why the hate-on User-centered Design? (waspractice vs. discipline & roles vs. people

Lately a lot of senior folks seem to be railing on user-centered design. Now, I thought UCD was the idea of putting the users in the center of the design choices. To do that, you can do it with a bunch of methodologies, or visit the users in their native habitat then keep them in mind later, or invite them to pick up a pencil and draw you some interfaces somewhere along the way. And none of these seem like a particularly bad practice when done in context of what you are trying to accomplish. With search, everyone is your user and you do search log analysis and a-b testing, when you design an internal ap you talk to your users, design for them and htey get to sign off. Consumer internet for multiple user types can often benefit from research, user segmentation and various sorts of testing. Sometimes personas are usful, sometimes task analysis... sometimes self-gratification is the right call when you and the user are the same. It's all UCD to me. So why the backlash? It feels like a backlash against love songs, sandwiches or democracy.

Or perhaps I'm merely semanticly sloppy, and the backlash is against the 32 step persona to particpatory prototype system(TM)?

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Jared Spool jspool at uie.com wrote:

We've started sharing some of it in our presentations (such as in my IA Summit keynote here: http://is.gd/3ynf ).

I think the problem is that UCD means whatever people want it to mean. And that's often, "You're not doing things the way I think they should be done, so you're not doing UCD."

Personally, my argument is that we've never been able to define it with any rigor and, therefore, it quickly becomes useless when we try to make sure we're all on the same page.

It's not so much hate for me as a desire to find a vocabulary that means the same thing to everyone.

Jared

On Oct 5, 2008, at 10:35 PM, Christina Wodtke wrote:

Lately a lot of senior folks seem to be railing on user-centered design. Now, I thought UCD was the idea of putting the users in the center of the design choices. To do that, you can do it with a bunch of methodologies, or visit the users in their native habitat then keep them in mind later, or invite them to pick up a pencil and draw you some interfaces somewhere along the way. And none of these seem like a particularly bad practice when done in context of what you are trying [trim]

So why the backlash?

Because there's more to design than just the user.

It feels like a backlash against love songs, sandwiches or democracy.

There are horrible love songs, revolting sandwiches and atrocities committed in the name of democracy.

-- Kontra
http://counternotions.com

From what I've read, there seems to a move away from having the user at the center of the design process to having the use of the system (or the interaction) at the center of the design process. To give credit to Larry Constantine, I think his term "Usage Centered Design" sums up what most interaction designers say that they do!

www.foruse.com is his website - although like many "senior folks" in the field it is kinda crap.

Tim

Disclaimer: I taught Larry's method "usage centered design" for a final year level university course for two consecutive years. Then I decided I should use the skills I was teaching and entered industry : )

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Christina Wodtke cwodtke at eleganthack.comwrote:

Lately a lot of senior folks seem to be railing on user-centered design. Now, I thought UCD was the idea of putting the users in the center of the design choices. To do that, you can do it with a bunch of methodologies, or visit the users in their native habitat then keep them in mind later, or invite them to pick up a pencil and draw you some interfaces somewhere along the way. And none of these seem like a particularly bad practice when done in context of what you are trying to accomplish. With search, everyone [trim]

-- Kei te kōrero tiki au. Kei te kōrero tiki koe. Ka kōrero tiki tāua. Kōrero ai tiki tāua.

I don't know if you're including me in your comment, Christina, but I did write a piece on activity-centered design recently that was part of a similar conversation, so I'll try to answer from my perspective.

http://bokardo.com/archives/activity-centered-design/

For me, it's not a hate of UCD, but more of a question about the best frame in which to approach design. I started thinking about this back when I wondered about IA being the right frame...and I'm still thinking about it.

My question comes right out of Lakoff's classic framing theory...the way you talk about something "Pro-Life" or "Pro-Choice" changes the way that you actually think about it. (and, in the case of design, practice it).

I guess the primary insight into my questioning was the observation that we do a lot of research on users, and tend to think we're serving a rather homogenous population, but in many cases our users are incredibly varied. Sometimes the only thing our users have in common is the activity they're doing...that's why both I and a lawyer can use Skitch (or Jing) equally effectively...even though we're nothing alike in almost every part of life, we happen to both perform the activity of grabbing screenshots rather similarly. The activity is our similarity...and not to mention that sharing activities is one of the primary ways that people meet and become friends with others...though they may be very different in other aspects of their lives.

I didn't want to step on toes with my piece, but that may be the result of asking the question. I have a hunch that focusing on activity as the primary subject (or usage) might actually begin to draw distinctions in practice. For example, personas are a UCD artifact...do they exist in ACD practice? (I don't know)

But let me be clear: right now this is only a theory and it's not made up of hate, just curiosity. : )

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

How precisely do you have to define a general approach to product development? In the early days of "Usability Engineering" we looked at the key principles of stakeholder involvement, quantiative usability goals, user involvement, iterations of design and evaluation, and comparison against the goals (when you meet the goals, you ship). Within this framework (and we used "framework" to avoid debates about whether specific methods like contextual inquiry, think-aloud testing, interviews, or surveys were the best methods given the constraints).

