Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful

Source
"Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful" by Don Norman

Summary
This article was mainly about how blindly following want the users want is detrimental to a product. He begins by saying that knowing one's users is very important. Current beliefs state that this is the most important part of designing a successful product. However, he points out that companies that are supposedly good at human-centered design still produce confusing products. He then points out that the car and some everyday objects were designed without user studies and they ended up being successful. The reason they are successful is that they follow activity-centered design principles. The designers developed it knowing what activities the product would perform. They take the previous design and improve upon it based on the problems they or their customers experienced. He also counters the argument that technology should adapt to human use by giving some examples of how we adapted to technology: the clock and watch, writing systems, and musical instruments. He argues that activity centered design can be successful if the designers can sufficiently explain why they designed the product that way. Activity centered design requires an understanding of people, technology, tools, and the reasons for the activities. His major problems with human centered design is that focusing on the individual person or group can make it easier for that individual but harder for everyone else, the people's needs today may be different from the needs of tomorrow, it distracts everyone from the support of the activities themselves, and too much attention for the needs of the users can produce a non-cohesive design.

Commentary
I have noticed a change in philosophy in Don Norman from his first book, The Design of Everyday Things, to this paper and his latest book, "Emotional Design". In the first book, his main point seemed to be that we need to focus on the user and the product should be easier for the user to use. Ease of use is important. However, like he said in this paper, strictly obeying the users could lead to a product that tries to please everyone, but disappoints them instead. That was one of the complaints we had when we read the first book. I agree that there needs to be a balance between the two. You can't ignore the users completely, especially when they complain, but the company knows what direction they want to go, so they should have the say in what goes into the program.