1 development in a number of Swedish organisations. We discuss our findings from a practical point of view and relate them to the research of others within the international HCI community. Finally, we discuss some issues we consider important for the future development of the practice of usability that we believe is of interest to the international community of usability professionals.

The concept of user-centred systems design (UCSD) has no agreed upon definition. Consequently, there is a great variety in the ways it is applied, which may lead to poor quality and poor usability in the resulting systems, as well as misconceptions about the effectiveness of UCSD.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a definition of UCSD. We have identified 12 key principles for the adoption of a user-centred development process, principles that are based on existing theory, as well as research in and experiences from a large number of software development projects. The initial set of principles were applied and evaluated in a case study and modified accordingly.

These principles can be used to communicate the nature of UCSD, evaluate a development process or develop systems development processes that support a user-centred approach. We also suggest activity lists and some tools for applying UCSD.

This article reviews current efforts in bridging the gaps between software engineering and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and describes some critical issues that must be resolved in order to reconcile some of the differences between the two fields. We argue that user-centered systems design (UCSD) must be tightly integrated in the software development process and suggest the usability design process as a way of doing this. The usability design process is a UCSD approach for developing usable interactive systems, combining usability engineering with interaction design, and emphasizing extensive active user involvement throughout the iterative process. We outline the usability design process and illustrate the steps in the process with examples from real-life design cases. Finally, we provide an example of how the usability design process can be implemented in a commercial software-development process, Rational Unified ProcessTM (RUP).

Work environment and occupational health problems of different nature are constantly increasing in computer supported work. Most efforts to improve the work environment are focused primarily on physical aspects, and to some extent on psychosocial aspects. Mental workload and cognitive problems are of a more complex nature, more difficult to measure and provide efficient solutions to, and are more seldom studied or solved. Solutions to work environment problems are usually applied to already existing work situations through improved equipment and work place design, health programmes, education, reorganizations, etc. The problems are seldom prevented by means of applying relevant methods early in the systems development process, before the artefacts have been designed and implemented. This paper, and the following papers of this special issue, will focus on the need to integrate different interdisciplinary methods at different phases in the development process of computerized support systems, with the ultimate goal to prevent work environment problems and decrease the health risks to the users.