One job title, many practices: the setting decides what counts as good work

A graduate leaves a course with one set of methods and an unspoken assumption that the methods are the skill. An agency wants the diary study that took three weeks as coursework inside four days. A research organisation expects the same study to survive a methods review years later. The activities look alike. The definition of a good result does not.

The methods of HCI practice are portable; the mandate to use them is not. Competence therefore includes a reading skill that comes before the methods: working out which setting you are in, what it rewards, what it allows and whom it assumes its users to be, including the reader in a second language and the user on a metered connection. This second of ten units, after the first left the profession's identity open, asks what a setting makes of good work.

The methods are portable; the mandate is not

Bak et al. (2008) asked why practice diverges from the textbook. Their survey covered software development organisations in one region and found that 29 of 39 carried out some form of usability evaluation. The obstacles they rank most significant are resource demands and the mindset of developers. The gap is not one of method knowledge but of what the organisation will fund and what its staff treat as a contribution.

Rosenbaum et al. (2000) reach the same conclusion from the other direction. They surveyed 134 HCI professionals at three conferences, collecting the organisational approaches used to raise the strategic impact of usability work.

Gulliksen et al. (2006) compiled studies of usability work in Swedish development organisations and argued that working with usability has become a profession in its own right. They describe effectiveness as shaped by the professional's background and by the organisation, its process and its values.

Rewriting the role does not rewrite the organisation

The obvious remedy for an unsupportive setting is a role designed to support the work. Boivie et al. (2006) tested that remedy in two Swedish systems development organisations, interviewing designers, project managers and a user representative. The role partly met its creators' intentions, shifting the designers towards design and user advocacy. The authors also report that it failed, and that the designers still faced the obstacles usability professionals have always met.

The failure has a shape a reader can follow. The authors defined the role in 1999 and then introduced it into the two organisations. What the organisation did with the role is the problem. Managers and developers began treating the designer as the answer to a question about users. They asked her what the users wanted, instead of letting her arrange the sessions that would have found out. The designer became the organisation's channel to the users rather than the person who opened the channel. Two organisations, and the team that designed the role evaluated it.

Where a setting does hold a standard, it usually arrives as a process requirement. Earthy et al. (2001) examine the adoption of ISO 13407 and its obstacles and benefits. That standard has since been withdrawn and replaced twice, first by ISO 9241-210:2010 and now by ISO 9241-210:2019, which was confirmed as current in 2025. The principles have not changed substantially since, so the process frame outlived the document. Gulliksen et al. (2003) proposed twelve key principles for user-centred systems design. The term had no agreed definition and was applied inconsistently.

The same word means different things in different rooms

Reading a setting would be easier if everyone meant the same thing by the vocabulary. Hertzum and Clemmensen (2012) used repertory-grid interviews with 24 usability professionals in China, Denmark and India. They found more utilitarian constructs centred on goal-related performance and on the individual.

Clemmensen et al. (2013) widened the comparison to 72 repertory-grid interviews with professionals, developers and users in the same countries. Professionals emphasised emotion-related aspects of use. Users emphasised context, utility and degree of use. A shared word is not a shared standard. When a designer says usability in a room of engineers, the engineer may hear something else.

Maturity selects the method, and the client is part of the setting

Lermen et al. (2023) compared six digital startups at different maturity stages in focus groups with 14 members. Four used design thinking and lean startup, and the two using lean UX did so because their maturity allowed it. Maturity predicts which method a team can sustain better than the type of business does.

The client is part of that organisation even when they sit outside it. Buis et al. (2023) studied how UX practitioners work with low-maturity clients, through 20 case studies from 22 interviews. They derived six best practices and a best-practice model. They find practitioners significantly overcoming organisational UX boundaries and moving clients towards a user-centred focus. In an unfamiliar setting, educating the client is part of the design work.

Product stage does the same work. Kujala et al. (2011) proposed the UX Curve, in which users retrospectively report how their experience of a product changed. They assessed it with 20 mobile phone users. Short-term evaluation captures initial adoption but misses the long-term relationship that drives satisfaction. A team that keeps a product alive for years can therefore use that instrument, while a team that must answer inside a fortnight cannot.

