[Sigia-l] D. Norman: "HCD harmful? A Clarification"

[Stew Dean]

At 06:43 12/09/2005, Listera wrote:
>I had posted a link to a Don Norman piece on UCD vs. HCD sometime ago. Don
>clarifies his earlier comments:
>
>There has been far too much emphasis on individual people, trying to model
>them, trying to build fascinating scenarios and "personas." I think much of
>this work misplaced, irrelevant, and potentially harmful if it diverts the
>limited time and resources of the design team away from matters that can
>actually help.
>
>Are Scenarios and Personas worthless?> No, scenarios are great for
>marketing. Personas are great for communication: see my essay "Ad-Hoc
>Personas & Empathetic Focus". But for great design, design for the activity.
>
>Design for the activity and the rest will take care of itself, better than
>the reverse ‹ design for the person, without proper support for the
>activity.
>
><http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/hcd_harmful_a_clari.html>

Good post - Don Norman has hit the nail on the head I think and 
independently echos my post to this group a while ago

Personas are great for communication and marketing - but for interactive 
design and IA work the activities (in my view including those that extend 
far beyond the interactive project)  are the key.  In short in order for 
someone to do task A they need information B. The factors that directly 
affect how an activity is carried out are vital and are what personas are 
supposed to provide but often fail to achieve.

To give an example one of the factors I feel alters the nature of an 
interactive project is how often a user is likely to carry out an activity. 
Let's say company A makes printers and requests that a section is set up 
called 'my printer'. This requires a login etc and then shows what 
comsumables are available for that printer and where to get them as well as 
the latest advice and tips for that printer (and special offers). The only 
problem is the user may only need to carry out that activity once ever four 
months, and then they are likely to pop down the local stationary shop as 
that is how the activity of replacing a cartridge is often carried out. So 
even if they did use the site there would not be regular visits.  Add to 
this the amount of effort required to login AND then rerequest a password, 
user name as the chances of them remembering it is very slim - well you can 
see according to the activity it's dead in the water.

Basing good solid interactive design on activity I think is not only 
optional but I feel vital. To state the obvious we call them users because 
they use things.  I will go as far as to say  this affects information 
based projects as well. Knowing why someone wants to find something, like 
for example a radio program, allows you design a much better interactive 
experience. A quick example is the BBC radio player.  If my activity is to 
listen to the last episode of  'The Now Show' on radio 4, something I 
imagine would be very useful, then I should be able to find it easily in 
the radio player. As the shows appear only to have the dates when you click 
on a show then that task becomes next to impossible. So that tells you the 
system needs to store information about which series and when it was shown 
and for the user to able to access this.

I hope you can see why I agree with Don Norman and why some practices that 
are current touted as good UCD may, indeed, be harmful.

Stewart Dean

www.empathydigital.com