Scenarios and the HCI-SE design problem

Diaper's critical review of Carrol's book 'Making Use' raises a number of interesting issues about how to set about the design of interactive systems. In particular Diaper poses an issue that has long dogged the area of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering (HCI-SE), namely how to deal with the formality required by the SE side and the sensitivity to context required by the HCI side. In this paper, we report on the experience of using scenario-based design and reflect on the effectiveness of the approach. This work fits into a broader context concerned with understanding exactly what the HCI-SE design problem is and now it might be best conceptualised.