User Experience in Arabia: The Business Case for User-Centred Design and Usability Engineering

A common problem faced by technology projects is that while every effort is made to deliver at the highest quality, and ensuring well constructed business specifications, the outcome falls short of user expectations, rendering a system difficult to use, thereby negatively impacting adoption by the user. This paper highlights the need to involve the user at an early stage in the development process, using a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach and User Experience (UX) methods, and building low cost prototypes that encourage low cost optimisation, in order to mitigate the risk of later re-work, and increase the chances of holistic designs rather than incremental changes. The paper also highlights the view that a User Interface (UI) is in fact a business interface, and optimising the UI is synonymous with optimising business KPIs.