On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 7:57 PM, Jared Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Since my name was cited in the original post, I did want to suggest that > I've been talking about this problem for years. > > Most recently, I wrote about it here: > Surviving Our Success: Three Radical Recommendations > http://tinyurl.com/5z78qs > (Unfortunately, a bit hard to find on the unusable UPA web site. And > nobody can explain to me why it's a PDF.) > Hi Jared, it was good to meet you in person yesterday. Thanks for replying. Looking at this article, I hear what you are saying, and in fact I agree with your suggestions wholeheartedly--100%%%. I'm not even a usability pro historically, but one thing I've tried to tell folks at my company is that UX is *everyone's* responsibility, not just some consultant or small consulting team within the company. Everyone needs to be reoriented towards users. I agree it is the only way that this important shift in the way so many software dev shops will scale--there will never be enough UX folks, certainly not enough highly educated designers. That is in fact one reason I'm so keen to engage you all--to understand this field better and try to formulate new ways to inculcate user centrism into the common software dev shop. I'll be glad to help out how I can in exploring these new ways. [BTW, UX pros shouldn't worry; you'll never be out of a job if this works because it will only make what you do more and more widely known and appreciated.] All that said, I still come to different conclusions about the value of UCD per se. That different usability folks found different problems does not at all invalidate doing usability reviews. That you want to teach these techniques to the teams themselves also says you think otherwise. I get the sense your issue is less with UCD and more with consultative UCD, based on this article, and in that I agree that consultations only have so much value--they'll only address the particular problems (maybe not even all of them) at that particular time on that particular project. I would also point out that doesn't even mean that consultative reviews are not valuable. They'll amost certainly find something, even if they don't find everything, and some improvement is better than none in my book. But I totally agree the ideal is to help these teams to think better about their approach to software creation. > Basically, my thoughts are that, for many folks, UCD is a dogma. These > people treat it as the only viable way of thinking about product design. > That is sad. > However, there is no real evidence to suggest that following UCD > dogmatically produces any better designs than ignoring it dogmatically (like > Robert seems to want to do). > I don't know why it has to become dogmatic. There are only so many ways to create software. Folks don't have to adopt a full, formal, dogmatic UCD (whatever that is) to get value from it. > In fact, all the evidence seems to suggest that it's a gestalt effect that > any success is derived at all. In either of the above pieces, you'll hear > (or read) about my thoughts on how the techniques of UCD are really just the > stone in the soup. I believe that something else -- something we never talk > about -- is what actually provides the best designs. (Just like it's > something else that makes the soup, not the stone.) > I'm not sure the metaphor is apt in this case. UCD is definitely adding important flavor. It's just not the whole soup. I think you're selling yourselves short if you take this view. Maybe you've just grown too accustomed to the flavor? > I'm way to busy this week to actually say anymore than this. > Well, I appreciate what you *have* said in any case. I realize I'm late to this discussion, as it were, so I hope nobody but me is taking my opinion seriously. :-D --Ambrose ________________________________________________________________ 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