Within this Usability Engineering framework, a multitude of methods could be used (appropriately or inappropriately) so I think that we do get into trouble when we start equating UCD to a small set of our favorite methods.

Can we agree on the general approach to UCD?

Chauncey

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 10:42 PM, Jared Spool jspool at uie.com wrote: I think the problem is that UCD means whatever people want it to mean. And that's often, "You're not doing things the way I think they should be done, so you're not doing UCD." Personally, my argument is that we've never been able to define it with any rigor and, therefore, it quickly becomes useless when we try to make sure we're all on the same page. It's not so much hate for me as a desire to find a vocabulary that means the same thing to everyone. Jared On Oct 5, 2008, at 10:35 [trim]

Christina, I think this falls under the "bigger table" syndrome that almost all UX practitioners are facing. How do I sit at the big table if everyone thinks all I'm concerned about is the "user"? I think this is the not-high-road path.

The higher-road path is actually the desire to meet all stakeholder needs and the growing concentration of enterprise work where the largest considered stakeholders are not end-users at all, but channel managers, and IT managers who will never use the things we create.

It is also about meeting business needs which for right or wrong are often in conflict with user needs. That conflict is NOT a bad thing, but it is still a need. I think security issues for example is never really a user need, except for perception of privacy, and so is seldom designed for them, but rather is a requirement that comes from other stakeholder sources. There are MANY other examples.

For me "stakeholder-centered design" has been come up a lot for me in my work and there are no analytical processes that truly handle this. There is a balancing act that needs to be reached and it is our goal as the designers to not just be the advocate for the end-user, but be the advocate for the most successful design for all stakeholders.

BTW, as an aside, I have put forth here that the difference between ACD and UCD is that ACD is really a type of UCD. It is about the sphere of the touch-points that the user engages in. It is a type, and not an alternative. so folks proposing ACD are not against UCD at all.

-- dave

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

It feels like a backlash against love songs, sandwiches or democracy. There are horrible love songs, revolting sandwiches and atrocities committed in the name of democracy.

that's why I chose those three. There are dreadful examples of each, yet are we getting rid of them because of that?

As Churchill said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

agreed, and I liked your piece because it asked "what is useful?" UCD should be composed with various methods and frames which are applied when appropriate, which I was trying to say but I was tired. : )

I always thought the heart of UCD was "hey, let's think about the guy using it rather than the code under it or the designers on top of it."

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 4:23 AM, Joshua Porter porter at bokardo.com wrote:

I don't know if you're including me in your comment, Christina, but I did write a piece on activity-centered design recently that was part of a similar conversation, so I'll try to answer from my perspective. http://bokardo.com/archives/activity-centered-design/ For me, it's not a hate of UCD, but more of a question about the best frame in which to approach design. I started thinking about this back when I wondered about IA being the right frame...and I'm still thinking about it. My question comes right out of Lakoff's classic framing theory...the way you talk about something "Pro-Life" or [trim]

I've come to two general conclusions:

1. I'm never quite doing what the current best practice/fad/terminology says

2. Whatever terminology I choose will become outmoded.

I remember back in '95 or so, Donald Norman came to a local chapter of HFES, with folks from the various parts of that field. Including design. And he asserted to our faces that what we were doing was crap, that emotion was critical.

This lovely assertion that all HF folks are in the evaluative side of things is just funny. And the assumption that we narrow the entire range of human factors down to cognitive factors is insulting.

This obviously stuck in my mind. And now that he is asserting that the lessons you learn in HF from the engineering side (Industrial Engineering) are critical to management of design ... I just can't take the whole thing seriously.

I have training in industrial design, engineering, manufacturing, cognition, vision, human performance, social psychology, emotional psychology, artificial intelligence, programming, and business. I might not have training in fundamentals of typography and color, but I can evaluate responses to these things and refine designs. And I'm tired of people assuming that because I do one of these things, I fit in some stereotype.

And this is what I think the backlash against "usability", "usability engineering", and "user centered design" is.

And I look ahead to the backlash against interaction design. And other backlashes. I plan to roll my eyes, figure out what the current preferred methodology is, see what I am already doing of it, see what I can learn from it, and see if I want to adopt it as a label. I might, I might not.

