ACTABLE INFORMATION SYSTEMS - Quality ideals put into practice

摘要

The problem we are approaching in this paper is that the actions offered by information systems (IS) often seem to disharmonise with the actions performed in the work practice. Several researchers report lacks in IS use. For example, Haeegerfors (1994) claims that there is a lot of IS which is not fully usable in the context wherein they exist. Henderson & Kyng (1994) claims that there is a discrepancy between creation of IS and work situations. Bannon (1994) claims that there is need for a better understanding among researchers and system designers about users and their work settings. We need to understand people as actors with a set of skills and shared practices based on work experiences (ibid.) There are many different philosophies, methodologies or checklists aiming at supporting the information systems development (ISD) process. One of the most popular methodologies today is the object-oriented approach Rational Unified Process (RUP), (e.g. Kruchten, 1999). Another familiar methodology is Structure Analysis and Structure Design (SASD) (Yourdon, 1989). The tradition of participatory design has paid a lot of attention to user influence in the ISD process. Followers argue for a broad and genuine participation aiming at agreement of IS and work (Haegerfors, 1994). Carlshamre (1994) claims that participatory design is more of a philosophy than a methodology. Vonk (1990) discusses a prototyping approach and claims that this approach will put more attention to the user interface then traditional ISD methodologies do. In the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) area usability and IS are focused. In this area we can find checklists such as Nielsen's (1994) ten usability heuristics and usability models such as Shackel (1984) and Nielsen (1993). What they all seems to miss or at least not have in focus is the action character of the IS.