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The Politics of Usability

A Practical Guide to Designing Usable Systems in Industry

  • Book
  • © 1998

Overview

Authors:
  1. Lesley Trenner

    1. IT Strategic Planning, Glaxo Wellcome Medicines Research Centre, Stevenage, UK

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Joanna Bawa

    1. Watford, UK

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • A useful and readable guide to designing usable computer systems in industry * Written by usability professionals from a variety of non-IT organisations who have dealt with the issues involved in getting started and seeing the project though * Consists of short, readable chapters, which include relevant anecdotes and summaries of the main points

Part of the book series: Practitioner Series (PRACT.SER.)

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxii
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  2. The Politics of Funding: Justifying Your Existence

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Making a Business Case for Usability and Beyond — the Fight for Survival

      • Chris Nodder
      Pages 3-19

    3. Selling Usability Services

      • Dermot Browne
      Pages 21-31

  3. The Politics of Set Up: What to Do with the Money once You Have Got it

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33
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    2. Overcoming Inertia within a Large Organization

      • Tasnim Kaderbhai
      Pages 35-48

    3. Integrating Usability into Systems Development

      • Alison Crerar, David Benyon
      Pages 49-60

    4. A Structured Approach to User Interface Design

      • Dermot Browne, John Friend
      Pages 61-68

    5. Making Usability Part of the Culture

      • Janet Saunders, Alan Arnfeld
      Pages 69-82

  4. The Politics of Survival: Keeping Usability on the Political Map

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 83-83
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    2. A Change is as Good as a Test

      • Maggie Williams
      Pages 85-97

    3. Consultants with Clout

      • Cathy Thomas
      Pages 99-110

    4. Cultivating an Effective Client Relationship to Promote a User-Centred Culture

      • Nichole Simpson
      Pages 111-124

  5. The Politics of Expansion: How to Work Effectively on an International, Multi-Cultural Level

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125
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    2. “Oh, so That’s the Way You Do it over There!”

      • Ingrid K. Towey
      Pages 127-142

    3. Spreading the Word: Introducing Usability Evaluation on an International Scale

      • Joanna Bawa
      Pages 143-155

    4. Standards and Style Guides — a Cross-Cultural Perspective

      • Tom Stewart
      Pages 157-167

    5. Usability Practice in the United States: Perception versus Reality

      • Patricia Dorazio
      Pages 169-181

    6. Round the World in 18 Days

      • Susan M. Dray, Lawrence R. Rowland
      Pages 183-190

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 191-194
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Keywords

About this book

Why This Book, Why Now? It is now widely recognized that in the development of IT systems, the technology­ driven focus of the past has been eclipsed by a concern for user satisfaction and user productivity. It is well known that usability engineering helps make systems easier to use and more relevant to business needs. The benefits of producing usable computer systems have been proven in careful dollar or pound calculations and any computer user who has interacted with a system designed for usability will enthuse about the benefits and refuse to go back to the bad old days. More and more organizations are starting to take usability seriously. Along with Microsoft and Apple and other IT organizations, we now find banks, insur­ ance companies, multi-national pharmaceuticals and many other non-IT corpora­ tions starting to "do something about usability". It seems as if there is plenty of material explaining how to do it. HCI (Human Computer Interaction - or CHI, Computer Human Interaction in the USA) has been studied in academia for several years and there are a range of books on usability engineering for practi­ tioners from systems engineering and user interface design to usability evaluation. However, as many practitioners have found, although you do need to understand the theories and be familiar with the techniques, applying them in a commercial context is not a straightforward matter.

Authors and Affiliations

  • IT Strategic Planning, Glaxo Wellcome Medicines Research Centre, Stevenage, UK

    Lesley Trenner

  • Watford, UK

    Joanna Bawa

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Politics of Usability

  • Book Subtitle: A Practical Guide to Designing Usable Systems in Industry

  • Authors: Lesley Trenner, Joanna Bawa

  • Series Title: Practitioner Series

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1530-4

  • Publisher: Springer London

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag London Limited 1998

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-540-76181-5Published: 21 May 1998

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4471-1530-4Published: 06 December 2012

  • Series ISSN: 1439-9245

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXII, 194

  • Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, Business and Management, general

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