[IxDA Discuss] Rationale for *not* using UCD

[Peter Merholz]

I honestly don't get what this discussion is all about.

UCD is an approach. A way of solving a problem. But it's clearly not  
the only way.

At Adaptive Path, we have a principle for our practice:
"More than anything else, our practice is focused on delivering  
results that satisfy the customer and meet their needs. This is true  
across all our lines of business.

(Adaptive Path, contrary to popular conception, is not a "user- 
centered design company." User-centered design is only one way to go  
about approaching our projects.)"

There are many design problems where UCD is not suitable. We've done  
many projects without UCD, and where we delivered good design. We've  
done many projects with UCD.

For us, the primary reason to engage in UCD is when engaging with a  
domain that we're simply not familiar with. UCD helps us get inside  
the heads of the users for whom we're designing.

We've opted out of UCD for projects where we're personally intimately  
familiar with the domain. For our work designing the Soundflavor  
application and website
<http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000679.php>
we were the users. We have large music collections and need help in  
managing them. We don't need to go to users for insight in how to  
design such a tool. We can draw inspiration from our experiences.

Also, regarding Jared's study, I don't understand why people are so  
up-in-arms with his findings. Frankly, it makes all the sense in the  
world to me that there's no correlation between investment in UCD  
practice and success in delivering usable product. This has less to  
do with UCD practice, and everything to do with organizational  
behavior and psychology.

--peter