The primary contribution of this paper is investigating how the User Centered Design approach is integrated into the industry. Employing a structured web-survey, targeted to the usability practitioners, we find out that UCD is particularly employed in big companies, but with a relatively low ratio: practitioners represent less than one percent of the company employees. User interviews and both
... [Show full abstract] low and high fidelity prototyping are the most frequently used techniques. We eventually validate our hypothesis that UCD integration is facilitated by factors related to management support, infrastructure and communication; companies interested in producing better usable and fit-for-use products should take all of these issues into serious consideration.