Getting Lost? Touch and You Will Find! The User-Centered Design Process of a Touch Screen

Recent reforms in office concepts have led to new intensification strategies that aim at more flexibility and efficiency. Hot desking is one of these new working practices that reduces office space per worker. These new office concepts however, pose new challenges and problems to solve. This paper describes the development phase of an innovative touch screen application for location based services to overcome the problematic edge effects of hot desking such as missing workspace awareness and poor communication. We followed a user-centered design (UCD) process to develop and test the interface so that it could be gradually modified and tailored to the demands and expectations of the end users. First, a methodological overview of the different phases of the UCDprocess is given. Then, the results of each phase are discussed, focusing on several interface elements. Finally, the most important and striking results are summarized.