How do you do usability work when no usability expertise is available? What happens in an organization when system developers, with no previous HCI knowledge, after a 3-day course, start applying usability methods, and particularly field studies? In order to answer these questions qualitative data were gathered through participatory observations, a feed back survey, field study documentation and interviews from 47 system developers from a public authority. Our results suggest that field studies enhance the developer's understanding of the user perspective, and provide a more holistic overview of the use situation, but that some developers were unable to interpret their observations and see solutions to the users' problems. The field study method was very much appreciated and has now become standard operating procedure within the organization. However, although field studies may be useful, it does not replace the need for usability pro fes sion als, as their knowledge is essential for more complex observations, analysis and for keeping the focus on usability.

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

Some organizations fail to involve users in systems development due to a widespread organization, high workload or secrecy issues. A remedy against this situation could be the persona method in which users and main stakeholders as represented as fictitious characters. Personas help eliciting user needs and requirements, facilitate design choices and are an overall communication aid where users cannot be present. An important part of the persona method, as portrayed in literature, is the personal details that make the personas trustworthy and alive. In this paper we present two cases in which personas have been developed and used, but where the personal is scarce or even non-existent because of a dispersed organisation, the organisational culture and secrecy issues. The paper describes how the personas were developed, used and received and how the method was altered in order to work in these special circumstances.

The problem of how to implement user-centred design (UCD) is well established as a research topic within HCI. Yet there are unresolved issues in order for UCD to actually be used in practice. This paper will present a case study within the Swedish Defence, concerning the introduction of UCD. The overarching goal of the research was to bridge the gap between work practices and systems development; focusing the efforts on introducing usability in the procurement process. We concluded early on that we needed to develop and formulate an approach that is probably common in practice but not described or used in research. We call this strategy UCD guerrilla tactics. It is to do the unexpected, to introduce UCD through UCD and to choose change projects pragmatically. Our main target group was future users and procurers of UCD methods. We aimed at introducing UCD to them by demonstrating and involving them in the work through user centred activities. It is also a flexible approach based on continuous evaluation of what is feasible and potentially gives the largest outcome. This paper describes the guerrilla tactics, how it was applied in a case study and factors that should be considered when using it.

This paper presents a longitudinal case study in which six Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers worked extensively in an action research cooperation with a public authority over a period of four years. The purpose of the cooperation was to increase the focus on usability in the authority, and the main research question was how user centered systems design and increased awareness on work environment in relation to computer usage could promote organizational change in a public authority. The overarching research approach in this project has been action research and the data used in this paper is derived from an evaluation performed at the end of the project, as well as through our experiences from working with the project. The results involve aspects relating to organizational issues, management support, strategic documents and end-user participation. Moreover the results include methodological support for bringing users and developers closer together and individual and organizational attitudes to development. The purpose of this paper is to make some general conclusions on how to bring about change when approaching a large public authority with the purpose of introducing usability and user centered systems design.