I think I have graduated to codgerhood.

~~~~ Barbara Ballard
barbara at littlespringsdesign.com 1-785-838-3003

Barbara, that was a great post! (Especially the first and penultimate paragraphs.)

It seems to me that every term used to describe work done in our field ascends, and then eventually descends, the Gartner hype curve. This process ends with gurus and guru wannabes railing against that term. In the meantime, practitioners shrug and adopt it if helps them get their jobs done more effectively.

Dmitry

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Barbara Ballard
barbara at littlespringsdesign.com wrote:
I've come to two general conclusions: 1. I'm never quite doing what the current best practice/fad/terminology says 2. Whatever terminology I choose will become outmoded. I remember back in '95 or so, Donald Norman came to a local chapter of HFES, with folks from the various parts of that field. Including design. And he asserted to our faces that what we were doing was crap, that emotion was critical. This lovely assertion that all HF folks are in the evaluative side of things is just funny. And the assumption that we narrow the entire range of human [trim]

I don't know that there's a hate-on in progress, but I do think that there is a spirited debate, and a much-needed one.

My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"?

In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to solve them. (note: I'm only speaking practically, I'm not trying to define design in its entirety for everyone) If you're building a web site, how could you do anything other than put the user and their interaction with the site first and foremost in every decision? Like many things in our industry, I think that people tend to introduce jargon in an attempt to legitimize the field. If it sounds fancy, it must be good!

In my opinion it's just design, plain and simple.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

If you work at an agency there is no such thing as "pure" UCD — it is tainted, constrained, or, to put in more neutral terms, challenged, by, as David says quite aptly, "stakeholder-centered design".

And anyway, a UCD approach that does not include an elaboration of front-end activities would get a big red "INCOMPLETE" stamp from me (if I was evaluating high-school-teacher-style). Does it really matter whether the activities come before, say, user profiles, or after?

Can someone provide links to any articles that illustrate this "hate-on"?

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Kurt Krumme krumme at gmail.com wrote:

I don't know that there's a hate-on in progress, but I do think that there is a spirited debate, and a much-needed one. My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to solve them. (note: I'm only speaking practically, I'm not trying to define design in its entirety for everyone) If you're building a web site, how could you [trim]

When conditions get hard... such as a bad economy... your burn rate is too fast, or someone decides the have some enlightened vision, shortcuts begin to happen. That shortcut is usually research and or testing. The most important research in a product development process is concerned with usage and revenue (users and buyers).

Sustainable usage and sustainable revenue will come only through users and customers. Where these are the same, life is usually pretty simple. When they are different things often get ugly. Shortcuts will usually compromise either or both usage and revenue.

as for ACD... I Dave is correct, ACD is a subset of UCD. I will never get how you can really understand tasks, activities and goals with out looking at the users that have them.

Mark

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Kurt Krumme krumme at gmail.com wrote: I don't know that there's a hate-on in progress, but I do think that there is a spirited debate, and a much-needed one. My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to solve them. (note: I'm only speaking practically, I'm not trying to define design in its entirety for everyone) If you're building a web site, how could you [trim]

On Oct 6, 2008, at 9:16 AM, Kurt Krumme wrote:

My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to solve them. (note: I'm only speaking practically, I'm not trying to define design in its entirety for everyone) If you're building a web site, how could you do anything other than put the user and their interaction with the site first and foremost in every decision? Like many things in [trim]

Bingo.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Semantics aside, I hope that the meat of a user-centered design approach is preserved. Time and resource pressures seem to create a constant potential for product development processes to backslide into designer-centered-design, software-developer-centered-design, etc.

Regarding Activity-centered design - its very useful but not completely sufficient. An apt analogy: Consider how behavioral psychology was supplanted by cognitive psychology.

-Mark

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

On Oct 6, 2008, at 1:22 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

In my opinion it's just design, plain and simple. Bingo.

Damn. I was one square away.

Jared

Jared wrote:
"I think the problem is that UCD means whatever people want it to mean. And that's often, "You're not doing things the way I think they should be done, so you're not doing UCD."

Personally, my argument is that we've never been able to define it with any rigor and, therefore, it quickly becomes useless when we try to make sure we're all on the same page.

It's not so much hate for me as a desire to find a vocabulary that means the same thing to everyone."

Robert writes:
I think user-centered design is the measurement of subjective opinion at its core.

Opinions, whether from the designer, user, or business stakeholder, color the use and application of literally all physical and web design techniques. The strength of one groups' influence over another will differ from place to place, but UCD is particular in its ability to analyze this for tactical and strategic use.

It's a powerful tool for the practitioner who knows how to use it effectively. If it can ultimately inform stakeholders when making important business decisions, and influence design direction with a unique facet of customer insight.

