The effects of user involvement: some personality determinants

A number of studies have been conducted with the purpose of confirming or disconfirming the general argument that user involvement in information system development is beneficial. Few studies have been undertaken, however, to support the view that the benefits of user involvement are affected by conditions surrounding systems development. This paper presents the results of a field study investigating the moderating influence of four user personality characteristics on the effects of user involvement on user information satisfaction. The relationship between user involvement and user information satisfaction was the most positive for users who were tolerant of ambiguity, and for users with a high need for achievement. An unexpected finding was that the relationship between user involvement and user information satisfaction was more positive for users with external-control beliefs than for users with internal-control beliefs. Degree of users' dogmatism had no impact on the outcome of user involvement.     

A Generalised Approach to Similarity-Based Retrieval in Recommender Systems

Recommender systems for helping users to selectfrom available products or services areincreasingly common in electronic commerce. Typically in case-based reasoning (CBR)approaches to product recommendation, the itemsrecommended are those that are most similar toa target query representing the elicitedrequirements of the user. Usually in practice,the user is required to specify a singlepreferred value for each attribute in thequery. However, we argue that a more flexibleapproach to requirements elicitation isnecessary to meet the needs of different users,ranging from those who know exactly what theyare looking for to those whose requirements arevague in the extreme. We show how the standardapproach to similarity-based retrieval can begeneralised to support queries in which theuser can enter any number of preferred valuesof a selected attribute, and examine thepotential benefits of the approach.     

User involvement in system design: An empirical test of alternative approaches

User involvement in the development of information systems is often assumed to be key to successful implementation. However, few empirical studies have clearly demonstrated a relationship between user involvement and two key indicators of system success: system usage and user information satisfaction. The authors test the general hypothesis that user involvement is a more complex concept than previous research would indicate; there are different types of involvement and different stages in the system development life cycle in which users may become involved. In a study of 83 users in 23 companies, they found that only the activity of user sign-offs on project phases had a significant correlation with both user information satisfaction and satisfaction with the information systems group. The authors conclude that there is a complex relationship between the type and degree of user involvement and other organizational and individual factors; this relationship affects both user satisfaction with and usage of the resulting systems. Some suggestions for further research taking this complexity into account are given.     

The relationship between user participation and system success: a simultaneous contingency approach

The relationship between user participation and information system (IS) success has drawn attention from researchers for some time. It is assumed that strong participation of future users in the design of IS would lead to successful outcomes in terms of more IS usage, greater user acceptance, and increased user satisfaction. However, in spite of this, much of the empirical research so far has been unable to demonstrate its benefits. This paper examines the participation–success relationship in a broader context, where the effects of user participation and two other factors, user attitudes and user involvement, on system success occur simultaneously. Other contingency variables considered here are: system impact, system complexity, and development methodology. The theoretical framework and the associated hypotheses are empirically tested by a survey of 32 organizations. Empirical results corroborate the positive link between user participation and user satisfaction and provide evidence on the interplay between user attitudes and user involvement.     

Medical device development: the challenge for ergonomics

High quality, well-designed medical devices are necessary to provide safe and effective clinical care for patients as well as to ensure the health and safety of professional and lay device users. Capturing the user requirements of users and incorporating these into design is an essential component of this. The field of ergonomics has an opportunity to assist, not only with this area, but also to encourage a more general consideration of the user during medical device development. A review of the literature on methods for assessing user requirements in engineering and ergonomics found that little published work exists on the ergonomic aspects of medical device development. In particular there is little advice available to developers on which issues to consider during design and development or recommendations for good practice in terms of the methods and approaches needed to capture the full range of user requirements. The Multidisciplinary Assessment of Technology Centre for Health care (MATCH) is a research collaboration that is working in conjunction with industrial collaborators to apply ergonomics methods to real case study projects with the ultimate aim of producing an industry-focused guide to applying ergonomics principles in medical device development.     

The user–developer communication process: a critical case study

Abstract. Although user participation in systems development is widely believed to have positive impacts on user acceptance, it does not guarantee success and there is still much that we do not know about how and why user participation sometimes delivers positive benefits, but not always. Much of the prior research on user participation assumes that user–developer communication will ensure that the resulting system will be designed to meet users' needs and will be accepted by them. The nature and quality of the communication between users and developers, however, remains an understudied aspect of user participation. In this paper, we focus on the user–developer communication process. We propose a process model that delineates four stages of communication between users and software developers, and we argue that these stages must occur for user participation to lead to effective outcomes. To illustrate our model, we apply it to analyse a 'critical case study' of a software project that failed despite high levels of user involvement. We show that when 'communication lapses' occurred in several of the user–developer communication stages, developers failed to be informed regarding the underlying reasons that users avoided the system. Based on the insights from this case study, we advise researchers and practitioners how to leverage the potential benefits of user participation, rather than take them for granted.     

