To All:
How sad this continuing pseudo debate about "UCD" is. I am (with colleagues)
responsible for the LUCID Framework which was a UCD Framework widely-used in
the 1990's. (LUCID stood for Logical User-Centered Interaction Design).
I don't know anyone today who insists that the methodology of UCD should be
preserved and followed as if it were a religious tract. For its time UCD was
revolutionary. Today it is dated. It should evolve to embrace social media,
mobile devices, and all the other wonderful and exciting interactive
technologies that are emerging.
What should not change is our focus on the user. We are interaction
designers. That means that we design interactions between people ("users")
and interactive products. Since neither our business nor technical
colleagues typically take ownership of the user experience, we play a
critical role in making products that are useful, usable and desirable.
What makes me so sad is that instead of using our collective wisdom to
evolve UCD into a 21st century framework that still advocates for the user
while supporting business and technology goals, we go around and around with
the same tired arguments.
We need to get past ideology and focus on deeper issues.
Charlie
============================
Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D.
CEO, Cognetics Corporation
============================
-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Dave
Malouf
Sent: Saturday, September 12, 2009 11:48 AM
To: disc...@ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] How trendy is UCD? Are we critical enough about
it?
Hi David,
I have to disagree with your dismissal of my request, and coming from
you in particular (InContext) it is almost inappopriate to do so the
way you did. You basically said that b/c your successes are in X
area, then my request for case studies from Y area is not
appropriate. It shows you miss the point of the request.
I KNOW UCD processes have done things at the level your case studies
have done. Heck I teach CI every quarter to my students. Its a great
method indeed. But is sorely limited in its scale and THAT is the
issue we need to address.
No one is saying that UCD processes have had no success for the areas
they have tried to work in. However, I am saying that the scale of our
design problems have changed radically in the last 3 years and that
traditional UCD formal processes do not scale with these problems.
For example, to re-design healthcare, the models of CI would be
completely insufficient because they are way too focused. The use of
affinities itself cannot scale to such big problems because the data
sets being looked at cannot work.
Further the goals of a CI practice is task driven, not transformation
driven. It is about re-designing task flows, when in fact what we need
to re-design are collections of different behaviors and cultural
assumptions and the mechanisms needed to create that change.
This is but one example. This is the level that Apple is working at,
when it creates whole new cultures with their products & services.
This is what is going to be required to deal with global political,
economic, and environmental issues.
But none of this means we can't or shouldn't be considering users.
Ravy Sawnhey, Founder of RKS Design, posted this recently:
http://rksdesign.com/who_we_are/index.php/team/
Totally a human-considered process. RKS itself has a pretty formal
human-considered process indeed. They also have amazing case studies
in all sorts of market areas. But I would not consider this
"user-centered" like CI or GDD. instead, it is human-considered.
But this is a tangent to the main point here. The point is around the
fetishization of UCD within the community at the detriment of a more
holistic look. I think Adaptive Path has been trying from the inside
to promote this and obvious Jared Spool has as well. The work of
industrial design firms that have taken on more interest in
transformation design or market innovation design, have definitely
taken this on totally.
So the consideration of human beings is of paramount importance, but
our use of traditional UCD methods that are not considering a more
holistic approach have probably demonstrated their limitations at
addressing larger scale design issues, and possibly maybe have
limited our abilities at looking at smaller design issues more
holistically as well.
-- dave
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45486
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