[Sigia-l] Human-Centered Design 99% bad

[Anne Miller]

As has often been discussed on this list, people find uses and applications
for technology that were never intended - the technology, as an artefact in
a broader social/physical environment has affordances/possibilities that
were not pre-planned. Excel (I don’t believe I'm using this as an example)
has been put to a range of non-spreadsheet uses that were never anticipated.


If Linux has functions that can be exploited in a socio-information
environment and people have the capacity to exploit those uses then it will
be used. If it isn't being used then one has to question the influence of
the broader environment of which Linux is a part; the range of possibilities
offered by Linux; the capacities of people to use it. 

Have you ever watched a child with a toy box? What's the child doing with
the toys if not exploring their possibilities for use/play/or just plain
exploration? 

Have you ever observed people with disabilities using the limited range of
input devices available?

How many purposes does a telephone directory serve? I use one to jack up the
height of my PC monitor. This is a function of characteristics of the
technology (phone book), my desktop environment (desk/chair/monitor heights)
and my need for a higher monitor (my physical capacities) and my ability to
'see' the phone book as a solution to my problem. 

Activity = the interaction between environment + the capacities of people

Give people an environment and they will use it. If it’s a specific type of
environment eg an air traffic control room, then tell them what they CANT do
and let them do whatever they need to do in whatever situations they have to
deal with.  As highest order predators we are adapted to manipulating
environments - our environments often don’t forewarn us about the
consequences of our actions until its too late (global warming, aircraft
crashes into mountain; patient administered wrong drug; When I hit the back
button on the browser I just lost all of the information on the online form
I was filling in and have to do it again).  

See	Burns CM, Hajdukiewicz JR. Ecological interface design. Boca Raton
Fl: CRC Press. 2004 

Cheers
A 


Dr Anne Miller
Group Leader
Patient Safety Research Group
Key Centre for Human Factors
University of Queensland
Ph: 61 7 3365  4543
Email: amiller at humanfactors.uq.edu.au


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Listera
Sent: Tuesday, 2 August 2005 12:43 PM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Human-Centered Design 99% bad

Anne Miller:

> And we/they do it all the time.

Is this a matter of actual observation or a personal approach to design?

In other words, are users saying they want to be given tools so they can
string their own answers to their own questions or do they simply want a
solution they can live with?

Do they really want the drill or the hole?

If people "all the time" want the drill, wouldn't they've been flocking to,
say, Linux over Windows? (As the former gives them "the possibilities and
constraints in the environment visible so that people can create their own
activity to suit their own particular situations and contexts.")

Ziya
Nullius in Verba 


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