This exam paper has been a collaboration between the writers and SYSteam Utvecklingspartner in Huskvarna. The assignment was about finding a need for a mobile application, making a requirement specification document with design documents and parallel to this constructing a prototype. The assignment is summarized in the following questions:

• How can companies in the forest industry benefit from mobile information technology?

• How can a user centered perspective be used in the process of making the requirement specification document and the design documents?

• How do guidelines for usability apply to a mobile application?

Three visits to companies in the forest industry were made to find a need for mobile information technology solutions. After a small analysis of the different companies’ problems and conditions the decision was to use Tenhults Impregneringsverk AB in the case study.

We used the FA/SIM method in our job of finding the organization needs for change and the principles of User Centered Design in the work of constructing a prototype.

The result of our work is a requirement specification with design documents and a prototype. The final prototype is an application deployed on to a PDA with a barcode scanner.

Our conclusion is that the purpose of mobile information technology often is about making the torrent of information more effective by reducing the duplication of work and securing the quality of the information.

Using a user centered perspective in the development work has in general terms worked out pretty well for us. Requirements and demands of the application have become clearer to us after each iteration, and in the end the customer and the developer organization where on the same terms.

We have been able to apply the guidelines of usability on MobSaw (is the name of the application prototype that was made during the exam work). The principles are universal; the biggest difference is about input and screen size because the hardware’s capacity is limited. The advantages of the smaller frameworks for mobile devices is that the focus on usability increases.