The setting you cannot read from a job title

Some settings stay invisible until the designer is inside them. Singh et al. (2025) used participatory action research with computer scientists, UX researchers and domain scientists building cyberinfrastructure applications. They identified four tensions. These included contradictory views on the quality of prototype development, and a tendency to locate the usability problem in the users rather than the system. The work, they conclude, turns on aligning research goals. A designer seconded into a scientific group must first negotiate how that group defines a good prototype.

Freelance and agency work hides the same problem. Morris et al. (2025) found that the aesthetic appeal of freelance television work draws people into precarious conditions, with long and often unpaid work. They also found that freelancers who entered as large organisations fragmented lacked the networks earlier cohorts built inside them. For a freelancer the setting is a run of short engagements in which the infrastructure that makes work repeatable is rebuilt each time.

The same reading problem appears from the graduate's side. Ma et al. (2026) compared learner and professional assessment of UX work using peer and expert assessment with grounded theory. Students emphasise the presentation of results. Industry expects participation from problem identification through analysis.

Contested question: is effectiveness a personal skill or a property of the setting?

The literature agrees that settings differ and agrees much less about where effectiveness lives. One position places it in the organisation. Bak et al. (2008) locate the obstacles in resource demands and developer mindset. Boivie et al. (2006) show a redesigned role leaving those obstacles intact. Gulliksen et al. (2006) describe effectiveness as shaped by the process and the values of the organisation. On this account the practitioner is partly a passenger.

The opposing position places effectiveness in the practitioner. Buis et al. (2023) report practitioners reducing the boundaries of low-maturity clients. Lermen et al. (2023) find maturity shaping method use, which cuts both ways.

A third position challenges the framing. Hertzum and Clemmensen (2012) find usability professionals construing usability similarly across China, Denmark and India. Clemmensen et al. (2013) find those professionals differing from users and developers consistently. If a professional's constructs travel between settings, what varies is less what counts as a good result than how much room the organisation gives to pursue it.

What would settle the disagreement is a comparative design the literature does not contain. The evidence is mainly surveys within one country, most visibly the Swedish work of Gulliksen et al. (2006) and Boivie et al. (2006). Small case studies such as Buis et al. (2023) make up the rest. A study following comparable projects in different settings, holding task and team roughly constant, would separate the explanations.

The setting-side claim rests on the Swedish surveys of Gulliksen and colleagues and the practitioner-side claim on twenty case studies by Buis and colleagues. Neither design separates the professional from the setting. While the dispute is open, a designer should treat effectiveness as jointly produced. The strongest objection is that this removes responsibility, because a practitioner who blames every failure on the organisation never has to change.

Where the argument is heading

The recent work has stopped arguing about whether the setting matters and has started trying to change it. Buis et al. (2023) turn low client maturity into practices with a model attached. Singh et al. (2025) address the setting no job title reveals.

