UCD doesn’t work. Or does it?

I found the chatter on Twitter yesterday regarding user-centred design (UCD) and whether it was a worthwhile exercise quite interesting. I think it was largely initiated by a post by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen, titled “User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea“, that suggests:

Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work.

It seems that when you ask Apple about UCD, the answer is:

“It’s all bullshit and hot air created to sell consulting projects and to give insecure managers a false sense of security. At Apple, we don’t waste our time asking users, we build our brand through creating great products we believe people will love.”

The reaction from the UCD Twitterarti, IMHO, was best summed up by this tweet from Marco Van Hout (@demandera):

Some then attemped to define what UCD was in order to dispel any missconceptions about the value of involving users, including articulating the alternatives — designing for systems or designing for the business.

Casting my mind back to IA Summit a few years back, the openning keynote addressed the same perceptions. It warned of believing in a UCD dogma that promotes it as a solution that will cure all ills. After thinking about these facets of the argument to use UCD or not to use it, my take on th issue was rather simple:

• UCD is about understanding your users – Apple understands who it is designing for. So does Ikea. They have lots of research on their attitudes, behaviours, capabilities and expectations and (tend to) design with them in mind. I know lots of organisations, though, who don’t understand their users. These places design without knowing that what they create might seem perfectly logical to themselves, but it unusable for the people it’s intended to be used by. The more insight you can gain into users’ mindsets, their needs and wants, the more value you can put into your designs.
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• Involving users isn’t a waste of time but an opportunity to engage, share ideas, and about change management – I don’t tend to use UCD workshops to actually *generate* ideas or gather requirements. If I did, I’d only end up designing things like Homer Simpson’s car.

  I use UCD methods primarily as a means of getting imporant stakeholders and end-users togther and provide a forum so they can understand the nature of the project I’m working on. This provides them the opportunity to comment on what’s going on in a safe and supportive way through structured design activities that everyone can participate in.

  That said, though, if I have formulated some ideas already I test and validate these concepts with users. Once in a while users do provide me with an idea or two that I can use. Recently, when I was doing some IA work, one user made the comment that online articles should have a place for references so tend credibility to its article. When I got back to the office I then added that space to the wireframes I was working on.

  In leading users through a focus on Personas, then onto Card Sorting, and then onto web page (or apps) design, I can lead users through the same steps that I’ve taken to create a design. More recently, I’ve built storyboards into the mix and get participants to begin to structure scenarios that depict Personas in the context of use of the products being designed. This builds an expectation of the end result and buy-in to my process. When the end result is shown to these users I have very little arguments about the final draft designs.
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• UCD is a philosophy — You could design in such a  way to ensure it’s very easy to code. You could design in such a way so that it suits the way the sponsoring organisation wants to support the product and focus on minimal risk and minimal cost. UCD is none of these things.UCD is just a way of working. Much like Agile is a philosophy for teamwork and focussing effort to ensure it adds value to the end product, UCD is not too dissimilar. It’s a means by which work focusses effort to maximise value to the end-user.

Yes, UCD is *that* simple.

Yes, Apple works this way.

Yes, Ikea works this way.

It’s not my expectation that UCD specifically elicits innovative ideas from end-users, but I do expect to use it as a way of working, a way of thinkin about users, and a philosophical approach to ensuring that work effort adds value to te final product that users will use.

M

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