Comments on: The poverty of user-centered design

By: dtechnos

dtechnos — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:55:00 +0000

Product, food and services are fairly rigorous in field testing, but there seems to be a vast cultural divide between those who fund, those who code, and those who use.

By: Heru

Heru — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:35:02 +0000

I recently came from google to your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog.

By: HG

HG — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:32:18 +0000

I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

By: Kristina

Kristina — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:04:35 +0000

The intention of user-centered design is no doubt to make the user interface as intuitive as possible for the widest variety of user expertise levels. Designing order input for a website for example must be easy to understand for anyone who finds the site and desires to make a purchase. Theoretically anyone in the world has access to these, and the user interface should be focused on helping the consumer enter the order correctly with ease. The design of more specialized software that is particular to an industry seems to require less emphasis on user centered design and more emphasis on perfecting the ability to track inventory, orders, profits, etc. while keeping the learning curve reasonable so as not to make the product costly for consumers in training hours. Audience must always be considered in design.

By: Tsvetomir

Tsvetomir — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:29:29 +0000

Such a wonderful post, I would be glad if there are more like this one. Regards!

By: Ian Collingwood

Ian Collingwood — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:57:30 +0000

In many ways I’m with Randolph on this one - just because people hijack your buzzword doesn’t mean you should abandon it in disgust. Do that and in 18 months I guarantee that you’ll need to find a new buzzword since they’ll all catch on again and start jumping on your bandwagon. (Why do you think we have moved from User-friendly through Usability to UCD to UX in less than decade?)

But let’s not be too pessimistic here. Sure, there are plenty of people saying they “do” UCD when we, the blessed adherents of the One True Faith, know that they are mere heathens praying to False Prophets (or should that be Fast Profits?).

That’s just too extreme. Firstly, anyone who’s been in this industry as long as Bias, Spool and Dillon have has to admit that things are a *lot* better now than they were, even 5 years ago. And secondly, even if UCD isn’t done perfectly, the fact that it is done at all should be a cause for guarded optimism.

The other point I want to make is that, sure, we could spend our whole lives complaining about how project planners and stakeholders don’t understand what we do and don’t factor in enough time or budget for us to do our jobs perfectly. But where will that get us? Unfortunately, what happens in the real world - the one where someone is paying you by the hour for your work - is that only artists and monks (and maybe academics with tenure ever get all the time they need to do their job as perfectly as they’d like.

For an industry that makes money telling others how to make their products to fit with user needs, I find it both ironic and rather sad that our *own* products often seem so poorly fitted to the needs of *our* users. Instead, we complain that stakeholders don’t use our products in the ways that we would like them to. Sound familiar?

So what’s the answer? Surely it’s to understand our own users better, and then iterate a few new ideas until we find something that works.

For me, the issue of what we call it is irrelevant. We all understand what we are talking about here. The goal is be to bring real evidence from real users into the design process. Jared touched on this and I agree - way too much of what gets done isn’t “user-centred design”, it’s “opinion-based design”. By this I mean that it relies on the opinion of someone, (the designer? the stakeholder? the marketing dude?, the UCD expert?) and not on evidence from real users, in real contexts.

At my company we’ve been on this path for a while and have started calling it “evidence-based design”. Sure, it’s another buzzword, which brings me right back to where we started.

But I don’t care. I see it as our job to develop the tools that allow us to bring evidence from users into every stage of the design process. It’s a tough job sometimes, but that’s why they pay us and that’s why I love it.

Call it whatever you like - but keep the focus of your attention on meeting the needs of *your* users. You know - the ones who pay you for your work?

By: belle ann

belle ann — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:00:49 +0000

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog.

By: Putting People First in italiano » La povertà del design utente-centrico

Putting People First in italiano » La povertà del design utente-centrico — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:32:55 +0000

[...] Leggi tutto l’articolo [...]

By: Randolph Bias

Randolph Bias — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:56:45 +0000

Andrew, Jared, (Gordon?), you are so right. And while we’re at it, what about this “gravity” nonsense? The concept has become so commonplace, even people unschooled in physics are leaning on it to explain things. (And how many of them REALLY understand it?!) And even if we did wish to continue to rely on this “gravity” thing (hey, it’s not just a good idea; it’s the LAW), it doesn’t really explain how light travels, now does it? So as to be maximally constructive in my critique, I propose a new term for gravity. I think from now on we should call it “Down eXperience” (DX). Of course, only people who are good at designing and explaining down experiences will be able to use this term. Until the great unwashed masses discover it and then we’ll have to invent a new term. But that’s a concern for next year. In the meantime . . .
1 - No, usability evaluation doesn’t help you design the FIRST prototype (though there
ARE various UCD methods that WILL help with that, e.g., contextual inquiry).
2 - Yes, some people do a poor job of choosing which UCD methods to apply, or of applying them, dang it. I wish they would stop doing that. (And I spent 90 minutes debating Krug at UPA last year, offering ideas on how to reduce this, and spend at least 30 weeks a year sharing those ideas with master’s students.)
3 - Yes, usability is comprised of learnability (AND discoverability) in addition to day-to-day usability, and we will do well to distinguish among them (and educate others
to do so).
4 - Yes, “truly understanding the user seems beyond both established methods and
established practices.” That’s why I’m working with you (Andrew) to improve old methods and add new ones. And,
5 - yes, our entire discipline is weak on the quantification of the value of which UCD
methods are best applied when, and by whom. Some of us are trying to work on this problem. Given what I’ve read so far, I believe I’ll continue to do so (whether it be under the rubric of UCD, or UX, or IxD, or Twas Brillig), and to do all I can to make sure the UCD baby doesn’t get thrown out with the bath water.

Randolph.

By: Jim Griesemer

Jim Griesemer — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:24:16 +0000

I confess to a having certain amount of disappointment and impatience with our profession’s propensity to heavily promote terminology, only to turn around and toss it away as “dead,” once it becomes mainstream. UCD, like User Experience, have become well-recognized calls to having a mindset of “placing the user first” in all phases of the creation of any product. If it follows that the methodology or implementation is flawed, why not improve those aspects instead of simply abandoning the terminology. Is it not true that every established discipline has had new methodologies that began their existences with flaws in place? Did those disciplines abandon the names of their methodologies so quickly, or just continue to improve them? I haven’t studied it, but I suspect they continually improved them and kept the name.

In my experience, the biggest problem we face is that the belief the user should come first is often talked about and promoted, but rarely implemented in the “we can’t afford research” environment of IT. I submit to my colleagues that the stakeholders and decision makers in Business will not take us seriously if we continue to change the name of what we do. In my experience, these folks are just beginning to get the message of UCD and User Experience. When they finally do understand that UCD and User Experience are cost effective, are we to say, “We don’t call it that any more?” I concur that the points you (and Jared) make about the flaws of UCD are valid. If that is the case, what do we do to make UCD live up to its name? I realize that my experience is anecdotal. Nonetheless, I wish to raise it.