Accommodating Real User and Organisational Requirements in the Human Centered Design Process: A Case Study from the Mobile Phone Industry

This paper reports on the results of a case study that investigated how different stakeholder needs within an organisation can be taken into consideration alongside the needs of real users in the human-centered design process to improve product and service design. The case study focuses on the mobile phone industry and in particular the design of a new service that was to be used in the retail stores of a major mobile phone service provider. The results indicated that by including various organizational stakeholders (such as sales and marketing teams) in an early stage evaluation of a prototype design provides valuable insight to problems (as well as suggestions to improve design) that may not otherwise come to light until a crucial time period in the project and could have a concomitant effect on sales and marketing timelines associated with the project launch.