Hi Jared: I think that I agree with what you are saying. Probably I should have been more polite in my response but I was really ticked off by the comment " I've yet to find anything that followed a UCD process that was what I would consider well designed."
Really? Everything that has been done by designers over the past three decades not one was well designed? Not one? Really? Come on now. That sounds arrogant and shallow to me. (It also reminds me of when I was a cognitive behavioral psychologist and at every staff meeting I had to listed to a diatribe as to why psychoanalysis was a waste of time. Yes, there are now better things but there were also come great insights). Why does it matter? Here's why. As you point out, UCD is used in two different ways: 1. As a philosophy which says that the user should be central to design decision 2. As a methodology There is no question in my mind that we can move beyond UCD as a methodology. It's dated and perhaps somewhat cumbersome -- at least the way that some people practice it. And those who use it are often not the most design-oriented folks in the world. In that sense, I have no disagreement with Andrei or the other UCD bashers out there. You mention the LUCID Framework that I developed (with others) in the 1990's. Y'know, today LUCID looks really dated to me. I've been thinking a lot about how to bring it into line with current thinking. My point being that this is not an attempt to hang onto the past. I fully acknowledge that we should move on. Where I do get steamed is when people who should know better bash the philosophy or fail to distinguish between the two. Why does this bother me? Well, I've spent many years (as have you and many others) trying to make the business world understand that designing for users is really important. It has been a long and hard road and we are finally getting some traction. When people publish stuff like that statement or even Don Norman writes an article like "HCD Considered Harmful" I really worry about its impact on executives who barely understand why they should care. Look at the thread "We don't make consumer products, hence no need for a User Centered Design development process" that you have been contributing to. How do you think this manager would respond to statements that UCD is crap? I think he would say "see even the practitioners don't believe in it." Does this help our profession gain influence? Does it make business think more about design and its value? I think not. Believe me, I get it that not all "UCD" people are great designers. I get it that there are other approaches. I don't disagree with any of that. But I do feel strongly that we are building tools for people. And I believe that concern for those people needs to be at the center of the design process. If we give that up, we risk sacrificing the hard-won bit of traction that we as a profession are finally getting. So UCD as a methodology I will not defend, although (like psychoanalysis) I think it has some real value. But as a philosophy -- that users matter, that usability matters -- that I will fight for. Because I do believe it. Too bad that we ended up with the same phrase meaning two things. So here is my bottom line recommendation: For those of you who feel UCD as a methodology should give way to more modern approaches, great. Just stop bashing UCD because others, less sophisticated than you, will misunderstand and come to the conclusion that they don't need any design at all. Is this really so hard to understand? Charlie ============================ Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. CEO, Cognetics Corporation ============================ -----Original Message----- From: Jared Spool [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 8:49 PM To: [email protected] Cc: 'Andrei Herasimchuk'; 'IXDA list' Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] We don\'t make consumer products, hence no need for a User Centered Design development process. 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