What users really think about the usability of smartphone applications: diversity based empirical investigation

In recent years, smartphone devices are becoming progressively popular across a diverse range of users. However, user diversity creates challenges in smartphone application (app) development. The diversity of users is often ignored by designers and developers due to the absence of requirements. Owing to this, many smartphone users face usability issues. Despite that, no dedicated platform found that guide smartphone app designers and developers regarding human universality. The aim of this research is to explore the requirements of diverse users in smartphone apps and provide usability guidelines. The objectives of this research are achieved by following two scientific approaches. The human diversity requirements are located by conducting usability tests that investigated the requirements in the form of usability issues. The systematic literature review (SLR) process is followed in order to resolve the discovered usability issues. Both approaches resulted in a list of usability issues and guidelines. The usability tests returned 27 problems while the SLR came with a comprehensive set of universal usability guidelines that were grouped into eleven categories. The study concluded with some major outcomes. The results show evidence of critical usability problems that must be addressed during the design and development of smartphone apps. Moreover, the study also revealed that people with disabilities were three times severely affected by usability problems in such apps than people of different ages and their needs must be considered a top priority in the development of smartphone apps.

     

‘Representing the User’ in software development—a cultural analysis of usability work in the product development context

It is widely accepted that users should be involved in the development of interactive systems. However, involving users in interactive systems development is challenging, especially in product development. The organizational culture is a key factor affecting the successes and failures of organizational change and development efforts. This paper shows how user involvement is intertwined with the organizational cultures in a case study of five software development organizations. User involvement is indirect in the case organizations, and labeled as usability work. Using cross case analysis, four ‘cultures of usability work’ are identified. The cultures have distinct cultural characteristics, employ different approaches to usability work, and have different preferences and strategies for the prospective facilitation of usability work. Sensitivity to the cultural context is identified as an important consideration in the facilitation of usability work, and culturally compatible strategies for usability work in different cultural settings are identified. The paper concludes that there might not be one ‘best, universally valid, context free way’ of introducing and carrying out usability work in software product development organizations.     

An integrative approach to requirements analysis: How task models support requirements reuse in a user-centric design framework

Many software systems fail to address their intended purpose because of a lack of user involvement and requirements deficiencies. This paper discusses the elaboration of a requirements-analysis process that integrates a critical-parameter-based approach to task modeling within a user-centric design framework. On one hand, adapting task models to capture requirements bridges the gap between scenarios and critical parameters which benefits design from the standpoint of user involvement and accurate requirements. On the other hand, using task models as a reusable component leverages requirements reuse which benefits design by increasing quality while simultaneously reducing development costs and time-to-market. First, we present the establishment of both a user-centric and reuse-centric requirements process along with its implementation within an integrated design tool suite. Secondly, we report the design, procedures, and findings of two user studies aimed at assessing the feasibility for novice designers to conduct the process as well as evaluating the resulting benefits upon requirements-analysis deliverables, requirements quality, and requirements reuse.     

User involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems

Information systems (IS) research on user involvement has primarily theorized relationships between developers, managers and users in systems development. However, so far, marginal attention has been paid to differences in user involvement practices between information systems. This paper explores user involvement in developing mobile and temporarily interconnected systems (MTIS). We refer to MTIS as heterogeneous systems that rely on network technologies for increasing the ubiquity of information services for users on the move. Such systems are becoming increasingly important in leveraging, e.g. car infotainment, supply chain management and wireless e‐commerce. With particular emphasis on the nature of MTIS and its implications for user involvement, the paper analyses the systems development process of an action research project. The findings suggest that user involvement practices need to be adapted to accommodate features of this class of systems. Being an early attempt to trace the implications of technology features such as use context switches and temporary system relationships, the paper contributes to the development of an updated theory of the user role in an era of increased system complexity and stakeholder ambiguity.     

Effective user involvement in product development by improving the analysis of user needs

User involvement has been shown to be beneficial in the development of useful and usable systems. The trend of software development becoming a product-oriented activity creates challenges to user involvement. Field studies appear a promising approach, but the analysis of the gathered user needs has been shown to be demanding. This study presents, on the basis of seven case studies, an early user-involvement process showing how user needs can be analysed and how the input to product development can be identified. In addition, the process is evaluated in two industrial cases with interviews and a questionnaire. The results show that the process supports effective early user involvement; the resulted requirements were evaluated as being more successful and their quality as better than average in a company. However, the case studies show that user involvement not only provides useful information about users' needs but also increases the understanding of users' values.     

