[IxDA Discuss] Expert/Rapid/Special Forces Design

[Scott Bower]

UCD, seems to me at least, the mantra of academics and some in 
SIGCHI/Human Factors who have, for some reason, taken a defensive 
posture. Design, and it's methodologies, is the realization of many 
different fields of research and study. Anyone that studies design 
history, particularly Industrial Design in the USA, can understand that 
UCD is but one approach to countless others that Dan didn't even touch 
on. Of course, I do not need to point that out to the people in IxDA. 
Just because an approach fails to materialize (for whatever success 
metric is used) in the market doesn't make it any less worthy. In fact, 
a world without art, experimentation, and failure would be a place 
without any type of design. UCD has been put on a pedestal  and it is 
definitely the method of choice for systems that have a high degree of 
complexity and zero tolerance for failure by the insertion of human 
interactions. I can say with confidence that R+D firms I have recently 
visited that are on the bleeding edge and have been using UCD to the 
exclusion of other methods are getting "washed out" solutions. As a 
result, they are increasingly contracting designer/artists taught by 
the likes of Golan Levin (those types are not on this list) to find 
innovation. I have alot of respect for organizations like the Eyebeam 
Openlab who value the idea of creativity.

UCD is not the best approach for breakthroughs in interactive 
information design and I believe the biggest stakeholders in UCD would 
agree. The breakthroughs in design going back the last 100 years were a 
result of good design solutions sometimes sold under the guise of UCD 
("See, there will be less lawsuits with this new design based on these 
tests") in order to sell it to the decision makers. I don't think I 
have ever worked on a project where a stake was thrown into the ground 
and one particular method was used to the exclusion of others. But 
sometimes breakthroughs are not what is needed and it is refreshing to 
see that in the US Healthcare system the concept of UCD is finally 
taking hold. Patient Centered Design.

It is unfortunate that Design schools, in the States at least, are 
failing to adequately educate designers and that a term like "Genius 
Design" or whatever we call it ("Creativity based on research"?) even 
has to exist. I do like the fact that it is controversial, that is 
exactly the kind of shake up the education community at large needs.

scott

On Oct 22, 2006, at 6:14 PM, James Leftwich, IDSA wrote:

> What's incredibly objectionable in this polemic approach by UCD
> advocates, is that designing in any other approach is a folly, or
> "has produced many failures."  Just a few token, and relatively
> unexamined examples are held up to underscore the assertion that
> intuition or experience is a doomed or merely egotistical approach.