Why not use user-centred design methods in this new situation? As illustrated by Figure 1 below there are a few problems when trying to apply user-centred design methods (here we refer to the ISO 13407 standard). They are:

• the context of use model (as defined in ISO 9241) only applies to work contexts – organizational tasks and work processes do not have meanings in MMOG contexts
• the organizational requirements are hard to specify, because we are not talking about a company, nor product development
• the principle of actively involving users is hard to follow, because before launch there are no users, and after launch there are too many of them

Figure 1. Problems when trying to apply user-centred design methods

This model (for computer-mediated community) offers an alternative, strongly sociology-informed point of view to understand computer-mediated communities.

By mikael at 2006-02-23 16:24