[Sigia-l] HCD 33% bad (was Human-Centered Design 99% bad)

[Stewart Dean]

In responce to...

>Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful
>Don Norman
><http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered_desig.html>

So in short, profiles and personas are out and activities and tasks are in.

My view is that he's right, but only for functional sites. Let me explain.

Activities and tasks are good if you are designing a functional interface, 
such as a shopping basket where knowing what the user does is important. 
>From what I've experienced and heard for those kinds of interfaces cultural 
differences don't make that much impact, this is not including cultural 
difference that apply to all users in that country such as legal, language 
and monetary differences. In theory the central functionality, if well 
designed, should work regardless of country.

Where knowing your user does make a bigger difference is in the provision of 
information, where user expectations are key, and experiential sites, as I 
often find myself working on, where users culture and psychographics are 
more important (as is creative involvement).

In short -I don't see there being one ucd process that works for all 
interactive projects as I see all projects a mixture of these three kinds of 
experience - that is experiential, functional and information based and the 
approach needs to alter accordingly.

So in effect Human Centered Design is 33% bad.

Cheers

Stewart Dean