Effectiveness of introducing Human-Centered Design process

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of introducing Human-Centered Design (HCD) into the development site of a company. In general, the effectiveness of HCD has been discussed over reductions of the total cost accrued during the development life cycle. However, reductions in cost do not always lead to a motivation for the development personnel on site. In order to analyze the effectiveness of introducing HCD at the “on-site level”, an experiment is implemented to have user interfaces (UIs) be designed though two different processes: HCD processes and existing processes. The results reveal that it is difficult to show the development personnel the effectiveness obtained from the introduction of HCD. However, the results also suggest that in an effort of spreading HCD throughout the organization under such circumstances, the key to understanding the effectiveness of HCD lies in identifying the issues in such activities as requirements analysis, UI design, and validation.