Towards a Usability Coaching Method for Institutionalizing Usability in Organisations

摘要

The ideas related to user centred systems design are difficult to implement in organisations and usability is given low priority in in-house systems development. This problem is multifaceted and complex and needs to be addressed with a method capable of adapting to situations, people and context. In this paper we outline a new method - usability coaching - that has the capability for dealing with the situated problems of introducing user centred systems development in an organisations. The method is the results of a larger action research case study in which 9 individuals in an organization received usability coaching. Our study indicates that the coaching program made coachees work more actively with usability activities; hence the coaching program had a substantial effect on their actions and contributed to the organizational change.