Make It Intuitive: An Evaluation Practice Emergent from the Plans and Scripted Behavior of the Computer-Community of Practice

Abstract

The catch phrase today for system designers is to “make it intuitive,” which begs the question, what is intuitive? The action research discussed in this article was the final stage of the application of grounded theory to user data that provided survey categories (criteria) for system acceptance. A theoretical rationale from the discipline of human–computer interaction was proposed to provide a consistent and repeatable interpretation of the users’ responses to the survey and directly align the responses to software design considerations. To put this work into context, I discuss in this article a case study on the use of the survey to monitor the user experience during the upgrade of an enterprise system and the subsequent implications and outcomes of applying the theoretical paradigm in practice. As such it may provide food for thought on survey design for elicitation of user requirements for information and communication technology systems.