Chapter three of Designing The
Obvious, makes a good point of not paying attention to every single need that
the user expresses. The user is important but one cannot continually change the
design they are working on because of the needs of the user. People never
really know what they want, so one must design for what they need. If every
user has something to add onto the design, the design will ultimately end up being
very bad or not work at all. Hoekman says that the “user-centered” design
should be thrown out completely and that we should not focus on what the users
want. That we should start to focus on the situation that the user is in
instead. We should observe the user and pay attention to what bothers them or
is difficult for them to use. And then if the problem is happening often enough
we should think about changing the way the design works.
When
my partner and I redesigned the machine for Project #2 we use both situation
centered and user centered I think. We did ask the user to only do a certain
few tasks yes, but we didn’t change everything that the user had a problem
with. We changed some things to make the design make more sense and actually be
useable to the everyday person. But we did not change anything more than was
needed. So we might have wanted to have the user use the machine for a longer
period of time and simply observe them instead of giving them instructions.
Hi Ellen,
ReplyDeleteYour references to the reading are well-put. Your argument would've been strengthened with some examples from real life or theoretical examples of why situation-centric might be better than "user-centered." For example, why would it not be a good idea to just poll a cell phone user about what they want? (The author's answer is twofold: 1. Most users will never use 80% of features and 2. the person you are interviewing probably has no idea what your technology can do, so how would they know what to ask for?) Good work on interpreting your Project #2 approach. This is your strongest post so far and I can see you're taking the time and making the effort to get a better understanding of the material.