After listening to this debate (thank you all kindly) I suspect the urge to discard the term is because many designers have been doing it "wrong." Forms of that might be * user centered design rather than users centered design-- making too many decisions off of a small subset of users who may vary in taste and personality. * user directed design (see the homermobile) in whch teh user says what features they want and it gets coded * user-taste design, as in 99% of our users like blue... well, users always prefer blue, but that doesn't help us stand out or be remembered * personas as barbies for designers-- i.e. we get so caught up in creating a backstory (because its' fun!) we forget what the personas are for.
I think the reason UCD vs ACD debate emerged because many good designers observed humans very widely in taste, narrowly in behavior, so some they are trying to narrow down the scope of design focus to what is generalizable. Just like in testing, you test usability with 8 users, but you wouldn't want to test what users thought impinged on their privacy with such a small number. Even very smart folks make the mistake in discerning what you test with large numbers, and what you test with small, and what design choices are informed by testing and what has to be done by skill and taste. In any case, I'm not certain renaming will do the trick here. UCD is established and very comprehendable. On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 7:13 AM, William Brall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think we are getting hung up on terms here. In the end it all means > the same thing. You aren't are programmer designing for yourself a > thing that does what the users need. > > As long as you aren't that, you'll do a decent job of making your > product usable. > > Most of these methods are philosophical, they are useful tools to > teach the principals involved in IxD but they aren't meant to be a > map you can follow to reach a perfect result. > > Mix and match as you please, just don't try to make a hammer screw > in a screw. In other words, what makes IxD work is not that the > methods on a grand scale are so great, it is that you are separating > someone out to think like the user and to advocate what they need in > a language that programmers and graphic designers can follow. > > There are several methods to architecture, and they are all better > than letting the builder build a house without a plan. So is true > with IxD methods. > > > Will > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33980 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > ________________________________________________________________ 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
