Mind The Gap

In this book, I focus on the problem of HCI integration in contract development. This context poses particular challenges, mainly because two parties with different goals are involved – the procurer and the supplier. The user-centred design (UCD) process has often been assumed to belong to the supplier side. The suppliers have employed usability professionals and tried to integrate UCD into their development processes. By taking a procurement perspective instead, I question this assumption. I present three case studies that start with a survey of common problems in current procurement practice and end with trying out an approach to work with UCD in systems acquisition. While my interest initially concerned successful HCI integration, I also discuss how the suggested approach deals with several existing problems that procurers face. In particular, the approach links abstract business goals that any systems acquisition starts of with, to detailed systems requirements that it aims at defining. This facilitates for procurers to focus on the goals that the future system should help enable and linking these goals to the requirement specification that the contract is based on.