DB2 Universal Database: A Case Study of a Successful User-Centered Design Program

This case study describes the application of user-centered design (UCD) principles to the development of a complex middleware software product—IBM’s DB2® Universal Database. Motivated by trade press reviews highlighting ease-of-use problems, a multisite development team utilized IBM UCD to transform ease of use into a featured product attribute. This case study describes the initial application of UCD to DB21 and the positive business results that followed: critical acclaim, increased marketshare and user satisfaction, and increased support and adoption of UCD across the IBM database product family. Although ease-of-use objectives, target markets, and human factors practitioners’ roles have evolved over 6 years and multiple versions of the product, DB2 continues to achieve positive results with UCD. In addition to the flexibility of the UCD methodology, other factors that influenced DB2’s success included manINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 14(3&4), 279–306 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.