Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting here... I think Robert may be focusing on good design done w/o the use of personas, which I completely agree is possible and very probable.
But that doesn't mean that *no* user centered research was conducted - it just means they didn't use personas. Which I think is Todd's point here...good design is much more probable when some sort of user centered research (especially when designing for an audience other than yourself) is conducted. I'm a big proponent of UCD - I believe "good design" is much more probable when UCD is utilized. That said, it doesn't guarantee good UX and it doesn't mean you'll never have a good UX unless you do formal research. It would be very interesting to get a rough idea of how many "good" products out there were developed strictly in a vaccuum by marketing, designers or engineers - w/o the use of customer interviews, observation, ethnography, usability testing, personas, card sorting, task analysis etc. Jeff On Nov 27, 2007 2:02 PM, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > Can good design be done w/o formal research? Well, yes of course, but it's > rare. > > Are you sure? > > I mean, I agree that there are a huge number of lousy products/sites/etc out > there, but there are also boatloads of great products, and according to > Jared, only something like 5% of teams who use personas are doing them > right, and I'd guess that only a small percentage of design teams use them > at all. > > Assuming this is a correct statement, I doubt that the only good products > out there are those designed by this measly 5% of the already small > percentage of persona-using designers. So where are the rest of the good > products coming from? > > Good design happens. Process can help, research can help - heck, even > personas can help. But none are a requirement of good design. And since each > is used effectively so rarely, it's obvious that a ton of good design is > done without these tools. > > So, how confident are you, really, that good design is rare unless backed up > by formal research? > > (Sorry if I'm sounding needlessly antagonistic, but this subject really gets > under my skin, as you might already be aware.) > > -r- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
