At each stage of design, user-centred activities are essential in order to understand and specify the user and organisational needs, so that potential design solutions can be evaluated against these needs. There are five essential types of activity (based on the ISO standard 13407) which will make up the main part of this document.

1. Plan the User centred process
2. Understand and specify the context of use
3. Specify the user and organisational requirements
4. Develop user interface and produce prototypes
5. Carry out user based assessment

This document has been created because the EMMUS project understands that within the multimedia industry, people have different requirements from the practitioning of usability. As an example, if you are intending to commission some usability work, you may wish to know rough details of the processes, but will be more interested in what results you will get (in which case you would wish to view our Client's page). However if you wish to conduct some usability work yourself, you would really need to know a lot of information about the tools (as provided in the Human Factors Index). Our aim is to provide you with what you want to know about the user centred design process.

We have developed four distinct documents to cover the different requirements from the user-centred design process, highlighting important issues. Follow the links below to go to the document that you feel will be most suitable for your needs, or to see a more detailed explanation of the document views,visit "Who is this collection aimed at?"

Client's View

"Understanding the interaction between Multimedia, usability and the Multimedia developer"

Developer's View

"Communicating with the client to get it right first time, and avoid unnecessary changes late on in development"

Multimedia Manager's View

"How to employ usability to improve productivity"

Human Factor's View

"How to apply the methods, and how to sell them to Managers and Clients"