NeuroExperience

I wrote an email to Don Norman about an article (http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered.html) that I didn’t think was helpful – so I emailed him while I was off sick yesterday and told him so…

Unexpectedly, he wrote me back and feeling rather like I’d just got a letter from royalty, I thought I’d share the exchange on my blog.

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Hello Mr Norman,

As you’re aware, your articles on the dangers of HCD have sparked a great debate which is only a good thing.  However, there’s a few factors that create problems for me as an Experience Planner stemming from how you’ve positioned HCD v ACD as an either or discussion.  This is confusing and undermining, when you want to help organisations think the smallest bit about people’s messy realities.  It’s my job to discourage the business community from designing solutions where they see themselves as speaking for the audience.

Here’s two points that I think concern me because in the wrong hands, your words could work against what Experience Planning strives for – to put the Consumer’s life at the centre of the business:

1. Effective Activity Centred Design can only be achieved if you’re aware of the human experience and can decide with a clear set of knowledge about what to include/exclude in the design, to meet time and budget limitations.  If money, time and technology were no object (nirvana), you’d be rigorously (and magically) human centred in your executions.
2. Most organisations are barely scratching the surface when understanding their customers, leaving the common wo/man out there with little choice but to buy average products and services for years until the competition try to do something about it.  That’s a huge waste of resources caused by a lack of focus on human shaped design.  Your articles can undermine the case for focusing on the human because Activity Centred Design is a weapon the budget holders can wield to justify the way they were doing things was right in the first place – and can be argued for reductions in budget expenditure.

It’s not that your articles are wrong or not intellectually stimulating – it’s the manner in which they can be misinterpreted by the majority of non-HCD thinkers out there.  You are considered to be one of the guiding lights of a movement, your words, much like those of many religious figures, can be used out of context to whip up all kinds of skewed thinking… it’s a responsibility of your brilliance to consider this when you communicate to your flock, and inevitably your movements detractors.

Hope my thoughts are constructive and interesting?

Kind regards,

Markus.

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His reply:

Thanks, Markus

I am of course aware that my articles in Interaction  can be misinterpreted. The one you cite is only one of several. Nonetheless, it is my intention to ask the professionals to reconsider their activities, because many follow procedures blindly without full understanding of why.

For example, usability is never the most important aspect of a product. Profitability is higher on the list of important attributes. I put the total experience above usability. If a product delivers value in the tasks it accomplishes and the pleasure it affords, then minor usability issues are forgiven.

My argument on Activity Centered Design in no way undermines the need to understand human behavior. My argument is not a cry to ignore all that we know: it is a cry to refocus it. When something is intended to be used by a large number of peoples, societies, and cultures, then I argue it is best to focus on the activity that is to be supported, not the individual people.

But activities are a very human endeavor. Moreover, they take place in context.  If you want to understand activities, you have to go out into the workplace (what we call “the field”) and watch people. Watch while they are doing multiple tasks, being continually interrupted, facing unrealistic deadlines, being harried by co-workers, clients or patients, supervisors, and family members.  Understand the tasks, and ordering of subtasks, and the kind of support tools that they require. Understand the needs required to support the activity, especially in the context of the real world where the activity may not be finished in a single session, where it might be continued on several different machines in different locations, where it has to endure after system reboots and multiple interruption, and where it is interleaved with multiple other activities, including some that might require the very same tools.

The study of activities is a very human-centered endeavor. It in no way diminishes the importance of the human-centered design team. If anything, it elevates it to a far more important role I the product process.

I believe that today’s focus is often wrong. A narrow focus is misleading. We should not focus upon individuals, upon usability, and upon other narrowly defined attributes. We should not study the use of a product or service in isolation of real world complexities. And we should think of the larger business context in which our labors are to be applied, a context where budgets, time, and competitive pressures are legitimate contenders for resources, where the activity-centered design must coexist with legitimate technical issues, marketing concerns, competitive pressures. Our efforts must help drive the total product, starting with initiation of the project through delivery, but it must also be part of a partnership where all players band together to produce the best possible product in terms of overall business benefits. Yes, overall user experience and customer benefits are critical components of business benefits, but only components.

So, I disagree when you say that a change from HCD to ACD is taking our eye off the customer or is giving the more traditional engineering and marketing approaches ammunition to eliminate or reduce our impact.  I am trying to provide much more potent approaches for our skills to make us even more essential to the business than we already are.

I guess I should save these words and submit them to Interactions, because you are not the only person who has been confused by my messages.

Thanks for writing

Don.