Evolving the scope of user-centered design

Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) share something in common with User Centred Design (UCD), in that both have become prominent during the last 10 years. As people have turned increasingly to designing systems to support work, it has been necessary to expand their thinking about system requirements and about usability. One question is whether EPSS and UCD represent discoveries of something new, or (possibly related) developments. The author suggests the emergence of both can be seen as a shift toward consideration use of context in the development of usable systems. By this he means that system design is seen as requiring attention to the environment into which the system must fit. Before EPSS or UCD people developed systems to meet requirements, often using human-factors techniques as a part of the process. He believes that people develop toward the same goal now, though the ways they think about the usability of a system and the approaches they take for ensuring system acceptance have changed and continue to change.