User centered design of context aware cell phones in human-centric systems

User research in software development and engineering design processes has gained unprecedented popularity due to the realization that knowing about users, their preferences, characteristics, and environments is highly useful in the design of effective user and human centric systems. Current human centric systems are intelligent, responsive, emotive and aware, and their capabilities and applications continue to increase rapidly. Due to this, it has become essential to address user related issues during the design of such systems. In this paper we focus on one area in human centric system design, namely context aware systems, which could benefit tremendously from user research. We look at a case study on the design of context aware cell phones that we developed and implemented by conducting extensive user research in the process. In this paper we discuss different user research activities that were conducted to implement this case study. We feel that these activities and the ideas therein can be employed by designers planning on designing intelligent (context aware) cell phones, and context aware systems in general. The discussions presented in this paper will also be helpful to usability engineers, interaction designers, and researchers who wish to focus on cell phone design. The results presented towards the end of this paper illustrate how valuable user research is in the design of context aware systems, and human centric systems in general.