The sources this unit rests on

• Bak, J. O., Nguyen, K., Risgaard, P. and Stage, J. (2008). Obstacles to usability evaluation in practice. Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction. doi:10.1145/1463160.1463164 Surveyed software development organisations by questionnaire and interview. Found 29 of 39 evaluated usability, with resource demands and developer mindset the main obstacles, so practice is limited by the organisation rather than by ignorance of method.
• Boivie, I., Gulliksen, J. and Goransson, B. (2006). The lonesome cowboy: the usability designer role in systems development. Interacting with Computers. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2005.10.003 Evaluated a defined usability designer role in two Swedish organisations. The role partly met its intentions but the designers still faced the obstacles usability professionals have always met, so a role redesign alone does not change an organisation's rewards.
• Buis, E. E., Ashby, S. S. and Kouwenberg, K. K. (2023). Increasing the UX maturity level of clients. Information and Software Technology. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107086 Studied how UX practitioners work with low-maturity clients through 20 case studies and 22 interviews. Finds practitioners help overcome organisational UX boundaries, the strong form of the unit's thesis.
• Clemmensen, T., Hertzum, M., Yang, J. and Chen, Y. (2013). Do usability professionals think about user experience in the same way as users and developers do? Lecture Notes in Computer Science. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-40480-1_31 Ran 72 repertory-grid interviews with professionals, developers and users in China, Denmark and India. Professionals emphasised emotion-related aspects of use while users emphasised context and utility, so the same vocabulary carries different meanings.
• Earthy, J., Sherwood Jones, B. and Bevan, N. (2001). The improvement of human-centred processes and ISO 13407. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. doi:10.1006/ijhc.2001.0493 Examines adoption of the ISO 13407 human-centred design standard. Sets out the obstacles organisations meet and the benefits they gain, showing that in a standard-governed setting good work is work that followed the process.
• Gulliksen, J., Goransson, B., Boivie, I., Blomkvist, S., Persson, J. and Cajander, A. (2003). Key principles for user-centred systems design. Behaviour and Information Technology. doi:10.1080/01449290310001624329 Argues user-centred systems design had no agreed definition and was applied inconsistently. Proposes twelve key principles tested in a case study, so even the profession's headline term names a family of practices.
• Gulliksen, J., Boivie, I. and Goransson, B. (2006). Usability professionals: current practices and future development. Interacting with Computers. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2005.10.005 Compiles studies of usability work in Swedish development organisations and treats usability work as a profession in its own right. Reports effectiveness as shaped by the individual's background, the organisation and its process and values.
• Hertzum, M. and Clemmensen, T. (2012). How do usability professionals construe usability? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2011.08.001 Analyses repertory-grid interviews with 24 usability professionals in China, Denmark and India. Finds more utilitarian than experiential constructs and construal at the individual level, and finds the construal similar across nationalities, the unit's strongest counter-argument.
• ISO 9241-210:2019. Human-centred design for interactive systems. Geneva: ISO. https://www.iso.org/standard/77520.html The current human-centred design standard, replacing ISO 9241-210:2010, itself the replacement for the ISO 13407 the unit's adoption case study uses. Confirmed as current in 2025, and states that the principles have not changed substantially since ISO 13407. A process standard, not evidence about outcomes.
• Kujala, S., Roto, V., Vaaranen-Vainio-Mattila, K., Karapanos, E. and Sinnela, A. (2011). UX Curve: a method for evaluating long-term user experience. Interacting with Computers. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2011.06.005 Proposes a retrospective method in which users report how their experience of a product changed, assessed with 20 mobile phone users. Argues long-term experience drives satisfaction, so the usable instrument depends on how long a setting keeps its product.
• Lermen, F. H., de Moura, P. K., Bertoni, V. B., Graciano, P. and Tortorella, G. L. (2023). Does maturity level influence the use of Agile UX methods by digital startups? Information and Software Technology. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2022.107107 Compares six digital startups at different maturity stages through focus groups with 14 members. Four used design thinking and lean startup and the two using lean UX did so because their maturity allowed it, so maturity explains which method a team can sustain.
• Ma, J., Chen, C. C. and Cheng, Y. T. (2026). Bridging the gap between UX education and industry practice. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. doi:10.1080/10447318.2026.2631663 Compares learner and professional assessment of UX work using peer and expert assessment. Students emphasise presenting results while industry expects participation from problem identification through analysis, locating the gap in what training rewards.
• Morris, J., Islam, G. and Davies, J. (2025). The search for meaningful work under neo-bureaucracy: work precarity in freelance TV. SAGE Publications, doi:10.1177/13505084241236454 Reports a qualitative study of freelance television workers. Finds aesthetic appeal draws people into precarious conditions and newer freelancers lack networks earlier cohorts built inside large organisations, the unit's warning about the freelance end of the profession.
• Rosenbaum, S., Rohn, J. A. and Humburg, J. (2000). A toolkit for strategic usability. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. doi:10.1145/332040.332454 Collects data from 134 HCI professionals at three conferences on the organisational approaches used to raise the strategic impact of usability work. Offers the results as a toolkit for practitioners in comparable situations, making the situation rather than the method the unit of advice.
• Singh, K. P., Jahnke, I. and Calyam, P. (2025). Entangled collaborations: tensions in cross-disciplinary user experience studies. Behaviour and Information Technology. doi:10.1080/0144929x.2024.2315325 Uses participatory action research with computer scientists, UX researchers and domain scientists building cyberinfrastructure applications. Identifies four tensions including contradictory views on prototype quality, showing that cross-disciplinary UX work turns on aligning goals rather than method.