Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER
1
Why User-Centered
In data management, the needs of the underlying technology often appear most demanding: choosing
appropriate data formats, schema, and perhaps, importing data from heterogeneous sources into
consistent relational databases. At best, the user interface is an afterthought, and, at worst, users can
be seen as an inconvenience, people who may enter incorrect or inconsistent data and, therefore,
should be protected against.
It is also obvious that the data are really ultimately there for people to use or benefit from; in
other words, it is the users not the data that are important. However, it is easy for this ultimate purpose
of data to be overshadowed by the more immediate and unforgiving constraints of technology.
A user-centered approach puts people at the heart of design.This is not just about the aesthetics
of the screens “putting a nice user interface on it,” but it permeates every aspect of the design of a
system. If even the lowest-level of data is structured badly, it is very hard to create usable systems on
top of it, and 'bad' here does not mean in terms of some sort of internal consistency, but it is, more
fundamentally about being fit for purpose or fit for ultimate use.
This focus on the users is at the heart of user-centered design, in general. To some extent, user-
centered data management is simply an application of this focus on the users and can incorporate
general techniques that can be found in standard textbooks in the area (
Dix et al.
,
2004
;
Preece et al.
,
1994
;
Shneiderman et al.
,
2009
) and international standards, principally ISO 9241 and ISO 13407.
The rest of this first chapter gives a short introduction to some of these general principles.
Section
1.1
gives a short motivating example that demonstrate some of the pitfalls when systems
are designed without a user-centered focus. Section
1.2
then discusses the process of applying user-
centered design and Section
1.3
the general notion of 'usability.' Finally, Section
1.4
looks at the
cost-benefit trade-off when applying user-centered design, how to decide when you have done
enough work.
Although these general principles of user-centered design can be applied on a bespoke basis
to particular applications, there are also special issues that arise when we consider the users of
applications in data management and particular kinds of user interfaces. It is on this more specific
area of
user-centered data management
that we focus in the remainder of this lecture.
1.1
AN EXAMPLE - WHAT CAN GO WRONG?
To see why this focus on the user is so important, let's consider an example the authors encounter
repeatedly. We are academics on examination boards when student grades are being discussed. It is
common to see a departmental spreadsheet or bespoke database being used as the primary reference,
