Involving Customer Relations in Contextual Design: a Case Study

This paper presents a case study in the form of a contextual design project, the aim of which was to design a system for a particular organization. The starting point in the case was a need in the organization for a specific system. The case involved an analysis of the organizations customer relations. Involving customer relations in the design project had a powerful effect: it was revealed that the system the organization believed they needed was irrelevant, while they needed another system nobody had thought of beforehand. The paper presents the case by describing the setting and starting point of the design project, how the project was conducted, and which results it ended up with. This is followed by a discussion of the effects of, and lessons learned by, involving customer relations in contextual design.