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5.2.3. The Right Tools for the Job: Using Converging Operations
Design of a system seems to require knowledge of all the system elements in order to begin the design, otherwise how can you correctly design any one element? Part of the answer to this dilemma lies in using multiple approaches to refine a design. Using iterative design with a variety of techniques puts special demands on the design process, and the next principles help guide the operations.
6. CONCLUSION
This chapter has reviewed one example of how the gap between user-centered analysis and concrete design can be bridged. Essentially, it suggested in both broad process terms, and in detailed data analysis, that the gap is bridged by transforming alternative representations for the end users world within a representational system. The process for creating this representational system can be facilitated by systematically creating mediating representations that reveal and link the represented world and the representing world. Placing the user at the heart of the process corrects for inherent biases in the designer as they go about the cognitive task of deciding what aspects of the represented world to model and how to model them in the representing world. In this way the magic of design is grounded in knowledge of the world and repeatedly tested with the people from whom that knowledge was derived.
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Betsy Comstock, Peter Nilsson, Kevin Simpson, Colin Smith, Dennis Wixon, and Larry Wood for comments on this chapter.
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