[Sigia-l] A Brief History... (was Design by testing)

[infoarchitect at ourbrisbane.com]

Bill wrote:
> This is from mistaking "user-centered design" (a methodology with 40 or
> so years of history) with "user-directed design" (the approach in common
> usage by many of today's "practitioners"). 

What propitious timing - I was just explaining this to a colleague today...

Although Human Factors (AKA Ergonomics) was implemented during World War 1 (to optimise 
factory production), it was generally thought to become a formalised process during World War 
2, when equipment complexity began to exceed the limits of human ability for safe operation.  
It was then formally 'institutionalised' with the founding of several organisations such as 
the Ergonomics Research Society in 1949, the Human Factors Society in 1957 and the 
International Ergonomics Association (IEA) in 1959.

As far as I can see, the birth of Human Factors heralded the advent of formal 'user centred 
design', so it's actually been around for the last 60 or so years...  That said, HCI is 
generally thought to have it's inception in 1945 with Bush's "As We May Think" article, but 
only formally arisen from the significant works of people like Licklider et al, Sutherland, 
and Engelbart in the 1960s - so I guess you could argue that the computing side of things has 
only really been around for 40 years. ;) 

Human Factors begat Human Computer Interaction, and HCI begat usability - and BAM! from both 
left and right of field (Library Information Systems on one side AND Richard Saul Wurman (the 
architect/graphic designer who coined the term "Information Architecture") on the other) came 
IA.

Unfortunately, many people in these professions today don't even know of the history of their 
area of specialisation (or more accurately these days - generalisation.  It seems UEs and IAs 
both try and do the same job - most of which is not supposed to be their job - but that's 
another discussion).  Of course, we don't know what we don't know.  Many professionals sit 
squarely on the bottom of Maslow's steps and never budge.  This leads them to constantly try 
and re-invent the wheel, instead of looking to their parent disciplines (of which they are not 
aware) for proven/effective answers/techniques/methods.

And yes Bill, this has also led to what you describe as "user-directed design" - a 
bastardisation (through no fault of their own) of user centred design.  People see themselves 
as 'qualified' to work in this space after doing a 2 day course covering card-sorting, 
scenarios, paper prototyping, and 'speak aloud' protocol - simply because they don't know that 
anything else exists.  

Unfortunately, this idea of such a simple technique was a tumble-on effect of Neilsen's '94 
paper - "Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation 
Barrier," in which he proposed all that was needed was scenarios, simplified thinking aloud, 
and heuristic evaluation to meet basic needs.  This paper was the impetus on one hand for 
popularising usability (excellent!), but on the other (as a tangential effect) for diluting 
its effectiveness. 

Neilsen (1994) prefaced his paper with "I will focus on achieving "the good" with respect to 
having some usability engineering work performed, even though the methods needed to achieve 
this result are definitely not "the best" method and will not give perfect results." 

Today, these oversimplified techniques are taught en masse with no background provided as to 
(among a plethora of other things) why that particular technique should be employed, the 
importance of participant selection (and how to derive a representative sample), how to 
observe and analyse (as opposed to just taking what a participant says verbatim as a 
requirement) - even what controlled, uncontrolled and confounding variables are!

Contracting in Government Departments is especially concerning as I find that people are 
simply 'given a title' and expected to 'learn on the job' - often without even a mentor... :-|

Perhaps it should be incumbent on all of us to start coercing "practitioners" (as Bill labels 
them) from that safe, warm step known as 'unconscious incompetence', into the big, scary realm 
of 'conscious incompetence'? 

Best regards,

Ash Donaldson
User Experience Designer