William Hudson talks to Namahn clients on "User-centred design with use case methods"

Some forty clients gathered in the library in the Namahn offices to listen to William Hudson describe his approach to user-centred design with use cases. Hudson, a software engineer, who runs his own design consultancy based in the UK, has extensive experience in designing interactive systems as well as being a writer and lecturer on the subject.

Methodologies employed in the software development process, such as the Rational Unified Process, as well as agile processes like eXtreme Programming are fundamentally system centred. Hudson introduced his listeners, many of whom were drawn from the software development field, to the principles of user-centred design and showed how it was possible to integrate this into all stages of the software development process.

He stressed the importance of the early creation of a conceptual model focused on the user rather than implementation issues. He then demonstrated how use cases can be employed to translate this abstract model into functional specifications to ensure that user requirements are included in the final product and the interface is an integral part of it. The increased understanding and integration between software developers and usability specialists afforded by this approach provides a significant benefit.