Position Statement Summary below. Increasingly it is being recognised that there is more to usability than mere ease of use and good user interface. Many, even of the most usable, information systems are considered failures. Failure, and success, has many aspects, not all of them technical, and in most cases not of extreme type. Often failure takes the form of hindrance to people's ways of working when there should be help, and unexpected harm to others involved with the system.
Failure has many causes.
But the picture is not always so simple. For instance, the London Ambulance System disaster was apparently due to poor technical design, but this itself can be traced back to a hidden agenda by the senior management to attempt to reduce the power of trades unions. Even if an information system is very easy to use, if these other, wider, factors are not taken into account, factors like indirectly caused harm, inter-personal effects, organizational effects, power games, etc., then its overall usability will be in doubt. This leads us to a wider concept of usability . A certain amount of technocentrism is valid in the early days of a new technology, while the technology itself is being developed.