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

[Listera]

Eric Scheid:
> ...it must be robust to survive a year long deployment in an office
environment.

That may be one of *many* criteria to consider while designing a phonebook.
However, there'll be 1000X more arbitrary uses of a phonebook than any sane
and finite design process could possible anticipate and deal with. You can't
spot a usage pattern never even dealt with during its design and
retroactively claim it as an "inherent" part of the design, simply because
somebody somewhere chose to use it in some unintended fashion. That's
putting the cart before the horse.

> What is relevant is that the thing, the artefact, is robust and compact, and
> waddayaknow ... a phonebook fits that description nicely.

Many artifacts can be monitor stands but not all monitor stands are
phonebooks.

You can also use a phonebook as toilet paper, if you're otherwise out of it
and that was the nearest thing available in a time of need. Are you now
going to go through another series of contorted logic to claim that the
phonebook-as-toilet-paper is an inherent part of its design? Just where do
you stop?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba