This paper shows how to combine a substantial part of the product development cycle of interactive devices into a single, co-ordinated approach. Much can be derived automatically from a suitable specification of the interactive device, and it can be derived automatically. Normal product development has a device specified and built, then has its manuals written, then it is used and tested. At this late stage design problems may be identified, but it is now too late: usability studies become academic in so far as the particular product is concerned, since it is already effectively in production. It would be better if the testing and manual writing could rapidly be obtained from the initial specification, before any investment has been made in fabrication. This paper offers a design approach that achieves this, and it shows how the various views of the design can be used help improve each other --- for instance, the automatically generated user manual can be fed back to suggest improvements in the design. A microwave

As a User Centred Design group placed centrally in a larger company, one is regularly confronted with the question of transferring competence to other functions within the organisation. These requests will be motivated by the need for expanding the activities or spreading the mind-set of user orientation. Frequently regular development and marketing staff move into usability related tasks and look for training. So, it is not seldom that we as user centred design specialists are asked upon to convey our skills to others. An activity which is likely to fall in a dilemma between teaching 'easy-to-learn methods' (methods which are cooked up by others and a bit old - from when we did a presentation last) or a user centred design attitude (so that the learners can design their own methods through continuous experimenting and learning). The latter is definitely richer but much more difficult to convey. This is the dilemma we would like to address in our position paper. Work practices are rapidly changing User Centred Design is a very fast moving field, both technologically and in terms of work practices for design and user involvement. If we want to stay on the leading edge we need to adopt a practice of continuous experimentation and improvement of the way of involving users in product development. The Danfoss User Centred Design group has worked with user involvement in product development for eight years. Looking back, our methodology has changed radically over the years: Starting from a mechanical design methodology basis [Buur et.al. 1991] with user interviews, via a cognitive engineering approach [Rasmussen et.al. 1994] favouring usability testing, to a participatory design philosophy [Kyng & Greenbaum 1991] with user involvement in design workshops [Binder ; Brandt & H...

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How hard do users find interactive devices to use to achieve their goals, and how can we get this information early enough to influence design? We show that Markov modeling can obtain suitable measures, and we provide formulas that can be used for a large class of systems. We analyze and consider alternative designs for various real examples. We introduce a “knowledge/usability graph,” which shows the impact of even a small amount of knowledge for the user, and the extent to which designers ’ knowledge may bias their views of usability. Markov models can be built into design tools, and can therefore be made very convenient for designers to utilize. One would hope that in the future, design tools would include such mathematical analysis, and no new design skills would be required to evaluate devices. A particular concern of this paper is to make the approach accessible. Complete program code and all the underlying mathematics are provided in appendices to enable others to replicate and test all results shown.