Human-computer interaction scenarios as a design representation

Research on the design of end-user applications has focused on methods for empirically determining user requirements, and for managing usability in the design process by analogy with the management of functionality. As an alternative to this approach, the authors propose that both sorts of design considerations be combined in a more comprehensive, task-oriented representation. End-user applications should be represented in the design process as a set of typical and/or critical user-interaction scenarios. An example of this approach is applied to the design of a new inspector for Smalltalk.