Discussion of User Participation in Defining System Interface Requirements: An Issue of Procedural Justice.

Abstract The article discusses the participation of a user in defining system interface requirements. It incorporates notions found to be successful in other disciplines, namely, the procedural justice notions of voice and choice. The various levels of voice and choice correspond to various levels of user involvement. The researcher used a laboratory experiment to collect the data. It examines, at various levels of involvement, the affective responses elicited from users when there was congruence between user expectations of involvement and actual user involvement. In information systems investigations comparing expected performance to actual performance, affective responses have typically been studied as the result of a discrepancy between the two. Thus, because of the unique perspective taken, the article makes an important contribution to understanding the relationships between user involvement and systems success. If users are asked for their preferences during the development process and then the preferences are not incorporated, users will feel that the initial solicitation of their preferences are not genuine, and this feeling will adversely affect performance.