Distorted user-centered design
Distortions and misunderstandings about user-centered design.
Misunderstanding 1. The user knows everything
User-centered design does not mean solving the problem the user says they have, nor does it mean adopting the solution the user proposes.
- Users have not been trained to discover problems. There are generally important problems that users have not noticed, and problems users consider important are often not actually so. Still, because they are experiencing problems whether they recognize them or not, there are behaviors that appear as a result, so designers can observe those behaviors and use them as clues in discovering problems.
- Users have not been trained to solve problems either. The solutions users propose are generally not the best ones. Still, they do act in various ways to solve/avoid/improve/mitigate some problems in order to achieve their goals, so designers can closely observe those behaviors and use them as references in solving problems.
The phrase “the answer is in the user” should be interpreted to mean that if a trained designer observes users well, they can draw out insight.
Misunderstanding 2. Users must not be made to adapt to the product
The claim that the product should adapt to the user and that users must not be forced to adapt to the product may be correct depending on the situation (if you consider games or musical instruments, even this claim is not always correct), but the claim that users must not, under any circumstances, end up adapting to the product is wrong.
Living things are highly adaptable. Humans are living things too, so they adapt well to artifacts and environments. Good design can greatly help humans adapt quickly to artifacts and form good habits. Design that does not make use of human adaptability is only half a design, and it makes humans behave in “stupid” ways. But it is not humans that are stupid; it is the environment that induces such behavior. (See: Finding the mouse cursor somewhere on the monitor)
Conflicting views of users
Interestingly, the two misunderstandings above reflect conflicting views of users.
- Misunderstanding 1 assumes that “users are so smart that they know exactly what the problem is and also know exactly what the design solution is.”
- Misunderstanding 2 assumes that “users are so stupid, or so lazy, that they can never adapt to artifacts.”
For nearly 30 years, I have been watching user-centered design be practiced absurdly in the field on the basis of these conflicting misunderstandings. Donald Norman had already pointed out a similar problem in 2005.1
Reduction of the designer’s role
Under these misunderstandings, the designer’s role is drastically reduced to little more than that of a messenger who relays the voice of the user (or of the client company that believes itself to be the user) to the development team, or else someone who merely makes things look pretty.