Evaluation of alternative UX design principles for To Do lists

Sammanfattning: As government authorities are getting more digitalized, the variety of case management systems is increasing. Therefore, the competition is getting tougher for companies that develop such systems and the goal to create a system that both fulfills its purpose and is easy to use is getting more important. Human-centered design is used to evaluate how general design principles work on To Do lists in a case management system. A pre-test survey is sent out to current users of a case management system to understand their requirements, what works for them and what does not. Then, three prototypes were developed from the answers to the pre-test survey and the design principles. The prototypes were then evaluated by the system’s users during online evaluation sessions. The result was that the functionalities requested by the users and that were developed with the help of design principles were more popular than functionalities inspired by only the principles. Also, functionalities that were less of a change were more desired to be implemented in the system directly. To conclude, the designer is not the user and a pre-test is essential to understand the users’ perception of the system. The pre-test should catch what amount of redesign is reasonable and what should not be changed. Further, design principles should be followed along the way, not to inspire changes that were not requested by the users, but rather to develop requested changes.