Since my original post didnt make it to the discussion board (I being a newbie to this group I didnt know the rules of posting messages:-( ), reposting it after making amends to it for all to read and comment. I hope it makes it to the board this time :-)
Thanks Pankaj ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pankaj Chawla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Jan 8, 2008 11:05 AM Subject: RE: [IxDA Discuss] Is user research a band-aid for "the listening deficit"? To: Jeff White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Robert Hoekman, Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, IxDA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >That's a good point Pankaj. However, if marketing was conducting poor user >research (imagine that!) that's just yet another reason why experienced >practitioners of UCD could provide value to the organization. > >Jeff Hi Jeff, I dont think its hard to imagine that poor user research is happening on daily basis ;-). After all, all bad products cannot be a by-product of bad engineering only. The bigger point I was trying to make is what I call the "perspective creep". A process is as good as the people who follow it and most of the times I have seen people at all levels adding their own perspective and bias to the data that came in and as it keeps trickling down the chain, chances are it is miles away from what the users asked for. So I dont think its a "listening problem" - I think most of the times a good communication is happening - the problem really is the difference between what came from the user and what finally got into the ears of the engineer who is implementing the piece and since there is no feedback loop from engineer to the user, there is no way to validate as to what came in from the user in the first place. So in effect the engineer is not implementing what the user asked for but what the user research team thought the user asked for - there is a subtle difference and thats the difference between successful and failed products. This of course goes on to reinforce your point that we need objective and experienced pratitioners who can interpret the raw data without a bias and provide a mirror image of the user. Cheers Pankaj ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ 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