In my experience, it falls out of favor when it lacks practical application to process, or becomes a political liability. It becomes completely irrelevant if timelines are short, or business goals require expediency in the face of calculated risk.

Trying to find a shared vocabulary would be admirable. Finding cases of UCD done well, or when combined with other design techniques, would be even better.

- Robert

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Dmitry Nekrasovski mail.dmitry at gmail.comwrote:

Barbara, that was a great post! (Especially the first and penultimate paragraphs.) It seems to me that every term used to describe work done in our field ascends, and then eventually descends, the Gartner hype curve. This process ends with gurus and guru wannabes railing against that term. In the meantime, practitioners shrug and adopt it if helps them get their jobs done more effectively. Dmitry On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Barbara Ballard barbara at littlespringsdesign.com wrote: I've come to two general conclusions: 1. I'm never quite doing what [trim]

I agree with most all of this Andrei. The problem is that UCD is not how many many products are developed. And that is the reason the term still has value.

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk aherasimchuk at involutionstudios.com wrote:
On Oct 6, 2008, at 9:16 AM, Kurt Krumme wrote: My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to solve them. (note: I'm only speaking practically, I'm not trying to define design in its entirety for everyone) If you're building a web site, how could you do anything other than put the user and their interaction with the [trim]

Somebody recently asked what are other approaches that are generally used besides UCD, to which I reply:

1. Stakeholder-centered Design - VP says he likes the feature and the users will like what he likes because he plans on being a user
- Marketing says they need 48 questions in the registration process b/c they need the information

2. Technology-centered Design (most common - and the one Norman's company is embracing by taking design out and doing just agile) - what is this?

3. Competitor-centered Design

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:26 PM, mark schraad mschraad at gmail.com wrote:

I agree with most all of this Andrei. The problem is that UCD is not how many many products are developed. And that is the reason the term still has value. On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk aherasimchuk at involutionstudios.com wrote: On Oct 6, 2008, at 9:16 AM, Kurt Krumme wrote: My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"

Will Evans | User Experience Architect
tel: +1.617.281.128 | will at semanticfoundry.com
aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4
twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill

It's all UCD to me. So why the backlash? It feels like a backlash against love songs, sandwiches or democracy.

The frequent arguments (which I'm frequently part of):

1) Many people (and it sounds like you're part of this group) view "User-Centered Design" a sort of an all-encompassing, umbrella term that includes any and all possible approaches, practices, and deliverables aimed at providing useful, usable, and enjoyable solutions for users. But since there are other approaches out there to accomplishing this goal, such as ACD, GDD, etc., and there are distinctions between these approaches, and the distinctions are important, much debate occurs that attempts to either define UCD, define everything else as compared to UCD, or erase the distinctions entirely in favor of the almighty term "UCD" so that the rest of the world doesn't get confused about how they should be developing products.

2) The arguments are not all about UCD as a whole—there is actually a lot of overlap in the toolsets for each approach—but rather about certain tools usually associated with UCD. Personas/scenarios, user research, and other things can be seen as flawed, unstable, and ultimately a waste of time. Donald Norman has come out against personas, for example, saying they're essentially useless for informing design decisions.

3) There is a school of thought that to achieve the best solution, one is better off focusing on an aspect of the problem/solution set other than the blanket "user". In ACD, the activity is at the core. In GDD, the user's personal goals are at the core. And so on.

An important note:

All the approaches involve paying attention to users and designing things that support them. They all have the same underlying goal as what's typically referred to as "UCD". Their focuses are different, their practices and methods are different, their deliverables are often different, and their outcomes may be different, but they all are an attempt to achieve the same thing.

When it comes down to it, every designer has a slightly different way of doing things, and if you can wrap it up in a pretty red bow and give it a name, you can make a lot of money as a consultant by charging people to apply your specific approach to a design project.

In the end, it doesn't matter one bit what process you use. What matters is that you can prove it works and can repeat it.

The passion you've seen coming out on all sides of the debate, I believe, stems from the Vulcan death-grip with which people tend to hold onto their particular strain of design process or approach. For some, it's about digging in and sticking to what they fully believe to be the right approach. For others, it's about refusing to accept existing norms and looking for alternatives. For some, it's about doing what they were taught was right by a prior mentor (professor, team lead, etc.). For others, it's about questioning that mentor.

Regardless, it's all very ... fun. It makes for some very lively and heated debates. And one thing most people seem to agree on is that the debate itself is good for the profession.

-r-

as for ACD... I Dave is correct, ACD is a subset of UCD. I will never get how you can really understand tasks, activities and goals with out looking at the users that have them.

One more time. This time with feeling.

ACD does not—I repeat, not—mean ignoring users. It means focusing on their activities instead of their goals. It means ignoring what Jenny wants to be when she gets out of college and focusing instead on how to create an app that helps her (and everyone else) complete the activities she needs to complete to get out of college.

Many times, a designer can become well-versed in an activity without doing outside research. Many other times, the designer cannot do this. In both situations, the focus is on the activity, not the user alone.

