Jared, Great post. I think one important difference of ACD vs UCD is that ACD has a strong paradigm behind it. ACD comes out of Activity Theory. This should make ACD more concrete than a UCD approach, which seams to have little of a core.
In your email you quote the following "Who cares what we call it? My clients/co-workers don't care what it is, as long as I produce great designs. Let's just agree that what we do is a good thing, whether we label it ACD or UCD or whatever." For example another approach in another industry is Agile. Just look at the adoption... Part of the brilliance was giving a set of practices a foundation. Most of the rules where being used already, when the Agile Manifesto was created. The manifesto gave agile, as Imre Lakatos (to the centre of Philosophy), would say a core, or if you are Kuhn fan (to the left of Philosophy ) believer a paradigm. UCD lacks the core, or paradigm and therefore if you are believe in either, Kuhn or Lakatos, or Herb Simon, UCD will be challenged in building up a centre of knowledge, that can be expanded upon. Just to clear up the view that ACD does not use User Research. My business partner, Sabrina Mach explained in another email discussion, that ACD can use it:- For example the difference between pure ethnography and activity theory or > distributed cogition is that ethnography is completely unstructured. > Ethnographers start observation without any preconception, they simply > observes and do not judge. The advantage of Activity theory on the other > hand allows the observer to structure their observations. It focuses on the > individual in terms of their sociality of work, members of the system, > working division of labour, and artefacts. > This paper explains distributed cognition and Activity theory quiet well. http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/Papers/CAH1.pdf <http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/Papers/CAH1.pdf> So in the end it depends what the aim of a study is... if you want to gather requirements and understand behavior, AT and DCog are probably quiet good... if you want to be able to predict how well something will work you are better of with a method that allows more quantitative assessment. What is reduced in using ACD is what is used to inform the design. This ambirgurity in what is UCD in turn creates a risk for the client. If one can not define the approach how can we compare which method is best? So your categorization is very useful. But would it be good idea to further refine it by looking at the stage of processes. Research, Idea generation, Testing, Launch, and Refinement? For example if we take your "genius" and "ACD" example where does Morita and the Walkman fit in. He spent allot of time thinking about the Activity of the device, after coming up with original idea. Does it need a record button. Size: It needs to fit into a suit pocket without ruining the cut of a jacket. In his book "Made in Japan" that Sony differed from the American style of design by getting to a working prototype fast, and then testing where he said the Americans believe in doing mock ups and simulations. James On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 3:33 AM, Jeff Stevenson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > Thanks, Jared. This really helps me to understand better where you > were coming from in your IA Summit keynote. > > To me, the difference between UCD and ACD is mostly about WHEN, in > the timeline of a project, you start doing your research. Let me give > an example. > > Let's say my client is a financial institution. They come to me > saying, "We really want to target people who are setting up their > first bank account. We're not sure how to make ourselves stand out, > so what do you recommend?." At that stage in the process, I would > definitely want to do UCD. I want to know what types of personas are > creating their first bank account. What are their unmet needs? What > do they want to do online with their bank account? What keywords are > they searching for when they research bank accounts online? etc. I > would begin with UCD. > > But consider another scenario. Let's say the same financial > institution comes to me and says "I want to create an online tool > for people to check their balance, transfer money, and order more > checks." In that case, I could just begin designing a solution that > met those requirements. I wouldn't technically need to know more > information about my users to execute on that request. The > requirements have already been defined, so I would begin with ACD. > > The problem is that the tool I build may or may not solve anyone's > real problem. I haven't gotten to the important questions, which > are: > - Why does the bank want to build this tool? (What is their business > objective?) > - What functions do the users want to be able to do? > - Which functions are most important? > - What would help this tool to stand out relative to the bank's > competitors? > > And that's the nice thing about UCD. It puts us in the mindset that > we are solving problems, not simply executing on a set of > requirements. ACD seems to imply that the requirements are already > known. And while someone may have a set of requirements in mind, they > may not be the right ones. > > So would it be reasonable to say that ACD is the logical continuation > of UCD? That is, after we understand our users' needs and wants, we > can then define which activities the users need to perform, and then > design a solution that enables those activities? > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35466 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 ....... 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