Validating the user-centred design process within a developing context

Abstract

South Africa is a developing country with diverse multi-cultural communities, eleven official languages and various infrastructure challenges. Enabling e-government is herefore considered a unique problem. A critical approach in developing a solution entails applying human computer interaction principles to cultural dimensions in South Africa. This paper illustrates how the usercentred process can be validated within a developing context. A paper-based government service was transformed into an e-government service by carefully applying the model of ISO 13407, Human-centred design processes for interactive systems. The usability thereof was evaluated through heuristic testing.