I don’t have all my thoughts well-formed on this yet, but I should post something lest I have a genuine lull here…
I’m just going to put this is basic scenario-outline form. Please leave comments to fill in some details so that we can all think about this more. (Hehe, he thinks he has readers).
Say I want to build a weather website.
As a technologist, I ask: what kind of database will I use? Where will I host the site? What features will I assume in the users’ browsers? How can I reuse existing infrastructure and code?
As an HCI practicioner, I ask: what sort of tasks will the user be performing? What’s the best way to scope the information presented to the user? How should the site be customizable? How can I make this more useful to more users?
As a business developer, I ask: what is the value of this site? How can I get people to use it? Where will I get the data and labor necessary to maintain it? How can I integrate this service with others?
One can think about business as the art and science of incorporating human values as explicit variables into system design. A proper understanding of this, then, can lead to more robust, useful and long-lived systems, building on the previous layers of HCI and raw technology.