Analyzing the Role of Organizational Culture in the Implementation of User-Centered Design - Disentangling the Culture Construct

摘要

Usability is an important quality characteristic of a software product or system. User-centered design (UCD) is an approach focusing on making systems usable. Improving the position of UCD in organizations has proven out to be a challenge. Organizational culture has been defined as an influential factor affecting the successes and failures of organizational improvement efforts. However, there does not exist studies of the effects and consequences of organizational culture in the implementation of UCD. In addition, there exists a lack of methods and theoretical models with which to reliably and systematically analyze organizational culture in relation to improvement efforts. Due to this, this paper analyzes the concept of organizational culture in order to derive relevant levels and aspects of culture to be investigated in the prospective research. Empirical illustrations are offered of the aspects suggested for the analysis.