System designer assessments of role play as a design method

摘要

In this paper we present a system designer perspective on advantages, limitations and applicability of role play as a system development method. The empirical material is obtained through discussions, interviews and written comments from 62 system designers who have taken part in one of seven workshops on role play in the period 2002 to 2005. The system designers included system developers, organizational developers, interaction designers, and computer science students. The study shows that role play is perceived as useful for (i) making end users active participants in the development process, (ii) creating a focus on user needs, (iii) fast idea creation in early phases of a project, and (iv) enhancing the developers' understanding of the future context-of-use. However, role play is not perceived as sufficient to create an overall understanding of a system.