On Jan 20, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Mark Schraad wrote: > My objection to Dan's term is merely one of semantics. I think there > is reason to capture (or name) a design process that proceeds > unabated by research because the designer or designers have extensive > domain knowledge - or embody the needs of the end user. And I am not > sure that deserves the 'genius' label. >
I'll explain why I chose the name, even though Jim and I have been over this extensively before. <http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/283/Dan-Saffer-Designing-for-Interac-page01.html > <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/discuss-interactiondesigners.com/2006-October/012084.html > When I set out to write the four approaches to interaction design, I had the same problem this thread has been having all along: how do we distinguish user-centered design from other types of (interaction) design philosophies? The other three approaches I ended up calling out were activity- centered design, systems design, and what I ended up naming genius design. Activity-centered design and systems design were well-defined and had been named previously, but the last approach needed some sort of title, so I gave it Genius Design; not sneeringly, I should add. I've noted repeatedly I use genius design as an approach all the time. And like all the approaches, it has its pluses and minuses. I don't use UCD all the time either. Or ACD. (I have been accused of having ADD however.) I chose the term "genius" not because of great intelligence or skill (although both help when designing in this manner) but because of the personal nature of the approach and how it was similar to how the 19th century "geniuses" like Edison worked. (This is mostly legend, I know.) I could have called it designer-centered design, but that seemed, well, terrible. You can object to the term, but that horse might have left the stable and you might have to let it go eventually. I see it all over this list and elsewhere now. Heck, even Jakob Nielsen has used it: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/genius-designers.html> But I'm a little tired of the semantics debate. We should prototype the messaging around our discipline on a wiki and be done with it, rather than have these debates crop up year after year. Dan Dan Saffer, M.Des., IDSA Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com http://www.odannyboy.com ________________________________________________________________ *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
