Thanks, Jared. This really helps me to understand better where you were coming from in your IA Summit keynote.
To me, the difference between UCD and ACD is mostly about WHEN, in the timeline of a project, you start doing your research. Let me give an example. Let's say my client is a financial institution. They come to me saying, "We really want to target people who are setting up their first bank account. We're not sure how to make ourselves stand out, so what do you recommend?." At that stage in the process, I would definitely want to do UCD. I want to know what types of personas are creating their first bank account. What are their unmet needs? What do they want to do online with their bank account? What keywords are they searching for when they research bank accounts online? etc. I would begin with UCD. But consider another scenario. Let's say the same financial institution comes to me and says "I want to create an online tool for people to check their balance, transfer money, and order more checks." In that case, I could just begin designing a solution that met those requirements. I wouldn't technically need to know more information about my users to execute on that request. The requirements have already been defined, so I would begin with ACD. The problem is that the tool I build may or may not solve anyone's real problem. I haven't gotten to the important questions, which are: - Why does the bank want to build this tool? (What is their business objective?) - What functions do the users want to be able to do? - Which functions are most important? - What would help this tool to stand out relative to the bank's competitors? And that's the nice thing about UCD. It puts us in the mindset that we are solving problems, not simply executing on a set of requirements. ACD seems to imply that the requirements are already known. And while someone may have a set of requirements in mind, they may not be the right ones. So would it be reasonable to say that ACD is the logical continuation of UCD? That is, after we understand our users' needs and wants, we can then define which activities the users need to perform, and then design a solution that enables those activities? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=35466 ________________________________________________________________ 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
