[Sigia-l] Do Make Me Think!

[Ziya Oz]

Dave Chiu:

> IMO, designers currently have a responsibility to their users...

That's a problematic one in that designers don't get directly paid by users.
This notion has been discussed here many times, but some believe that our
primary responsibility is to the client not the user.

> ...just  as doctors have a responsibility to their patients (although for
> designers there is no hippocratic oath).

I'm sure a case can be made that a very significant portion (who knows maybe
the majority) of doctors see the patient as a vehicle to get money from
primary public/private insurance dispensers.

This is at best a murky area.
 
> What's the role and responsibility of the  designer in that situation
> regarding know-how? What's the designer's  accountability?

Again, if you buy into the notion that the client (who signs the checks) is
the ultimate arbiter of responsibility/accountability then it's not that
difficult. If it's the users, then it gets murky. In the long run, you can't
serve the user despite your client.
 
> Thus, the unmet needs weren't about the iPod as a device,
> but overall ease of use, i.e.: iTunes integration with iPod.

BTW, the MP3 player vs. iPod example I gave accounted for this (the
iPod/iTMS/iTunes integration). Newsweek just published an interview with
Jobs on this:

Other companies had already tried to make a hard disk drive music player.
Why did Apple get it right?

We had the hardware expertise, the industrial design expertise and the
software expertise, including iTunes. One of the biggest insights we have
was that we decided not to try to manage your music library on the iPod, but
to manage it in iTunes. Other companies tried to do everything on the device
itself and made it so complicated that it was useless.

What was the design lesson of the iPod?

Look at the design of a lot of consumer products‹they're really complicated
surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you
first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up
with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going,
and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can
oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people
just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers
are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15262121/site/newsweek/>

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem