Information Systems and Service Design (Fall 2011) UC Berkeley, School of Information

Because requirements evolve and are refined during the design lifecycle, some early stage usability methods can only partly predict the usability of the deployed system or service. Some usability methods require a working system or prototype and the involvement of users, neither of which might be available during early stages of the design lifecycle. So there's potential conflict between software architecture - which is an early stage activity - and late stage usability efforts. Service failures occur when a service encounter falls short of the customer's expectations. If this failure is apparent to the service provider, recovery actions might be attempted. For information services, service quality and recovery are often governed by a service level agreement that quantifies the minimum quality of service that satisfies business needs.