Successful UCD practices under IT project constraints

The User Centered Design (UCD) is a flexible framework, conceived for designing, implementing and evaluating usable interactive systems, which leaves to the design team the responsibility of choosing appropriate combinations of methods, models and techniques. A critical aspect is related to the process of making such choices within the global perspective of the entire design process in presence of contingencies and constraints while predicting the success of the project. To support decision makers in this task we propose a conceptual framework based on comparative analysis of best practices and previous (successful and unsuccessful) experiences, grounded on a data analytic strategy known as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). In particular, we propose to use QCA for analyzing multiple cases of UCD projects whose characteristics can be assessed by the investigator through the lens of a taxonomy of elements which represent both the dependent and independent variables. More in detail we are interested in the selection of combinations of requirement analysis and evaluation techniques that under certain circumstances determines the desired outcomes.