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interactions archive
Volume 12 , Issue 4 July + August 2005 table of contents
Year of Publication: 2005
ISSN:1072-5520
Abstract:
[Editor note: instead of the standard choice of a paper from ACM's digitial library, this week's edition of comouipapers urges you as a UI practitioner to read the linked issue of ACMs <interactions> bulletin, specifically the articles 'CHI: the practitioner's dilemma' by Arnowitz & Dykstra-Erickson, 'Why doesn't SIGCHI eat its own dog food?' by Morris, and most certainly 'Human-centered design considered harmful' by Donald A. Norman.]
My Discussion:
These articles may be the harbinger of a revolution in which the UI community confronts that User-Centered Design, UCD, is simply not going to give us the results we need. The Morris article highlights that as UI practitioners, the CHI community couldn't even get itself to use its tools and methodologies for somehing so obvious as to create a good conference for ourselves. The Arnowitz & Dykstra-Erickson article the describes an actual revolt in the CHI community during a planning session between practitioners and academics, with practitioners being clear they weren't getting much out of the academic tracks, and the academics feeling threatened by too much focus on practitioners. The Norman article, written by the grand master and authority on clear design that instantly communicates its function to the user and is a joy to use, actually makes a point that UCD is not leading to the best products out there but that genius design vision very often trumps painstaking UCD protocol.
This last part is something practitioners already quietly know, but cannot say out loud, because we are not all design genius visionaries, and we need something to guide us to good results in our efforts. However, academic inquiry into UCD has not delivered a clear and workable set of guidelines and practices, and in practice UCD clashes badly with business constraints on product design. We may see UCD as a guide being replaced, or at least have to consider it.
interactions archive
Volume 12 , Issue 4 July + August 2005 table of contents
Year of Publication: 2005
ISSN:1072-5520
Abstract:
[Editor note: instead of the standard choice of a paper from ACM's digitial library, this week's edition of comouipapers urges you as a UI practitioner to read the linked issue of ACMs <interactions> bulletin, specifically the articles 'CHI: the practitioner's dilemma' by Arnowitz & Dykstra-Erickson, 'Why doesn't SIGCHI eat its own dog food?' by Morris, and most certainly 'Human-centered design considered harmful' by Donald A. Norman.]
My Discussion:
These articles may be the harbinger of a revolution in which the UI community confronts that User-Centered Design, UCD, is simply not going to give us the results we need. The Morris article highlights that as UI practitioners, the CHI community couldn't even get itself to use its tools and methodologies for somehing so obvious as to create a good conference for ourselves. The Arnowitz & Dykstra-Erickson article the describes an actual revolt in the CHI community during a planning session between practitioners and academics, with practitioners being clear they weren't getting much out of the academic tracks, and the academics feeling threatened by too much focus on practitioners. The Norman article, written by the grand master and authority on clear design that instantly communicates its function to the user and is a joy to use, actually makes a point that UCD is not leading to the best products out there but that genius design vision very often trumps painstaking UCD protocol.
This last part is something practitioners already quietly know, but cannot say out loud, because we are not all design genius visionaries, and we need something to guide us to good results in our efforts. However, academic inquiry into UCD has not delivered a clear and workable set of guidelines and practices, and in practice UCD clashes badly with business constraints on product design. We may see UCD as a guide being replaced, or at least have to consider it.
# posted by Unknown @ 12:07 PM
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