Stakeholder meeting
Summary
A stakeholder meeting is a strategic way to derive usability
objectives from business objectives, and to gain commitment
to usability. It also collects information about the purpose
of the system and its overall context of use.
Benefits
- Ensures that all factors that relate to use of the system
are identified before design work starts.
- Bring together all the people relevant to the development,
to create a common vision.
Method
Planning
Arrange a half-day meeting. Invite stakeholders who have
knowledge about the business objectives, the intended users
and usage. This may include:
- business manager
- project manager
- user representative(s)
- marketing
- developer(s)
- training
- support
The first three are key areas. You will also need a facilitator
and a person to record the information provided during the
meeting.
Before the meeting
- Identify the key issues you need to explore.
- Provide all participants with a copy of a list of the
issues to be discussed at the meeting.
At the meeting
Briefly discuss the following topics:
- Why is the system being developed? What are the overall
objectives? How will it be judged as a success?
- Who are the intended users and what are their tasks? (Why
will they use the system? What is their experience and expertise?)
- Who are the other stakeholders and how might they be impacted
by the consequences of a usable or unusable system?
- What are the stakeholder and organisational requirements?
- What are the technical and environmental constraints?
(What types of hardware will be used in what environments?)
- What key functionality is needed to support the user needs?
- How will the system be used? What is the overall workflow
(e.g. from deciding to use the system, through operating
it to obtaining results)? What are typical scenarios of
what the users can achieve?
- What are the usability
goals? (e.g. How important is ease of use and ease of
learning? How long should it take users to complete their
tasks? Is it important to minimise user errors? What GUI
style guide should be used?)
- How will users obtain assistance?
- Are there any initial design concepts?
- Is there an existing or competitor system?
Try to obtain consensus where there is uncertainty or disagreement.
If information is missing, agree how this can be obtained.
Avoid prolonged discussion of minor issues.
After the meeting
Obtain any missing information. If the information is not
easily available, arrange a field study to observe
users in their work environment.
Circulate to all participants a summary of the conclusions.
More information
More detailed information on planning user centred design
can be found in the  INUSE
Handbook and the RESPECT
Handbook
Variations
If possible hold this meeting before the functional requirements
have been finalised, but the meeting is important even if
user centred design is introduced late in the development
process. All stakeholders should attend the first meeting.
Hold additional smaller meetings if more detail is required.
If it is impossible to hold a meeting, the information can
be collected by interviews or questionnaires, but this does
not enable commitment and consensus to be achieved.
Next steps
Collect and agree detailed information about the context
of use.
Case study
Background reading
The stakeholder meeting described here is similar to the
LUCID
Envision activity
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