the time of User-Centered Design has come and gone. time to move on.
I’m passionate about building software and web 2.0 solutions that have good usability. I’m equally as passionate about building systems that are designed to make the functions they serve as efficient as possible. So, if that’s the case, why do I think something is wrong with User-Centered Design?
Most companies (and people) make the mistake of thinking User-Centered Design is a silver bullet. It may have solved particular issues in the past, but it is no longer a silver bullet. There are many innate issues with the UCD methodology that are increasingly going against the grain of emerging business strategy paradigms. First and foremost, UCD is predicated upon an old business strategy for information technology: business automation.
UCD designs systems to efficiently accommodate needs. What will be designed is a highly efficient user interface that meets the current business need. In other words, UCD designs systems that are predicated upon the “business as usual” paradigm.
One of my previous posts discussed that the age of business automation is over. It is unless you want to lose market share. The age of innovation has begun. Progressive companies are focused on innovation and will employ innovation based methodologies.
In contrast to the increased focus on innovation, UCD is not an innovation methodology. The entire premise of UCD is based upon a set of principles founded in research: observational research, data analysis, business process mapping, etc. Research methods study things that have already occurred…. which is the past. Innovation studies look at the future.
Innovation requires an entirely different skill set altogether. It is the age of the creative mind looking at business problems in new ways. We must examine many possibilities that are not constrained by the way business is conducted today. UCD must adapt their processes or it too will be a methodology of the past.
Hi Mitch – good post. This is why UX professionals need to be in a more strategic position and not in a “reactive” position as a lot of corporations make them out to be. The only way innovation will happen is if UX is not looked at as a strictly IT function, but a business function as well, and sadly that’ not how things are today. As long as we’re under IT – we’re never going to adapt, because we’ll be forced to follow obsolete software processes that engulf most large corporations.
Need more proof ? – http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html
UCD as a methodology might be a thing of the past, but designing user experiences that are cohesive, comprehensive, and easy will never go out of style. In fact, I would say that those user experiences, those that step beyond what we _have done_ ARE innovation.
I agree with the premise that innovation is critical (always has been), but what says that UCD isn’t an innovation process? More likely, you met UCD folks who weren’t able to innovate based on their user research. I see that as more of a skills deficiency, not a methodology issue.
While I would like to say that I am an excellent innovator, I actually have to give credit to my evolved form of UCD that puts a lot of emphasis on identifying what problems really need solving from the business strategy and user needs standpoint. Some would say that this isn’t “innovation, ” but it has been VERY successful at creating innovative solutions. Actually, to be more precise, the process is much better at defining the problem (which is often a novel or innovative perspective for most of my clients). Once you know the problem, well, the solutions are pretty straight-forward.
But, to you point, many UCD folks merely automate current frustrations instead of redefining the problem and creating a more appropriate solution. A key component of my evolved UCD process is specifically designed to find ways to optimize the users tasks, often to re-engineer them.
So while I agree with your direction, I don’t think you need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The title is intentionally provocative to goad a reaction… Were you ever a sub-editor?! Talent there…
The argument is that UCD builds for the status quo and does not innovate. While they may be true in the authors experience and in a number of other people’s experience the heritage that UCD gives to relative newcomers in the field (I’ve only been in the web services / tools / transactions space for 8 years and so I’m acutely aware of the gaps in my knowledge) is to
1. observe and learn from customer needs and problems they actually wrestle with on a regular basis.
2. classify these as of equal importance to business goals/needs
3. create (I’d say innovate!) models which solve problems which may or maynot align with current business processes.
4. sit down with business, IT, finance and UX and negotiate to a model which is feasible – pushing boundaries for usability and helpfulness while being cost economic to build and maintain given the organisational ambition and depth of pocket.
5. then go into detailed qualitative and design work iteratively testing until proven to deliver the original benefits the proposition outlined.
If one’s experience is one of constraining to current systems then UCD is only delivering part of it’s promise.
Likewise if it always pushes innovation then agreement and actual delivery of services will happen less often due to never agreeing.
I push for innovation as the starting point and pragmatic tripartate negotiation to deliver the best actual solution for the business and the user.
Does this fit your understand of UCD or have I strayed int a parallel discipline?
We spoke on this very topic at UPA last week – using traditional UCD methodologies to drive innovation. http://centralis.com/Resources.aspx
Interesting post. I had a similar thought the other day as I encountered a research based co-worker. I agree with the other posts in regards to the fact that clean, simple and concise layouts, which only display tasks when users need them, will always be in demand.
But it seems that as we move into the future, always basing every decision on “the numbers” (research) will eventually formulate one “best way” to do everything….but where would the innovation and fun be in that.?. And if that did happen, would people eventually start designing whacky sites again just to “stand out / be different”?
As we move forward, hopefully there will be emerging UX approaches, which are either better or at least close in terms of user performance which offer both innovation and “reliability”.
I agree with @AndrewLamb: if one’s UCD process isn’t driving innovation, then there’s something amiss with its implementation!
That said, I find that even the ‘best’ UCD processes sometimes fall short when it comes to bridging what I call the “ideational gap”. Simply put, copious amounts of research and testing can only take you so far, and rarely result in truly breakthrough innovation.
I’ve taken to applying design thinking (http://designthinking.ideo.com/) at intervals during the UCD process to boost the likelihood of achieving a breakthrough (if, indeed, that’s what is appropriate). Give people a voice, a ton of sticky notes, and an afternoon to brainstorm, and it’s amazing what you can get!
All innovation and innovators started out by “framing time” around an experience that they wanted to improve. They found out about people’s current activities and behaviour and work on an intuitive hunch – regardless of whether the specific product existed in that persons life yet or not.