Effective Communication in Requirements Elicitation: A Comparison of Methodologies

The elicitation or communication of user requirements comprises an early and critical but highly error-prone stage in system development. Socially oriented methodologies provide more support for user involvement in design than the rigidity of more traditional methods, facilitating the degree of user–designer communication and the ‘capture’ of requirements. A more emergent and collaborative view of requirements elicitation and communication is required to encompass the user, contextual and organisational factors. From this accompanying literature in communication issues in requirements elicitation, a four-dimensional framework is outlined and used to appraise comparatively four different methodologies seeking to promote a closer working relationship between users and designers. The facilitation of communication between users and designers is subject to discussion of the ways in which communicative activities can be ‘optimised’ for successful requirements gathering, by making recommendations based on the four dimensions to provide fruitful considerations for system designers.     

Exploring the relationship between total quality management and information systems development

This study examines a series of relationships between total quality management (TQM) and information systems (IS) development. Specifically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will be different in their approaches to IS development. Our findings suggest that where TQM is adopted more fully, there will be a significant impact on four areas of IS development: system goals; system design philosophy/concepts; assumptions made by IS professionals about system users and user involvement in system development. We also report evidence that both TQM and IT may require similar organizational cultures.     

User viewpoint modelling: understanding and representing user viewpoints during requirements definition

There has been increasing awareness of the impact of the early stages of systems development on the quality of information systems. A critical early activity is requirements definition, when the requirements for an information system are determined. Traditional requirements capture techniques do not support the collaborative nature of requirements definition or the emergent nature of requirements themselves. This paper focuses on viewpoint development as a means of resolving some of the difficulties of requirements definition. It proposes a user viewpoint model for capturing and representing the viewpoints of users during requirements acquisition. The model can facilitate communication and interaction between analysts and users and help build a shared understanding of requirements. It can be used to structure the requirements acquisition process. The model provides for evaluation of requirements acquisition techniques to guide the selection of appropriate techniques for developing user viewpoint models. The paper reports a multiple-case study of requirements definition efforts that examined user viewpoint development in practice and used the cases to validate empirically the concepts of the user viewpoint model. The implications of the case study findings for requirements definition practice are discussed, and some areas for future research are identified.     

User Involvement in Automatic Filtering: An Experimental Study

The aim in information filtering is to provide users with a personalised selection of information, based on their interest profile. In adaptive information filtering, this profile partially or completely acquired by automatic means. This paper investigates if profile generation can be partially acquired by automatic methods and partially by direct user involvement. The issue is explored through an empirical study of a simulated filtering system that mixes automatic and manual profile generation. The study covers several issues involved in mixed control. The first issue concerns if a machine-learned profile can provide better filtering performance if generated from an initial explicit user profile. The second issue concerns if user involvement can improve on a system-generated or adapted profile. Finally, the relationship between filtering performance and user ratings is investigated. In this particular study the initial setup of a personal profile was effective and yielded performance improvements that persisted after substantiate training. However, the study showed no correlation between users’ ratings of profiles and profile filtering performance, and only weak indications that users could improve profiles that already had been trained on feedback.     

TADEUS: seamless development of task-based and user-orientedinterfaces

Task-based and user-oriented user interfaces utilize knowledge about user tasks and user characteristics to the utmost extent. They support users throughout their work flows, and must be constructed by a development process that avoids loss of application context and involves user feedback, from requirements specification to code generation. The concepts behind the task analysis/design/end users systems (TADEUS) approach to enable seamless task-based development are a semantically rich representation scheme, a model-driven development procedure, a diagrammatic notation and unifying specification scheme. Thus, interactive applications can be developed seamlessly. Specifications comprise problem domain knowledge, work processes, user roles and personal profiles, as well as interaction modalities (required for task accomplishment). For user-interface prototyping the TADEUS environment contains a model interpreter that executes structure and behavior specifications. This way, early feedback on task-based portals can be provided by users. In this paper we detail the latest developments in the TADEUS project when implementing a work-process based usability life cycle. We review the underlying methodology and the features of the TADEUS environment, in order to demonstrate the benefits for developers and users resulting of smooth transition support for and between the different stages of development     

A systematic review on the relationship between user involvement and system success

