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6. CONCLUSIONS
We find effective external design, in general, and interaction design, in particular, to be a challenging and engaging activity. When developing computer systems for humans, it is the human-computer interface that embodies all opportunities, values, information, knowledge, and feelings that the user will experience when using the system. We claim that there are many issues to be considered when performing interaction design and bridging the gap. We have called this the design space.
We are constantly striving to find new and better ways to collect the data needed for design. One difficulty lies in gaining access to all the implicit knowledge and the self-evident matters that exist in the minds of customers and users. This means that the design process can never be a simple transformation, because the customer and the users are never able to express all their needs in detail at the beginning of the design process. Therefore, the matter of design is to be able to collect enough facts to begin a discussion of the proposed design. We perform interaction design in this manner to ensure that important design decisions are made in cooperation with the customer and the users. This is important because those decisions effect costs in both the short and the long term and they affect users everyday activities.
From the customers and the users points of view, it is critical that all work concerning external design is focused on satisfying their needs, rather than satisfying a formal system specification. We have been using our methods for external design with users for all types of applications (e.g., public information systems, multimedia production systems, production-planning systems, products for homes, and for World Wide Web access). It is important that the method used for project management can accommodate a process of continuous learning and revision of the original system specification.
There is a great challenge in the future uses of computers. We strongly believe that the area of interaction design will benefit from expertise in areas such as architecture and commercial advertising, where knowledge about how to meet human emotional needs are taken seriously. We also hope that the area of interaction design will develop better means to respond to cultural and social values.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work described herein has benefited from the contributions of several colleagues in many different ways. In particular the authors would like to acknowledge the efforts of Anna Skevik, who founded the usability program at Linné Data in 1989.
8. REFERENCES
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