Summary

Many people who are involved in the creation of interfaces seem to know the following design principles, or at least consider them as obvious.

• Early focus on users

• Early -- and continual -- user testing

• Iterative design

• Integrated design

But is the theory applied in reality? This paper tries to analyze the influence of the organizational structure to interface design by studying two organizations.

The authors identify many problems: Distributed responsibilities lead to inconsistent designs. Physical distance, formal communication and communication channels limit the very necessary communication between developers, users and interface designers.

It also seems like that management prefers a clean hierarchical structure with defined communication channels over a lean, efficient structure.

In conclusion, even if someone wants to apply the design principles, it would be very hard in the described structures.

Best Things

Quotes from the involved people make the paper more vivid.

Detailed analysis of the structure, their influence and flaws.

Improvements

Summary box to sum up the main findings.

As mentioned in the paper: Only two "old" organizations are observed for one month.

Question to Authors

Do you think the paper did make the organizations think about restructuring?

Article Questions

1. Why was the Marketing considered as of limited use for the developers/interface designers?

2. Why is indirect and formal communication sometimes ineffective?

My Opinion

I liked the article. Sometimes the design principles seem quite useless because they are so obvious. But knowing them is one thing, be able to and allowed to apply them another.