And with that, time for me to get back to work!

-r-

Somebody recently asked what are other approaches that are generally used besides UCD, to which I reply:

1. Stakeholder-centered Design

2. Technology-centered Design

3. Competitor-centered Design

Well, of course UCD sounds great when compared to these particular alternatives. But that doesn't automatically mean it's infallible, and that doesn't mean it's the only solution out there.

-r-

Will...not to nitpick, but if you are not doing all three of your alternatives IN ADDITION to UCD, you're very very very lucky to get a paycheck, or you work in a design firm, where such influences are possibly less prominent (I'm guessing, as I've been a corporate guy most of my career).

Will said:
Somebody recently asked what are other approaches that are generally used besides UCD, to which I reply:

1. Stakeholder-centered Design

2. Technology-centered Design

3. Competitor-centered Design

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

I should be clear - those approaches to the EXCLUSION of all other things, including users/usage/activity.

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 3:15 PM, Bryan Minihan bjminihan at nc.rr.com wrote:

Will...not to nitpick, but if you are not doing all three of your alternatives IN ADDITION to UCD, you're very very very lucky to get a paycheck, or you work in a design firm, where such influences are possibly less prominent (I'm guessing, as I've been a corporate guy most of my career). Will said: Somebody recently asked what are other approaches that are generally used besides UCD, to which I reply: 1. Stakeholder-centered Design 2. Technology-centered Design 3. Competitor-centered Design Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885 [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"

Will Evans | User Experience Architect
tel: +1.617.281.128 | will at semanticfoundry.com
aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4
twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill

Referring to Robert's statement: "ACD does not—I repeat, not—mean ignoring users. It means focusing on their activities instead of their goals."

IMHO, if UCD or ACD do NOT focus on both goals and activities, it fails as a process.

It's really a chicken-and-egg argument, depending on the solution (i.e. whether the user-base is defined or not). It could be the activities that inform the user goals, or the user goals that influence the activities, but if the end-result only has one and not the other, I cannot imagine it satisfying all three of the (client) stakeholders, Dev team and end-user.

On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote:

ACD does not—I repeat, not—mean ignoring users. It means focusing on their activities instead of their goals. It means ignoring what Jenny wants to be when she gets out of college and focusing instead on how to create an app that helps her (and everyone else) complete the activities she needs to complete to get out of college.

Which works great until the goals change the activities.

That's where I've always been confused by the ACD stuff. (Such as Jenny's desire to prop up her MCAT scores so she can get accepted to Harvard Med, which may change the way she chooses courses and professors from the college's class scheduling system.)

Nobody is suggesting that when you're using the non-ACD method (whatever we wanna call that), that you take irrelevant facts into account in the design process.

I've never understood how the design process is actually different when you're doing the ACD thing.

Since clearing up my confusion is just a goal of mine, feel free to ignore it. That way we can all focus on our activities. : )

Jared

On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:45 PM, Will Evans wrote:

Somebody recently asked what are other approaches that are generally used besides UCD, to which I reply: 1. Stakeholder-centered Design - VP says he likes the feature and the users will like what he likes because he plans on being a user - Marketing says they need 48 questions in the registration process b/c they need the information 2. Technology-centered Design (most common - and the one Norman's company is embracing by taking design out and doing just agile) - what is this? Technology driven Internal architecture focus Developers are [trim]

Again, Is UCD a methodological framework (or whatever you call it)? Are these things one of those too?

Or is UCD just a state-of-mind?

Am I just supposed to feel particularly UCDish today?

Jared

On Oct 6, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Jared Spool wrote:

Again, Is UCD a methodological framework (or whatever you call it)? Are these things one of those too? Or is UCD just a state-of-mind?

To me, UCD is an approach to design that suggests certain methods. Personas, for instance, with their frequent emphasis on user goals, seems to be a technique suggested by an UCD approach. Something like Indi Young's Mental Models (aka alignment diagrams) would be a technique that Activity-Centered Design approach might engender.

We should not forget the two other major approaches as well: systems design, and "genius design." Those are valid approaches to our work as well.

Dan

Dan Saffer
Principal, Kicker Studio
http://www.kickerstudio.com
http://www.odannyboy.com

On Oct 6, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Dan Saffer wrote:

To me, UCD is an approach to design that suggests certain methods. Personas, for instance, with their frequent emphasis on user goals, seems to be a technique suggested by an UCD approach. Something like Indi Young's Mental Models (aka alignment diagrams) would be a technique that Activity-Centered Design approach might engender. We should not forget the two other major approaches as well: systems design, and "genius design." Those are valid approaches to our work as well.

Which brings me back to my original assertion:

if you ask 10 UX professionals what their approach to UCD is, you'll get (a minimum of) 10 answers.

: )

Jared

Google-Centered Design: "Make it work/feel/act/look like Google"

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Dan Saffer dan at odannyboy.com wrote:

