Hallo,
User study has been inflated and at the same time reduced since, I would like to suggest, 1985 when this humble but significant aspect of design practice was crowned 'User Centered Design' by Don Norman et al.
Ever since, user study has been marketed in different fancy terms and blown up more and more in its claim to drive innovation. The bubble is bursting. I have myself lent critique to this inflation and limited its value back to what it is really worth.
Chow, R., and W. Jonas. "Case Transfer: A Design Approach by Artefacts and Projection." Design Issues 26, no. 4 (2010): 9-19.
Chow, Rosan. "For User Study. The Implication of Design." Dissertation, University of Arts Braunschweig, 2005.
http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=978483235&dok_var=d1&dok_ext=pdf&filename=978483235.pdf
The sadder part of the story, however, is that user study is reduced in its end to merely innovation. Here more serious works ought to be done to rediscover the social and ethical ideals and posture that once accompained it. Our (older) collegues on the list (Pelle Ehn, David Sless, Nigel Cross, Harold Nelson, Klaus Krippendorf...) certainly have more to tell.
Don't forget user study, rather re-awake to face up the challenging ends to which it once aimed.
All the best,
Rosan
Rosan Chow, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Design Research Lab
Deutsche Telekom Laboratories
UdK Berlin
Einsteinufer 43, 10587 Berlin,Germany
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-----Original Message-----
From: Don Norman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Samstag, 11. Juni 2011 00:46
I am amused by Francesa's comment: "you might be interested in considering the position of those who say that in order to design successful products one should "forget user-centered design"!
The main book is "Design-Driven Innovation" by Roberto Verganti."
Roberto and I are so much on the same wavelength here that we are jointly giving a keynote at the "Designing Pleasurable products"confence in two weeks in Milan.
http://www.dppi11.polimi.it/
Basically, we say that UCD and HCD (which we consider to be the same things) are great for incremental innovation but useless for radical innovation (what Roberto calls "meaning change"). We use Pasteur's quadrant to argue that there are four kinds of innovation. And the most dramatic come from anywhere, certainly NOT from user studies.
I gave my version at IASDR and at an IIT-ID conference. The Design Research
community hates it. Technology first, i argue. needs last. See
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
You might look at my paper entitled "Human-Centered Design Considered harmful" as well as the second URL I posted above.
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered_design_considered_harmful.html
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/hcd_harmful_a_clarification.html
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