Why This Book, Why Now? It is now widely recognized that in the development of IT systems, the technology driven focus of the past has been eclipsed by a concern for user satisfaction and user productivity. It is well known that usability engineering helps make systems easier to use and more relevant to business needs. The benefits of producing usable computer systems have been proven in careful dollar or pound calculations and any computer user who has interacted with a system designed for usability will enthuse about the benefits and refuse to go back to the bad old days. More and more organizations are starting to take usability seriously. Along with Microsoft and Apple and other IT organizations, we now find banks, insur ance companies, multi-national pharmaceuticals and many other non-IT corpora tions starting to "do something about usability". It seems as if there is plenty of material explaining how to do it. HCI (Human Computer Interaction - or CHI, Computer Human Interaction in the USA) has been studied in academia for several years and there are a range of books on usability engineering for practi tioners from systems engineering and user interface design to usability evaluation. However, as many practitioners have found, although you do need to understand the theories and be familiar with the techniques, applying them in a commercial context is not a straightforward matter.

A useful and readable guide to designing usable computer systems in industry Written by usability professionals from a variety of non-IT organisations who have dealt with the issues involved in getting started and seeing the project though Consists of short, readable chapters, which include relevant anecdotes and summaries of the main points

Inhalt
1 The Politics of Funding: Justifying Your Existence.- 1. Making a Business Case for Usability and Beyond the Fight for Survival.- 2. Selling Usability Services.- 2 The Politics of Set Up: What to Do with the Money once You Have Got it.- 3. Overcoming Inertia within a Large Organization.- 4. Integrating Usability into Systems Development.- 5. A Structured Approach to User Interface Design.- 6. Making Usability Part of the Culture.- 3 The Politics of Survival: Keeping Usability on the Political Map.- 7. A Change is as Good as a Test.- 8. Consultants with Clout.- 9. Cultivating an Effective Client Relationship to Promote a User-Centred Culture.- 4 The Politics of Expansion: How to Work Effectively on an International, Multi-Cultural Level.- 10. Oh, so That's the Way You Do it over There!.- 11. Spreading the Word: Introducing Usability Evaluation on an International Scale.- 12. Standards and Style Guides A Cross-Cultural Perspective.- 13. Usability Practice in the United States: Perception versus Reality.- 14. Round the World in 18 Days.