On Oct 6, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Jared Spool wrote: Again, Is UCD a methodological framework (or whatever you call it)? Are these things one of those too? Or is UCD just a state-of-mind? To me, UCD is an approach to design that suggests certain methods. Personas, for instance, with their frequent emphasis on user goals, seems to be a technique suggested by an UCD approach. Something like Indi Young's Mental Models (aka alignment diagrams) would be a technique that Activity-Centered Design approach might engender. We should not forget the two other major approaches [trim]

—
~ will

"Where you innovate, how you innovate,
and what you innovate are design problems"

Will Evans | User Experience Architect
tel: +1.617.281.128 | will at semanticfoundry.com
aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4
twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill

On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 19:35:34 -0700, Christina wrote:

Lately a lot of senior folks seem to be railing on user-centered design.

Just to chip in with my British 2p.

I don't care what it's called really. We're in business, we have a website that needs to achieve some things. There are a number of factors that need to come together for it to be successful in doing these things.

There was certainly a historical time when 'user centered design' performed a useful function as a term, to draw attention to aspects of what made a site successful that (in many cases) had insufficient attention and resources.

I'm finding that 'UX' for User Experience is often used now in replacement.

Whatever actual methods, methodologies, techniques or philosphies are used, between us we have some common expertise and knowledge that we apply to cause software to be successful in a business context. It certainly helps to have common language, and to be able to describe and communicate what we do, and why some of it is an expert role, but in the meanwhile I'll just keep plugging away with doing my job, trying to make my website as successful as it can be, and describing it internally in terms that help me do that.

- Nick Gassman - Usability and Standards Manager - http://ba.com *

Maybe I am being narrow-minded, but I just don't see these other distinctions as being valid approaches. Stakeholder-centered, tech-centered, etc. I really feel this is over-complicating things.

If you agree with what I said earlier about design defining what you're trying to do and then dealing with the challenges of doing it, then all of these things, including and especially the USER must be factored-in. Any design that focuses on one factor to the exclusion of the others is destined to fail IMO.

However that doesn't mean that you can't prioritize these factors. In terms of designing a web site or app that people will use, I guess I just don't see how anything can be prioritized higher than the user. Again, not to the exclusion of all else. Sometimes something may be best for the user, but just not be feasible because of costs or technological limitations. However sacrifices like that need to be made very carefully and thoughtfully.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33885

We should not forget the two other major approaches as well: systems design, and "genius design." Those are valid approaches to our work as well.

In 2008, do people still say to themselves: hmm, today I'd like to use UCD. Scratch that, ACD. Perhaps systems design. Oh no it's Friday, it's gotta be genius design day. But wait, I'm working at Google, forget design.

Is there any time left for...design?

-- Kontra
http://counternotions.com

Yep, the selection of activities to be supported by design is defined by the person's goals.

Persona definition is the process of choosing the activities most pertinent to the goals from the pool of possible activities. This was the take home message from recent Cooper practicum for me.

-- Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction Design is design of time
http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 2:37 PM, Jared Spool jspool at uie.com wrote:

On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:59 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: ACD does not—I repeat, not—mean ignoring users. It means focusing on their activities instead of their goals. It means ignoring what Jenny wants to be when she gets out of college and focusing instead on how to create an app that helps her (and everyone else) complete the activities she needs to complete to get out of college. Which works great until the goals change the activities. That's where I've always been confused by the ACD stuff. (Such as Jenny's desire to prop up her MCAT [trim]

this may be the most notable
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered.html

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Ben Bashford bashford at gmail.com wrote:

Can someone provide links to any articles that illustrate this "hate-on"? On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Kurt Krumme krumme at gmail.com wrote: I don't know that there's a hate-on in progress, but I do think that there is a spirited debate, and a much-needed one. My problem is with the term User Centered Design itself. I agree that it's become over generalized. But every time I hear it, I ask myself, "As opposed to what"? In my work, I define design as the practice of defining goals and problems and then working to [trim]

On Oct 6, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Christina Wodtke wrote:

this may be the most notable http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered.html

The trick to all this — imho — is understanding what a good designer actually does. Regardless if that designer is designing cars, clothes, products or systems.

Ultimately, good design is not about UCD, ACD, genius design, waterfall, agile or whatever label you want to put it on. Those are all marketing terms in the end, some trying to describe a process that exists, while others are trying to define a process when one does not exist because the people on the job are lacking in some respect. In the latter case, there's usually an intention of creating some baseline that often can't be met because what's lacking is simply good designers on the job.

Good designers consistently do two things:

1) Define and understand the problem in relevant terms

2) Solve the problem elegantly

Once you get that, the rest is just meddling for little value in return.

