Redesign of A Seismic Monitor Using Contextual Design

This paper discusses a user-centered approach to requirements gathering and design and its application toan agile software development project. The approach used in this paper is based on Contextual Design(CD), a user-centered design technique, developed by Beyer and Holtzblatt. The benefits of using CD torequirements gathering and usability are explained using a case study, a Web-based seismic monitor,which allows a user to monitor earthquakes all around the world in real time. This case study demonstratesthe benefits of CD by the improved design and usability of the application. CD shares some of thefundamental principles of agile software development processes, such as continuous user feedback andrapid prototyping. This makes CD a natural candidate to be used in agile software development.