Towards a Usability Coaching Method for Institutionalizing Usability in Organisations

Overview & Synopsis

The ideas related to user centred systems design are difficult to implement in organisations and usability is given low priority in in-house systems development. This problem is multifaceted and complex and needs to be addressed with a method capable of adapting to situations, people and context. In this paper we outline a new method - usability coaching - that has the capability for dealing with the situated problems of introducing user centred systems development in an organisations. The method is the results of a larger action research case study in which 9 individuals in an organization received usability coaching. Our study indicates that the coaching program made coachees work more actively with usability activities; hence the coaching program had a substantial effect on their actions and contributed to the organizational change.