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This paper describes our experiences from a system development project at a Swedish government organisation. The primarily task in the project was to complement the organisations system development method with methods concerning usability, user centeredness and work environment, in purpose facilitate the development of usable IT-systems and a healthy work. We set focus on the future users in a very early stage in a development process engaging future users in comprehensive seminar process. They were there encouraged to propose their own future healthy work. Throughout the process, focus was on user centeredness and a future healthy work. More general, we have developed a method, vision seminars, for user centred specification of future work with a focus on organisational development and a healthy work.

The Vision Seminar Process is a process for developing an efficient, sustainable, IT-supported future work and a tool for proving a solid basis for the development of IT systems. The process provides a framework where practitioners and designers cooperate in the design of both sustainable work and usable IT systems. A practical approach is provided to facilitate for practitioners' reflective in-depth analysis of their work practices as well as to question and discuss their entire work situation and organization.

This report gives a practical and basic description of the process procedure based on experiences from several projects where the process has been carried out in different contexts and organizations.

The main research objective for the VIHO project (Efficient Computer Support in Care for the Elderly) was to investigate how a home care and help service organization can be developed in order to be better prepared for future challenges, and how new technical systems could support the development process. We have studied the home help personnel’s need for support and investigated how the new organization could be formed in order to provide a healthy and sustainable work. Initial focus has been on the essential parts of the work and how the work could be improved in the future, and not on design of the technical support systems. Our basic point of view has been that correctly used, new technology can contribute, so that work and organisation develops in a positive way, patients are feeling secure and the personnel’s work environment is improved. This means that the organisation better can fulfil expectations and requirements. The professions can be strengthened and the organisation will be able to meet future challenges. In this report we briefly describe the results and the methods used in the project.

This paper illustrates how a participatory design process has developed as a result of empirical studies with workers. The view on design as a process presented here necessitates an explicit analysis of work where both workers and designers participate. The analysis gives workers a possibility to reflect on present and future work practices and to evaluate effects in advance. Moreover, it provides designers insights that facilitate design of support systems that match work complexity. It has often been argued that the full potential of a new IT-support system is not reached, but that only old work procedures are preserved. It is one of the purposes of our work re-design process to support creative changes of different nature. To ascertain that the complexity of work is acknowledged and that work redesign is enabled in the design process, we recommend that workers participate to a much higher degree than present. During a number of projects this process has successively developed. In this paper, the process is described, together with a selection of cases where it has been applied. Important experiences are the need for extensive user participation in the design process and the time and resources the process must be given.

The main research objective for the VIHO project (Efficient Computer Support in Care for the Elderly) was to investigate how a home care and help service organization can be developed in order to be better prepared for future challenges, and how new technical systems could support the development process. We have studied the home help personnel’s need for support and investigated how the new organization could be formed in order to provide a healthy and sustainable work. Initial focus has been on the essential parts of the work and how the work could be improved in the future, and not on design of the technical support systems. Our basic point of view has been that correctly used, new technology can contribute, so that work and organisation develops in a positive way, patients are feeling sequre and the personnel’s work environment is improved. This means that the organisation better can fulfil expectations and requirements. The professions can be strengthened and the organisation will be able to meet future challanges. In this report we briefly describe the results and the methods used in the project.

In this report we give an overview of usability aspects applicable to mobile devices and systems. A number of research projects from three different application areas are presented and experiences from the projects are discussed.

To successfully design usable products, services and systems both for leisure and for mobile work practice has turned out to be a difficult undertaking. Many systems fail because of a number of reasons. Some systems do not fail, but remains difficult and cumbersome to use.

A certain immaturity can be observed since developers and designers do not fully utilise the benefits and assets provided by today’s technology in design of mobile systems. For mobile systems, the varying contexts of use become more important. When only relying on existing knowledge of design for stationary systems, important possibilities are often lost and the system has gone astray.

Today, mobile technology is making its entry into working life within all sorts of occupations. When the purpose of the technology is to support mobile work, new requirements appear – for both the technology itself and for the emerging new work processes – as a result of these new conditions. Consequently, the introduction of a new IT system will affect the organisation and the way work is performed. This thesis addresses these changes in work processes and ways to provide a supporting IT system. An underlying component of my research work is the belief that the personnel from the organisation itself must participate in a large extent when developing new work processes and when designing supporting IT systems, since they will be using the IT system as a tool in their future work practice.

To understand the nature of mobility in a work context and how it affects usability in IT systems, I have initiated studies of the area where mobile work is supported by technology. Important characteristics have been found that affect mobile work. My research work has concerned traditional professions, primarily professions within mobile healthcare.

An exhaustive study of how to design new work processes within the area of home care of the elderly has been carried out, accompanied by field studies of mobile work within the mobile healthcare sector. The results have been described in terms of aspects of future work processes that are effective and sustainable. Moreover, important characteristics of mobile technology that support this kind of mobile work have been identified. The two perspectives are then merged, in order to design usable IT systems for mobile work.