I've disliked the term UCD for so long because to even consider the term, one has to reconsider what it is that I do as a designer at a tactical level because the premise is that I don't know what it is that I do. At best, the terms UCD and ACD are redundant to what is already happening or should be happening. At worst, those labels become misapplied marketing speak that does nothing but muddy the waters.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

Who, Christina, what a strange and in my opinion, ridiculous, article by Don Norman. He writes under "What Adapts? Technology or People?" that it's some kind of corollary that technology comes first, then humans adapt. He writes about the clock (and watch):

"An arbitrary division of the year and day into months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, all according to physical principles that differ from psychological or biological ones, now rules our lives. We eat when our watches tell us it is meal time, not when we are hungry. We awake according to the harsh call of the alarm, not when we are rested. University classes are taught in one hour periods, three times a week, in 10 %u2013 15 week sessions, not because this is good for education, but because it makes for easier scheduling. The extreme reliance on time is an accidental outgrowth of the rise of the factory and the resulting technological society."

That's nice and all, but UX professionals aren't designing "time", they are designing solutions, whether they be online or offline. So, to use an example of industrial design, when a "time"-keeping product is launched without paying attention to the user, you end up with something as craptacular as this:

http://goodexperience.com/2008/08/broken-alarm-clock-de.php

But hey, it still tells time, right?

I've disliked the term UCD for so long because to even consider the term, one has to reconsider what it is that I do as a designer at a tactical level because the premise is that I don't know what it is that I do.

While you're wailing and gnashing your teeth over wounded pride, it's worth nothing that the term and philosophy of UCD had to be coined because at some point "design", as it was widely understood, meant styling, aesthetics, and personal expression of the designer's sense of cool and nothing else. We've all seen too many "designed" things that clearly did not involve an understood of use, context, behavior, and motivation.

Yes, good designers would do such things, and have for decades (as witnessed by Henry Dreyfuss' book, DESIGNING FOR PEOPLE, which, as far as I can tell, was the first book on UCD). But, the majority of designers did not, and clearly many felt it was necessary to distinguish their efforts from this majority.

Gah. Why am I contributing to this? Is this really the crucial topic of our field?

--peter

On Oct 6, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Peter Merholz wrote:

While you're wailing and gnashing your teeth over wounded pride...

If you'd like to get into a conversation over who can call the other snippy names or pontificate on motives in flowery language in attempt to belittle the other, I'll gladly take you up on that offer outside the confines of this list.

Yes, good designers would do such things, and have for decades (as witnessed by Henry Dreyfuss' book, DESIGNING FOR PEOPLE, which, as far as I can tell, was the first book on UCD). But, the majority of designers did not, and clearly many felt it was necessary to distinguish their efforts from this majority.

It's been like this for decades in the design profession, and well before Dreyfuss even wrote his book. And note that in Designing for People, Dreyfuss does a number of things well beyond what people consider UCD practice... like... building real, full scale working prototypes or doing competitive market research or finding ideas in completely unrelated solutions to other problems that have nothing to do with asking customers anything about anything.

That's the whole point. You can't grab one piece of the puzzle and ignore the others. Which is what people in this industry do for God knows what reason.

You want to point to Dreyfuss as the model for UCD? Great! I'm all for it. Maybe we'll finally get people in this industry to stop complaining when asked to learn how to draw, using products like Photoshop and Illustrator in depth, code web standards markup, script behaviors and build prototypes of their products for a change. Sign me up.

Gah. Why am I contributing to this? Is this really the crucial topic of our field?

Obviously, it appears you have your own ego invested in it as well.

-- Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422

On Oct 6, 2008, at 7:19 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

On Oct 6, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Peter Merholz wrote: While you're wailing and gnashing your teeth over wounded pride... If you'd like to get into a conversation over who can call the other snippy names or pontificate on motives in flowery language in attempt to belittle the other, I'll gladly take you up on that offer outside the confines of this list.

GIRL FIGHT! GIRL FIGHT! (It had to be said. With apologies to all the real girls out there.)

Yes, good designers would do such things, and have for decades (as witnessed by Henry Dreyfuss' book, DESIGNING FOR PEOPLE, which, as far as I can tell, was the first book on UCD). But, the majority of designers did not, and clearly many felt it was necessary to distinguish their efforts from this majority. It's been like this for decades in the design profession, and well before Dreyfuss even wrote his book. And note that in Designing for People, Dreyfuss does a number of things well beyond what people consider UCD practice... like... building real, full scale working [trim]

Andrei is correct. UCD had nothing to do with Dreyfuss. I know, 'cause I was there.

For those who care, UCD was born on the engineering side. As I explained in my IA Summit Keynote (and revisiting in my upcoming UI13 Keynote — register today at http://uiconf.com ), UCD was a knee jerk reaction to the times — those times being the late 1970s and early 1980s.

We're talking the days before real personal computers (yes, there were TRS-80s and Apple IIs, but they weren't being used in a business context yet). In those days, computers had a history of being designed for engineers and operators who would receive significant training for simple functionality. The operators of the computers didn't care about the data or, for that fact, the actual programs. They only cared about running the job, distributing the results, then running the next job. The computer itself didn't have to be easy to use or "user friendly" (the term of the day at that time), because the users were very well trained.

