Andrei, what makes you think that 21 year old is likely to be capable of developing a better solution if they a.) don't know the business, and b.) don't know it's customers?
This isn't about UCD per se, this is about the common sense view that understanding business and user requirements are essential to the development of a good solution - this takes research. You're also missing the fact that what is the "better" product depends on your definition of "better". If a stack of research dictates that solution a.) meets business and customer needs better than solution b.) then solution a.) is "better" surely? The 21 year old would be very lucky to discover that solution.... The simple fact is that whether you practice UCD or whatever else, the arrogant attitude that any good designer can simply deliver their solutions from on high to illiterate customers is way past it's sell by date. I think some of the designers criticising UCD agree that research is beneficial, but just don't agree with UCD in particular. That's fine with me. It's the "research is for cr*p designers" attitude that I object to. ----- Original Message ---- From: Andrei Herasimchuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: IXDA list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 26 June, 2008 5:00:38 AM Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is UCD Really Broken? On Jun 25, 2008, at 6:54 PM, J. Ambrose Little wrote: > On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > wrote: > "As for the people who pay the checks? All they care about is > getting a great product. If you design great stuff they don't care > how you did it. Guaranteed." > > Andrei, I caution you against making broad generalizations like this. If I sat down with a few business executives and showed them two versions of their product, as well as showed them substantial proof that one of the products, which had been tested over a three to six month period, returned significantly higher customer satisfaction, fewer rates of return, higher sales throughput, but that the product was designed by a 21 year old in college who did it in his dorm room and knew nothing about UCD, and the other product was designed by their in-house design team following company approved UCD methodology, those executives wouldn't say, "We'll use the product designed by our in-house folks since they obviously followed the correct procedure." Those business executives would take the better product designed by the 21 year old who did it solo without using any methodology at all... then they'd promptly fire their entire design team. If that's a broad generalization, then consider me guilty as charged. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 ________________________________________________________________ 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 __________________________________________________________ Not happy with your email address?. Get the one you really want - millions of new email addresses available now at Yahoo! http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/ymail/new.html ________________________________________________________________ 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
