On Jan 16, 2008 2:37 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > People take the term "user centered" and use it to mean that the only > thing that matters in product design are users. I can't tell you how > many times I see people attempt to design products with little to no > regard to how technology actually works or what the business needs to > function for profit because they claim technology doesn't matter... > only what the users want does. Or that the users needs and wants and > desires trump the others. > > Why d they do this and how do they get away with it? Because the > silly term for the process says so! It's User Centered Design after all. That's unfortunate. I would say those folks lack a basic understanding of what UCD is in the first place then. It is *not* about simply giving the user what they want. It's about finding the right balance between all those things. That misunderstanding is usually a quick correction if there's someone around with some good UCD chops, which gets back to your point about the right people. Obviously, that's always going to be the case. > > And FWIW.... User centered is NOT better than engineering centered or > marketing centered and doesn't make better products. It's just as > fundamentally flawed as an extreme approach to anything. > That simply has not been my experience, and this sounds more like opinion than fact. There's been lots of research over the years showing the value and ROI (business value! profit!) of UCD. In my personal experience, a UCD project has always delivered better results across the board than when engineering or marketing isolated themselves from users and just made something based on their own speculation or agenda. Jeff ________________________________________________________________ *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
