As a follow-up to the successful Politics of Usability, this book deals with the ways in which HCI experts apply their knowledge within the pressured environment of the modern organisation. Quite apart from the need to provide a good usability service with little time or money, most HCI practitioners also have to deal with the day-to-day concerns of funding, budgets, project and people management, teamwork, communication and the promotion of HCI ideas. How to achieve this and still find new ways to make modern technology more usable is the central message of this book. The text offers a unique perspective on usability by concentrating on real situations and focuses on practical, workable approaches to professional duties rather than complicated systems of rules.

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Part I: dealing with organisational politics in an uncertain world: The Myth of Objectivity: Making the transition from ivory tower to real-world usability evaluation - William L Mitchell & Heather A Heathfield. No Usability Test is an Island: Is our expertise enough on its own? - Tim Westall. Who Moved my Lab: the effect of constant organisational changes on usability practice - Jose Coronado. 'What does that button do?' Effective usability project scheduling around complicated and unfamiliar technology - Avi Parush.- Part II: A new usability for new applications: adapting our skills, growing our role: 'I enjoyed that this much!' A technique for measuring usability in leisure-oriented applications - Patrizia Marti & Paola Lanzi. Caught between real and virtual worlds - Phil Turner & Susan Turner. The XMod Files: Defining and Designing the 'User Experience' - George M Donahue. Prototype and Archetypes: Coping with adult behaviour in the design of information systems for children - Mike Pringle. Prototypes in Web site design - representations with Political Agenda - Nick Bryan-kinns, Magnus Lif, Fraser Hamilton & Ismail Ismail.- Part III: Politics and New Media: the overwhelming importance of usability on the web: The Politics of Intranet usability: can one size fit all? - Rob Procter, Scott Gallacher & Robin Williams. Developing Intranets which people use: Making progress when everyone has an opinion - Lucy Suits & Lee Zukor. Getting Past the Home Page: Structuring Information with People in Mind - Karen Gunter. Strategies to make e-business more customer-centered - Richard Anderson & Jared Braiterman.