In the advent of "personal computing", (which happened with mini- computer time share systems and solo-purpose devices, such as word processing units — remember the Wang 2200, the DEC WPS08, and the IBM Displaywriter?), the focus shifted from trained operators that were uninterested in the data, only in the operation, to untrained 'users' that were very interested in the data and uninterested in the operation. This is where the movement for designing for users, which subsequently became user-centered design.

The key players here were John Gould & Jack Carroll at IBM, Ben Schneiderman at UMaryland, Marilyn Tremaine (I'm don't remember where she was at the time), John Whiteside & Dennis Wixon at DEC, Stu Card at Xerox, Ginny Redish & Joe Dumas at AIR, and a handful of others who I apologize for not remembering off hand. (I worked with the DEC team at the time. I'm sure Chauncey will produce a long list of people I've forgotten.) This was all pre-CHI, which had its first meeting in 1982 in Gaithersburg, where 970 people showed up, so it was well off the ground by then. (I didn't go to that, but I was at the second one in Boston the following year.)

The UCD movement was important because it gave us a way to talk with the stakeholders and engineering managers (development was an engineering discipline at the time) about how user interfaces needed to actually interface with users.

While many of us were aware of other design disciplines, they seemed way "out there". Aesthetics and form were far away from what we were trying to do in the early days. In those days, it was all about pure usability — diagnosing frustration points, producing cognitive models that explained them, and coming up with a thinking that would get past that.

It wasn't until the late '80s and early '90s that people started thinking in terms of formative evaluation techniques as something that could be integrated into the development process. For example, it wasn't until '89 that we started talking about paper prototyping (based on work done by Laurie Vertelney at Apple) and its uses in a development process.

It wasn't until '87 that we saw an integration of visual design with UCD practice, from work presented at the CHI+GI conference in Toronto. (Allison Druin's Noobie came to mind. A life size doll with digital sensors, speech systems, and a video screen.)

So, UCD has predated most of the things we associate with UCD today. And it had nothing to do with design as we think of it today.

And that ends today's history lesson. I hope you took notes because this will all be on the final.

You want to point to Dreyfuss as the model for UCD? Great! I'm all for it. Maybe we'll finally get people in this industry to stop complaining when asked to learn how to draw, using products like Photoshop and Illustrator in depth, code web standards markup, script behaviors and build prototypes of their products for a change. Sign me up.

Seems like an excellent motivation for revisionist history. I'm all for it! Forget everything I said above. It was all Dreyfuss! : )

Jared

Jared provides a fine summary of the history of UCD. I believe the most important point to be that UCD is fundamentally rooted in usability, utility, goals and tasks — most often work-related and externally motivated.
Whether UCD concepts and the "UCD community" are capable of evolving with the times, towards designing for discretionary and hedonistic use of digital products and services in consumer cultures, is a point for debate. My personal opinion is that seems to be struggling, as witnessed for instance by the relatively small difference between CHI conferences from the early 90s and CHI conferences today. Institutions, including academic communities, have a way of permanenting themselves and their foundations (which is, of course, suitable in many ways but makes them less agile).

Jared closes his post, however, with a comment on Andrei's remark on Dreyfuss which I would like to respond to.

You want to point to Dreyfuss as the model for UCD? Great! I'm all for it. Maybe we'll finally get people in this industry to stop complaining when asked to learn how to draw, using products like Photoshop and Illustrator in depth, code web standards markup, script behaviors and build prototypes of their products for a change. Sign me up. Seems like an excellent motivation for revisionist history. I'm all for it! Forget everything I said above. It was all Dreyfuss! : )

It may be important to point out that the UCD field, and specifically the CHI academic UCD community that Jared surveys, didn't pay any systematic attention to the design field before the mid or late 90s. There were isolated exceptions, of course, but on the whole it is fair to say that UCD went through its formative stages largely without input from industrial design, graphic design or architecture.

What Andrei does, if I read him correctly, is to identify a few of the things that are considered fundamental in design practice and scholarship within the design field — craft skills to do with sketching, shaping and assessing — and translate them to our tools and materials.

I support Andrei all the way in this move. And he also makes a valid point about what our field could learn from design, which UCD historically hasn't done. That is not the same as engaging in "revisionist history", in my opinion.

Nobody is trying to take anything away from the work of the UCD pioneers in the 70s and 80s, nor from what that work meant to the IT business at large and to the users.

Jonas Löwgren

>>In the latter case, there's usually an intention of creating some baseline that often can't be met because what's lacking is simply good designers on the job.

Good designers consistently do two things:

1) Define and understand the problem in relevant terms

2) Solve the problem elegantly

Which reminded of this cartoon to illustrate:
http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/

Jonas wrote:
What Andrei does, if I read him correctly, is to identify a few of the things that are considered fundamental in design practice and scholarship within the design field — craft skills to do with sketching, shaping and assessing — and translate them to our tools and materials.

Or, in short: User Centered Design, not Engineering.

Peter -- Peter Boersma | Senior Interaction Designer | Info.nl http://www.peterboersma.com/blog | http://www.info.nl