Social Research Methods Used in Moving the Traditional Usability Approach Towards a User-Centered Design Approach

The present chapter focuses on the idea of rethinking the concept of usability moving from the traditional view of usability expressed in the internal characteristics of the product towards usability understood as deriving from the quality of interactions between humans, their work and the web design product. Usability is not only an add-on or a final result in the design process but it is embedded as a main concern within the design process itself. Related to this perspective on usability, the authors discussed the design models which can support it and argued on the importance of using social research tools for a better understanding of the people and their needs starting with the very first stage of design. Further on the authors have provided a brief description of the most frequently used research methods in user needs analysis (interviews, focus groups and surveys) together with short guidelines in preparing and using these methods. The last part is dedicated to the illustration of user needs analysis taken from two of their research projects.