Yes, I have done this on several occasions, most notably when I was building an automation application for emergency managers.
In that gig, our entire management team went through 6 months of training (off and on, not continuously!) shoulder to shoulder with our future customers/users learning the job and getting on the job experience. It was the only way we could 1) identify the real problems these individuals faced in performing the specific tasks we were hoping to automate 2) establish the sort of empathy required to give us credibility in a very tight-knit (almost military like camaraderie) community During some of the work sessions, we sought permission (and were usually granted) to video tape what was going on. These records were invaluable for forensic purposes and to communicate to our staff the kinds of issues our stakeholders faced. The literature in embedded studies of this type is long and well established ( I think Christine raised some of the issues with this approach ). In our case we were very upfront about our intentions: "we are hear to participate, pull our weight and be a part of the real work going. At the same time, we are a for-profit company ultimately interested in creating a product that we will likely resell to folks such as yourselves. Your allowing us to participate will significantly improve the chances the product will be usable and useful. And because of the time you've made for us, we will likely provide a discount not only to your agency, but to all similar public agencies." We embedded ourselves in at least three different contexts over the course of about 1 year. We believe this approach was a significant contributor to the usability and usefulness of the product: This product was designed and delivered in 1997. I just got a note from a user who wants to continue using it but misplaced his original disks. Leo ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
