On Aug 27, 2009, at 11:44 AM, Charles B. Kreitzberg wrote:
Andrei:
" In my experience, no. In fact, I've yet to find anything that
followed a
UCD process that was what I would consider well designed. Often
because the
people who practice this sort of thing tend to focus far too much on
the
"user" part and less on the "design" part."
Two years ago when I started with this list you were saying the same
nonsense.
Please stop.
There are many of us who are excellent designers and have been for
years. We
care a lot about the user and usability as well as design.
I got it. You think that UCD is wrong.
IMO, that is a superficial and shallow analysis of what UCD is
really about.
It does nothing to advance our profession.
I've spent the last 10 or so years doing what I believe to be a deep
and thorough analysis of what UCD is really about. And I'm leaning
more towards Andrei's view based on that work.
I think the problem, Charlie, is that UCD is too amorphous to talk
about in any meaningful way. Depending on who you talk to, it's either
a "state of mind" / philosophy of approaching design (aka "it's
important to make sure user needs are taken into account") or it's a
series of steps (aka methodology) that involves specific activities.
There doesn't seem to be any agreement, amongst people who say they
practice UCD, on which it is. Some will say you're not doing "UCD"
unless you're doing the activities, while others say if users were
part of the underlying design thinking, then it was UCD regardless of
the activities.
Andrei talked in terms of "UCD Process" which is even harder to get
people nail down. Some describe it as a general set of activities
(usability testing, field research, modeling, and others), while some
describe it as a specific series of steps that you follow at specific
stages in the design process.
I don't know where you fall in terms of what UCD is. (I do remember
you promoting a methodology -- LUCID -- which had a series of
activities that proposed to help companies create better designs. Did
I get that right? Is UCD = LUCID in your mind?)
And then there's the big problem with the word Design. In most
descriptions of UCD, there are virtually no design activities. You
don't find ideation or synthesis. Critique usually falls more towards
criticism through test data (though techniques such as so-called
Expert Review or Heuristic Evaluation -- which often don't involve
either experts or heuristics -- eliminate the data to provide just
criticism without discussion). It isn't really design as defined by
any other approach.
At best, it's "user centered analysis", but the practice is so wide
and varied, that it's hard to figure out what good, quality analysis
should be.
So, while I agree that Andrei's statement is a little hyperbolic and
certainly taken from his own viewpoint, I would agree that it's really
hard to find any instances of product or design success that you can
point to UCD actually contributing to.
If we could all agree on what UCD was, that might make it easier, but
I'm not sure that's a useful place to dedicate resources. We all agree
that good design has huge benefits and maybe that's a good enough
place to stop the conversation.
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: @jmspool
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