Phew! What a long debate, that despite a few great contributions (Scott, Charles) seems to go around in circles.
Of course great products can be created without UCD (start ups do it all the time) and, of course, UCD cannot guarantee you a great success. So, is it broken? Well, I guess that depends on two things - what you think UCD is? and what you think its purpose is? It seems clear to me that people are not agreed on what they think UCD really is - and this cones down, I think, to not knowing which word to emphasise. If you emphasise 'user' then 'user research' and 'usability testing' become those horrendous time and budget sinks and it is tempting to think you must do what the user says. But if you emphasise 'design' then different conclusions follow, suggesting a more philosophical frame of mind. And if you emphasise 'Centred' then it suggests that you can ignore all other constraints (the business, the technological risks, etc). Although I still do use the term UCD occasionally, I do so very very cautiously - it is so overloaded with ambiguity and pontification, that it is rarely helpful. But just because the term is broken (as proven by this thread I think) does not mean the underlying concept is. Which leads to the question about why we need the underlying concept - what is UCD for? It may help to think of user-centerd design as a noun describing an outcome - the iPhone is a user-centered design (actually, I think it is one the most user-centered designs of recent years). Very little of the technology in the iPhone is innovative and neither (really) is the business case. But the convergence of industrial design, interaction design and the meeting of deep user needs is truly innovative and user-centered. For most businesses deploying UCD methods, there is little or no interest in these processes - the outcome is what is sought, it is all that matters! Thus, UCD (as characterized by most in this thread) is a fantastic collection of tools to help us achieve these outcomes, but whether we use those tools or not doesn't matter, if we can deliver the iPhone, Google or Facebook outcomes. [for the personal anecdotes, I should briefly say that I have worked on a good number of user-adored products that have been complete and utter business failures, as well as on a good number of commercial successes where time, budget or access prevented any user research or usability testing and yet users clearly saw and appreciated the benefits of a development team focused on meeting user needs.] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30642 ________________________________________________________________ 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
