ISSD Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

The design of any service -- whether it will be performed by people or by information systems -- takes place in a context of

• Current and potential customers
• Current and potential technologies
• Current and potential competitors
• Existing services or systems
• Existing user or application interfaces
• Legal, regulatory, cultural systems and constraints

These factors or constraints can never be equally important; how they are weighted determines the appropriate design methodology and the key characteristics of the design.