Marks and Spencer - Evolutionary design of a small task-orientated system

Thursday, 03 June 2004
The project was a spin-off from a larger project to develop in-house graphical user interface standards for future systems developed to support the food business within Marks and Spencer Head Office departments. The objective was to develop a small system using standard packages (Excel and Easel) to support the new product development activities of the merchandise selectors in the Fish Department. Task orientation was achieved by starting from a high level task analysis of the user's development tasks and using this as a basis for negotiating a minimalist system which would provide real benefit. This minimalist system was built in Excel, using the data form facility and implemented within a matter of weeks. The system provided immediate benefits in terms of reduced re-keying of progress information and improved accuracy of development records. However, the bigger benefit was that it introduced a form of electronic working and allowed users and developers together to evolve a support system with richer functionality based on the user's tasks and their real experience of the evolving system. Despite this evolutionary growth, we were able to retain consistency in the user interface by applying the user interface Style Guide. Date: 03 June 2004 Category: Usability & HCI
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 March 2008 )