This thread of my work focuses on how to achieve human-centeredness in the design and use of information technology systems.
A human-centered design process ensures that information system requirements and design choices support, rather than constrain, the exercise of human skills, knowledge and capabilities. I have been influenced in this area by the “emancipatory” literature on human-centeredness in design, by theories of situated action and by Peter Checkland’s work in Soft Systems Methodology. My work in this area has focused on the effectiveness of “user-centered” system development methods, investigating the causes of failure that result in a technocentric design and discussing how we might design alternative methods. I dislike the word “user” – I prefer to talk about human beings as purposeful actors in the adaptive social construction of technology rather than viewing humans as passive users of technology.
Selected Papers:
Gasson, S. (2008) ‘A Framework For The Co-Design of Business and IT Systems,’ Proceedings of Hawaii Intl. Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-41), 7-10 Jan. 2008. Knowledge Management for Creativity and Innovation minitrack, p348. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2008.20.
Gasson, S. (2005) ‘Boundary-Spanning Knowledge-Sharing In E-Collaboration’ in Proceedings of Hawaii Intl. Conf. on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Jan. 2005. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2005.123
Gasson, S. (2003) ‘Human-Centered vs. User-Centered Approaches To Information System Design’, Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 5 (2), pp. 29-46.
Gasson, S. (1999) ‘A Social Action Model of Information Systems Design‘, The Data Base For Advances In Information Systems, 30 (2), pp. 82-97.
Gasson, S. (1999) ‘The Reality of User-Centered Design‘, Journal of End User Computing, 11 (4), pp. 3-13.