User Centered Design in Practice - Problems and Possibilities

A case study in human-centred design
The Swedish National Employment Service - AMS
Designing a graphical user interface for the new AMS
Information System - AIS.
Nigel Claridge (nigel.claridge@nomos.se)
Tomas Berns (tomas.berns@nomos.se)
Nomos Management AB
www.nomos.se
Introduction
The Swedish National Employment Service - AMS developed a new computer system the
objective of which was to support the Swedish employment process, career counseling
and job-related rehabilitation. It was to be used by some 10 000 Swedish employment
officers on a daily basis as it contained information about employers, job vacancies and a
register of all job seekers. In the future, members of the public will have access to parts of
the system through the Internet.
By November 1995, a prototype Windows-based user interface had been developed
internally but there were some serious concerns about its usability. AMS commissioned
that interface to be evaluated for usability by external independent usability consultants.
Both expert inspections and a user testing method were applied. Results indicated clearly
that the then current interface did not support the efficient and effective execution of tasks.
Based on these results AMS decided to halt the interface development process and restart
design.
This short paper gives an overview of the user-centered design process that was
applied in the development of AIS from November 1995. The subsequent user-centered
design activities that were carried out are briefly described together with some of the
benefits they had for the development as a whole.
The actual work carried out included the following activities: Context analysis of
AIS, an Expert (heuristic) evaluation on AIS, measurable goal formulation, a Parallel
design activity to create a new user interface design concept, design support activities,
three iterations of user-based testing on the new AIS design concept, a SUMI evaluation
on the current AF-90 system and all iterations during the development process. A series
of focus groups were run early in development to glean functional requirements from endusers
and then later in development to establish possible reasons preventing a smooth
introduction of the new AIS system to the workplace.
42 (85) CID-40 • User Centered Design in Practice