On Nov 13, 2008, at 3:38 PM, Peter Merholz wrote:
Regardless, I think my main and more important point is that activity
centered design feels soul-less to me. It's motivation as I've
heard people
describe it here and other places is discount UCD (getting to the
point
quickly).
I would argue that UCD, as typically practiced, is soulless, too, as
it focuses on tasks and goals, and thus has a reductive
understanding of humans. UCD tends to treat people as robots whose
goal is to maximize productivity, to relentlessly accomplish a goal.
One thing that reassures me is the increasing embrace of
anthropological and sociological methods, which takes us beyond
tasks and goals, and towards behavior, motivation, context and
culture. This more holistic appreciation of people ought to provide
insights that allow for superior products and services.
Ptthh. (Is there a better online way to represent a raspberry?)
Bad UCD is soulless.
Good user research embraces the anthro and socio methods you're
talking about.
This is the problem of our terminology. We regularly lump bad work,
whether it be bad interaction design, bad visual design, and bad user
research, into the underlying titles because we don't have good
descriptions of what this work looks like when it's done well. (And
like most professional activities, it's done well far less than it's
done poorly.)
Let's try to be careful in where we're discounting entire areas of
practice to ensure that we're not just condemning when it's done
poorly in a broad generalization. Then we can all get along.
Jared
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