Zhiwei's Academic Journel

DESIGN
Norman, D. A. (2005). " Human-centered design considered harmful." interactions 12(4): 14-19. Norman, D. A. (2005). "HCD harmful? A clarification." http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/hcd_harmful_a_clari.html(10/25/2006).

Basically, what DM said is that HCD (human-centered design) has put too much focus on individual person and this person's individual actions, (page-by-page analysis, screen-by-screen), which is a limited view of design. The design process becomes a piece-by-piece work, such as making sure a user could do A, making sure a user could do B, etc. The result of the HCD ignores sequences, interruptions, ill-defined goals (all the aspects of real activities). Instead, DM advocates ACD (activity-centered design) to focus on a person's entire activity, focus upon the tasks to be done and on the activities that are actually carried out.

In HCD, a system is often designed to carry out tasks, whcih are often situations with a single, well-specified goals, such as "respond to thsi email". Activities are larger groupings, comprised of multiple tasks that fit together. And, also I think the nature of activity is developmental and dynamic. For example, "get caught up on the day's correspondence" could mean reading emails, responding, looking up information, sometimes to copy and paste into email, checking calendars, sip a coffee, etc. Saying an activity is developmental means that the tasks that fit together to carry out "caught up on the day's correspondence" could compose any number of tasks list above and even more that come out of surprise. For example, a person may well be chating with co-workers to discuss the current progress of the project in order to finish a correspondence about a project schedule. Saying an activity is dynamic means that the sequence that these tasks are carried is not fixed and could well be changed depending on the person who carries these tasks, and the environment that this person stays.

At the end, DM made an assertion saying that "increase our focus upon the tasks and activities.. and reduce the focus on these cute but design-empty scenarios and personas." I don't believe this is a right solution. Instead, I think we should put more focus on activity, clustered tasks, and group-personas, and less on individual tasks, and stiff sequential scenarios.

This work is related to design category of general exam is that the design of a computer-mediated communication system also requires more focus on activities(e.g. keep connection with a family member), less focus on individual tasks (e.g. send a message, etc.)

posted by Zhiwei Guan  # 11:21 AM 0 comments