Inclusion of Users with Special Needs in the Human-Centered Design of a Web-Portal

Human-Centered Design focuses on the analysis, specification and involvement of a product's end users as driving elements in the design process. The primary research objective of the case-study presented in this paper is to illustrate that it is essential to include users with special needs into all major steps of designing a web-portal that provides services to these special users. But how can this be accomplished in the case of users with special cognitive and affective needs? Would the “classical” Human-Centered Design Process (HCD) be sufficient or would it need to be adapted and complemented with special procedures and tools? In this paper the design team shares the strategies they adopted and the experiences they gained by including users with dyslexia in the design of the LITERACY Web-Portal. Besides providing insight into the special effort and steps needed to adapt HCD for users with special needs, the paper encourages application designers to include end-users even though - or particularly because - they have needs that are special and critical for the adoption of the product.