Scenario-based usability engineering

Scenario-based design elaborates a traditional theme in human factors and ergonomics, namely, the principle that human charac- teristics and needs should be pivotal considerations in the design of tools and artifacts. In scenario-based design, descriptions of usage situations become more than just orienting examples and background data, they become first-class design objects. Scenario-based design takes literally the adage that a tool is what people can do with it - the consequences it has for them and for their activities that use it (Beth and Carroll, 2002).

References

Rosson, Mary Beth and John M. Carroll (2002), Scenario-based usability engineering, Proceedings of the conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/778712.778776 (PDF)