Making representations work
Morten Kyng · Communications of the ACM · 1995
this article, the two most important reasons for this are: . The design process needs to be based on experience with both the work to be supported and the technical possibilities and limitations. Few will probably argue against this. Our point, however, is that this eventually requires an approach in which professional designers and end users cooperate on several of the major design activities. The experience of the end users cannot be effectively mediated by representations of work or representatives of users, such as systems analysts or ethnographers. By such mediation, experience with the work being supported is frozen at the level of explicit understandings existing at the time when the representation of work is made or when the user-proxy finishes his or her analysis. When this understanding is challenged in subsequent design processes, the processes deteriorate --- unless end users themselves are there to create new understandings of the work [19]