The classic argument is “would Ford have invented the car or more horses”. It took a brilliant observer of current human experience, combined with a piece of knowledge – the engine – to have the “aha” moment that led to the car. But central to that is an observation that “frames time” around a situation where people want to get places faster, more comfortably and independently – when mixed with the knowledge in Ford’s head – the latest in motor engineering – and you got the innovation leap to the car.
I share “framed time” with other designers or diagonal thinkers to expose the “framed time” to many brilliant, kooky, whacked out odd-ballers (and a few business stakeholders + a sprinkling of techies along the way) and if you’ve got the right eyeballs looking at the “framed time” you’ll get more innovation than you can shake a stick at.
That’s UCD, or call it Customer Driven Design, but for me, it’s all the same. The key is HOW you “frame time” and WHO you share the “framed time” with. There’s got to be underpinning processes to drive it and lots of talent, but the principle’s really simple.
In my book, this article barks up the wrong tree – the error doesn’t like in UCD, but with how you do good research to inspire great ideas – UCD is just the name of one brand of glue that holds the process together.
Steve Jobs said it best when he quoted Wayne Greatsky, saying “I skate to where the puck is going”.
Jobs has an innate ability to “Create” new standards in interface design. The iPhone vs. Windows mobile a great example. The Microsoft team looked to “extend” the ubiquitous windows interface to a mobile device. It failed. They go their design inputs from hundreds of focus group studies on the subject. While OS-X is the underpinning of the iPhone, the interface is unique and cutting edge – meeting users “where they are” in terms of their expected “human” behavior.
That said, there is nothing wrong with data collection, studies, and research. It’s all in the questions that you ask. Getting a usability study that is free of the bias typical in this research (by forcing “relative” comparisons to other interfaces, for example) is the fly in this ointment. Lets not throw out the notion of UCD, just the current paradigm. In the end, it is ALL ABOUT THE USER. Forget that, and we’ll have a problem, Houston.
User Centered Design will not get us to organizational transformation. This is the strategic shift that underlies most of the cutting edge thought regarding Experience Design. It is the shift that Tim Brown, Peter Merholtz, and others are referring to in many of their recent think pieces and presentations. UCD has become mired in too many job titles to make the kind of difference needed to do the research, design, and implementation required by efforts to transform the experience organizations deliver in their products and services. Experience Design require T-Shaped professionals and you don’t get those people through I-Shaped expertise alone.
Surly in this example UCD will give you the understanding of how current user’s are using the systems being analysed. If all that’s required is a re-skin of what’s current the approach will allow you to align a new design to the current usage.
If however a new strategy is to be incorporated, current usage patterns are unlikely to provide or align with the understanding and expectations of where the business wants to be. UCD will most probably be able to provide competitive analysis of similar services or process that could form part of the final solution but as Mitch suggests UCD – like all other design/development/delivery processes – rarely if ever provide a silver bullet and needs to be used with the understanding of it’s shortcomings.
UCD is an excellent way to innovate. I don’t understand your reasoning at all.
The best UCD projects, where research to gain an understanding of user behaviour and motivations is a key part of the project, often produce great innovations. They are able to do this because they understand the underlying issues that users face and the drivers to their behaviour, whether current technology or systems meet those needs or not.
Undoubtedly there’s a difference between generative and evaluative research, such as contextual inquiry versus usability testing, but to say therefore that UCD doesn’t lead to innovation is just plain wrong. It’s adding 2+2 to make 6.
User-centric design thinking is not co-creation. Just because you’re keeping customers at the heart of your design thinking doesn’t mean that is the only input into the design process. The needs of the client’s business, market trends, technology trends – these are all critical factors, surely…?
Still, provocative post. Like it!
Thought provoking article, but I don’t buy its fundamental premise. First off, UCD is not one thing, it’s a collection of tools and processes. How UCD is practised depends upon the organization and various constraints including time, money, and scope.
The ability to recognize opportunities for innovation is a natural part of a well-run UCD practice, since so much of it involves discovery during ethnography, requirements elicitation, formative testing, and so on.
I’ve been a UX specialist for 11 years and in my years of being a consultant and in-house practitioner, I have seen many forms and approaches to implementing and executing UCD models. In my experience, it truly depends on the cultural perception of UCD within the organization that determines its value. If an organization sees UCD as an impediment to innovation, they will not yield innovation from their UCD practitioners. If however UCD is baked into the organization as a core strategy towards innovation, quality and excellence… the benefits can be priceless.
Barriers to success UCD can achieve lie at both ends of the spectrum (strategy > engineering) Unless the model is supported up and down the chain, the integrity will be compromised. (as per Parth’s comment). I’m reluctant to agree however that moving it here or there is the solution, a more systemic/holistic implementation is really the silver bullet aka holy grail.
In addition I also don’t find the statement that UCD only looks backwards to be an accurate statement. Do we need to understand current state? Absolutely. But you have to acknowledge that current state is leveraged to determine opportunity for innovations in task, communication and collaboration efficiency – I would consider looking back and getting current state a situational awareness imperative to driving future innovations, they are part of the same task.
While today Agile engineering models are increasingly becoming the norm, many businesses are still playing catch up. The changes the author suggests are not as statically applicable in such a dynamically relative space. As in every practice, there are ideals and reality… there will always be room for modification and improvement, particularly in technology innovation services where change is our only constant, but I don’t think a post like this offers much of a solution.
After reading this article several times and all of the comments, I’m still not clear if this was intentionally provocative or if the author has yet to understand how to effectively utilize UCD. Either way.. I’m thankful for reading it and I think it’s clear… I was provoked
p.s. I’m a big fan of the yahoo! Agile-Usability group.