I have been thinking about taking “human-centered design” as my overarching position for the design of ebooks, because as I mentioned in my earlier posting, “human-centered design” approach, which I think is about making human’s experience more explicitly, will lead me to get deeper understanding about readers’ rich reading experience (including their emotion).
However, after I read Norman’s article “Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful” at http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered.html, I feel like I need to do literature review first about differences among ”user-centered design,”"human-centered design,”"activity-centered design,” “experience-centered (?)” and “the like.”
The following quote was taken from one section, “WHY MIGHT HCD BE HARMFUL?”
“But there are more serious concerns: first, the focus upon humans detracts from support for the activities themselves; second, too much attention to the needs of the users can lead to a lack of cohesion and added complexity in the design. Consider the dynamic nature of applications, where any task requires a sequence of operations, and activities can be comprised of multiple, overlapping tasks. Here is where the difference in focus becomes evident, and where the weakness of the focus on the users shows up.”
Does this make sense to you guys?
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December 11, 2008 at 12:40 am
rajasee17
First of all thanks a lot Hyun, for directing us to this wonderful article… I read the article you mention and also Norman’s clarification article for the same…
I nodded in agreement to what Norman says about not just focusing on the needs of the users but also on the errors that might occur while the user uses the designed software. as designers we often do not think about the entailing errors that may occur. he also pointed out that the error messages should go beyond telling you that something’s wrong. rather they should direct the user towards a suggestive action tht may help the user to get out of that erroneous situation..
he advocates activity centered design in the light of HCD and i think its fairly justified in his article ….
December 11, 2008 at 1:11 am
HyunSeung
Honestly, I am not quite sure if “activity-centered” approach (i.e., one aspect of human-beings) is the best solution. I rather want to try to take a “holistic” approach over “one-aspect-centered” approach.
I think the whole point (to become a good HCI designer) seems about how rigorously and thoroughly a designer “interprets” any data obtained from users, along with contexts.
Nowadays, I am more inclined to the nature of human-beings….
December 11, 2008 at 2:23 am
rajasee17
I disagree when you call activity centered approach as just one aspect of human beings. From my understanding of activity centered design approach, activity is goal oriented; as different human beings, each one of us may have different ways of approaching that goal based on contexts which may also keep changing. So even though the end goal is the same, the means to that end may vary for different individuals. Activity theory asks of us to take into consideration those user actions, operations and mostly importantly the user intentions to use a tool to meet their objective.
December 11, 2008 at 3:37 am
HyunSeung
Well.., Yes, probably, I should have not said “one,” but I used “one” as an opposite word of “whole.”
Anyway, I am not still sure if I am able to agree with the idea that “Activity-Centered Design is superior.”
First of all, I am still struggling with understanding Norman’s definition of Human-Centered Design (HCD). Maybe, I am totally wrong, but I *feel* like that Norman’s definition of HCD seem too narrowly defined.
Second of all, I am not sure if this activity-centered approach covers useful and critical aspects of human-beings.
December 11, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Kshitiz
This is interesting! It reminded me of a post I had done some time back on *centered design.
I think that the notion of what the name should be, lies in the project.
Knowing that the Interaction Designer these days are involved in projects from interface, to usability to experience, to exhibition design, it hence becomes dependent on the project.
In one of his class, Erik mentions that Complexity is an essence that every designer should embrace and not necessarily run away from. I think once that notion is established, one would be in a better position to understand the projects from its ontological value rather than going by the terms used.
Activity centered design, though revolves around Activities and actions, it is still very much embedded within the humans. As is is the Humans who perform the actions (unless we take into account the cat using the keyboard and MS Word example used by Jeff in class).
And if we go by the phenomenological understanding that Heiddegger propagated about, in his “Being and Time” , even though one may think of concentrating on the actions, one cannot ignore the person, i.e. the being. As it is only the being that gives rise to the thinking and hence the actions.
June 11, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Markus
I emailed him about this article and got a lengthy response from him, which I’ve published on my blog (with his permission) http://bit.ly/mzA6w