1. Encouraging a culture of user- centred design in the Smart Internet Technology CRC by Supriya Singh Head, UCD Project, SITCRC supriya.singh@rmit.edu.au Presentation to the BRI Seminar Series Melbourne, May 12 2003

2. SITCRC SITCRC began operating in November 2001 as a partnership between Australian Universities and Corporate Partners. It has been funded for seven years with $120 million in cash and kind from corporate, university and government sponsors, including $22 million from the federal Government. University partners include the Australian Graduate School of Management, the Australian National University, Griffith University, RMIT, Swinburne University, the University of Adelaide, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, the University of Tasmania and the University of Wollongong.

3. Programs Four technology programs – Smart Networks, Intelligent Environment, Smart Personal Agents and Natural Adaptive User Interface. The User Environment program intersects all these to “ensure that new internet products and services will work for people”.

4. Lessons learnt UCD in the academic discovery stage of design does not resemble text book descriptions of UCD in the corporate context; Getting the UCD virtual team working together – issues of virtual team formation; Working together with the technology researchers – using UCD tools such as interviews, personas and scenarios to begin working in interdisciplinary virtual teams.

5. UCD in the Discovery Context of Design We are working at the early stages of design where projects are being formulated; In general, we are not working with prototypes that can be tested; We are working in the academic rather than corporate context in this discovery stage; We are working in virtual interdisciplinary teams.

6. The UCD Team Ten people in the team across RMIT, Uni of Tasmania and Griffith Universty; Three at RMIT in Business, 2 at I-Cubed and one at Computer Science; RMIT scholarship holders – Applied Communication, Constructed Environment and Computer Science; UCD team – sociology, business, computer science, information systems, environment.

7. Building a Team Core at RMIT came from CIRCIT where we had a history of working together across disciplines; Face-to-face meetings, teleconference – most recently fortnightly newsletter and website; Came together because of an interest in UCD, but from different starting points; Writing papers and reports together – sharing tentative thoughts.

8. Working with the Technology Researchers The intention of having a UCD perspective was clear. However, UCD was at the beginning interpreted in terms of a book-end – tell us what you know about users, let us get on with it, and then you test it. Presentations, co-opting UCD people to technology programs, use of personas and scenarios and interaction over time – led to goodwill but not necessarily accompanied by understanding.

9. The UCD Project Successor to the User Needs project in the first year of the CRC Mission of the UCD Project: We aim to establish a culture of placing the user at the centre of the discovery and development phases of the design of Smart Internet Technologies. Linkages and communication with the technology and demonstrator programs will be central to establishing a culture of user-centred design (UCD) within the CRC.

10. Need for a Meeting Place The interaction has to be two way – rather than just UCD researchers going to the Technology programs; Workshop in Nov 2002 where key technology researchers came to meet with the UCD team; Able to explain what UCD could do for their individual technology programs; Worked together to develop personas and scenarios – the character and plot of the story of the technology to be designed; UCD people went to Wollongong. Wollongong people came to Melbourne.

11. Joint Projects Whitney and Amivox – reading e-mail on the bus; “Nymity” – exploring identity, anonymity and security; The virtual café

12. UCD at RMIT Business Helped initiate and coordinate the UCD Symposium; With I-Cubed, we have sponsored Prof Gitte Lindegaard, who holds a chair in human-computer interaction at Carleton University, as an International Visiting Fellow – end July early August; Eliciting demand and interest in a UCD course.