The Role of Designer-Generated Scenarios in Developing Web Applications and their Help Systems

Due to the increasing changes in the working practices of organizations brought about by web technology, developers now face not only the new technological challenges, but also the communicative challenges involved in a multidisciplinary development team. Complex communication process involve human-computer interaction, human-human interaction mediated by computers, and human-human interaction about computer artifacts. In this paper, we present a communicative approach that makes use of scenarios produced by designers and developers throughout the development of web applications. We describe a case study, focusing on the communicative aspects involved both in the process of software development, and in the users’ interactions with the final product. The use we made of the scenarios is best illustrated in the final product by the help system, whose architecture is also described.