ContextFor more than four decades it has been intuitively accepted that user involvement (UI) during system development lifecycle leads to system success. However when the researchers have evaluated the user involvement and system success (UI-SS) relationship empirically, the results were not always positive.ObjectiveOur objective was to explore the UI-SS relationship by synthesizing the results of all the studies that have empirically investigated this complex phenomenon.MethodWe performed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following the steps provided in the guidelines of Evidence Based Software Engineering. From the resulting studies we extracted data to answer our 9 research questions related to the UI-SS relationship, identification of users, perspectives of UI, benefits, problems and challenges of UI, degree and level of UI, relevance of stages of software development lifecycle (SDLC) and the research method employed on the UI-SS relationship.ResultsOur systematic review resulted in selecting 87 empirical studies published during the period 1980–2012. Among 87 studies reviewed, 52 reported that UI positively contributes to system success, 12 suggested a negative contribution and 23 were uncertain. The UI-SS relationship is neither direct nor binary, and there are various confounding factors that play their role. The identification of users, their degree/level of involvement, stage of SDLC for UI, and choice of research method have been claimed to have impact on the UI-SS relationship. However, there is not sufficient empirical evidence available to support these claims.ConclusionOur results have revealed that UI does contribute positively to system success. But it is a double edged sword and if not managed carefully it may cause more problems than benefits. Based on the analysis of 87 studies, we were able to identify factors for effective management of UI alluding to the causes for inconsistency in the results of published literature.     

Eliciting user requirements using Appreciative inquiry

For decades and still today, software development projects have failed because they do not meet the needs of users, are over-budget, and abandoned. To help address this problem, the user requirements elicitation process was modified based on principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry, commonly used in organizational development, aims to build organizations, processes, or systems based on success stories using a hopeful vision for an ideal future. In four studies, Appreciative Inquiry was evaluated for its effectiveness with eliciting user requirements in different circumstances. In the first two studies, it was compared with brainstorming, a traditional approach, with end-users (study 1) and proxy-users (study 2). The third study was a quasi-experiment comparing the use of Appreciative Inquiry in different phases in the software development cycle (study 3). The final (fourth) study combined all lessons learned using Appreciative Inquiry in a cross-case comparison study of 3 cases to gain additional understanding of the requirements gathered during various project phases. In each of the four studies, the requirements gathered, developer and user attitudes, and the Appreciative Inquiry process itself were evaluated. Requirements were evaluated for their quantity and type regardless of whether they were implemented or not. Attitudes were evaluated for commitment to the requirements and project using process feedback. The Appreciative Inquiry process was evaluated with differing groups, projects, and project phases to determine how and when it is best applied. Potentially interceding factors were also evaluated including: team effectiveness, Emotional Intelligence, and perceived stress. Appreciative Inquiry produced positive results for the participants, the requirements obtained, and the general requirements eliciting-process. Appreciative Inquiry demonstrated benefits to the requirements gathered by increasing the number of unique requirements as well as identifying more quality-based (non-functional) and forward-looking requirements. It worked best when there was time for participants to reflect on the thought-provoking questions and when the facilitator was knowledgeable of the subject-matter and had extra time to extract and translate the requirements. The participants (end-users and developers) expressed improved project understanding. End-users participated consistently with immediate buy-in and enthusiasm, especially those users who were technically-inhibited. We conclude that Appreciative Inquiry can augment existing methods by presenting a positive and future aspect for a proposed system resulting in improved user requirements.     

Designing a personal informatics system for users without experience in self-tracking: a case study

Thanks to the advancements in ubiquitous and wearable technologies, Personal Informatics (PI) systems can now reach a larger audience of users. However, it is not still clear whether this kind of tool can fit the needs of their daily lives. Our research aims at identifying specific barriers that may prevent the widespread adoption of PI and finding solutions to overcome them. We requested users without competence in self-tracking to use different PI instruments during their daily practices, identifying five user requirements by which to design novel PI tools. On such requirements, we developed a new system that can stimulate the use of these technologies, by enhancing the perceived benefits of collecting personal data. Then, we explored how naïve and experienced users differently explore their personal data in our system through a user trial. Results showed that the system was successful at helping individuals manage and interpret their own data, validated the usefulness of the requirements found and inspired three further design opportunities that could orient the design of future PI systems.     

An approach to user knowledge acquisition in product design

As the world increasingly moves towards a knowledge-based economy, user requirements become an important factor for enterprises to drive product collaborative design evolution. To map user requirements to the product model, user requirements are generally extracted into knowledge that can be used for design decisions. However, because users are interest-driven participants and not professional design engineers, the effect of user knowledge acquisition is not ideal. There are significant challenges for rapid knowledge acquisition with dynamic user requirements. This paper presents an approach to user knowledge acquisition in the product design process, which obtains the tangible requirements of users under the premise that users are adequate for participation. In this approach, the typical information flow is divided into four stages: submission, interaction, knowledge discovery, and model evolution. In the submission stage, natural language processing technology is used to transform text form solutions into data, so that computer technology can be applied to manage large-scale user requirements. In the interaction stage, users are helped to improve their solutions by the iterative recommendation process. In the knowledge discovery stage, after less concerned partial solutions are removed and vacant items are predicted to be supplemented, the final collection of user design information is obtained. Finally, based on rough set theory, design knowledge can be extracted to support the decision of the product model. The washing machine design project is used as a case study to explain the implementation of the proposed approach.