"I always took UCD to mean that user's needs (and not users themselves) were placed well in the centre (but not exclusively) of the design process."
Yeah I guess we disagree here. When I normally get involved in UCD it has a specific process in mind resembling that which I outlined. Perhaps the issue is that the origninal intent have mutated. "Having worked in a hospital, I can tell of some disasterous pieces of equipment that had a negative impact on people's lives due to poor design." Sure as I said, if you are doing something truly new that don't have a well established set of design patterns you will involve the users to a great extent. But these kinds of projects are the exception not the rule. For most cases where UCD is hailed as the way forward we are talking about standard design problems (need to create a timesheet application, video player, financial application, community etc. "I know it isn't very artistic, but it is design nonetheless. From my training as a psych, there are ways to tease this information out but it takes a lot of work with training and experience to do it well." I don't believe in "artistic" I believe in problem solving. Design is the ability to make informed decisions solving various problems. It's not game of aesthetics although they do have a positive impact on clarity when applied properly. "But it does feel like user centred design to me simply because the user's needs are core to the design itself. I really wasn't aware that UCD demanded only qualitative data." It doesn't but it puts a certain weight to it that is unwarrented the way it's used in most cases. Of course the user is always in center that is exactly what I and others are saying. It's just not in the center as it's used most often in UCD which to me is a specific approach towards designing solutions. At the end of the day the real test is the final product, someone has to sit there and move the pixels around so they make sense. Involving the user as most agencies do when they claim UCD is simply not enough. It is of course enough for the clients because they can then always defend poor results with user testing. It's become a placebo that don't really solve the problem IMHO. The real trick is to understand what users do, not what they say they do or want to do. With regards to quantitative data I would bet you that if we did a sample of 20 agencies that claimed they used UCD, perhaps only one actually used quantitative data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45486 ________________________________________________________________ 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
