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Why User-Centered Design is Not Enough, by John Wood

By Core Jr - September 24, 2012

in Articles | Essay

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci via Wikimedia Commons

Utopia or Oblivion? Buckminster Fuller framed this question in his 1993 book of the same name, warning that mankind's prospects would go decisively one way, or the other. Twenty years on, it is clear that nobody could have answered his question with any certainty. This is because we are all entangled in it. Fortunately, most of us have heard of the butterfly effect, so we are slowly realising that each one of us has some responsibility for what happens. What does this mean for 'UCD' (User-Centered Design)?

Putting The User at the Center In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a computer program for diagnosing medical conditions. It conversed with patients directly, via screen-based questions in everyday language. But it did it so cunningly that most correspondents thought they were talking to a human being. The question and answer routine was based on the psychotherapeutic approach of Carl Rogers, best-known for developing an extremely patient-centered approach. Technologically speaking, the program was very simple. First, it addressed the respondent using her first name, asked open-ended questions about their state of health and incorporated some of their own words in its answer. The strategy worked so well that users were convinced they were talking to a sympathetic doctor, rather than a machine.

How Useful is Humanism? One of the things we might deduce from Weizenbaum's experiment is that educated people become very susceptible to suggestion, once they are placed at the center of their emotional universe. The idea of user-centered design grew out of 'humanism', which can be traced to ancient Greece and the early Christians, who came to value the differences between individuals. However, while humanism has many admirable qualities, it is a dangerously incomplete basis from which understand things.

If we were to make a caricature of the humanistic world in picture-book terms, Nature would be depicted as a faint grey backdrop, with people standing out in bright colours. The growth of humanism gave us a strong belief in free will. More recently, in the era of consumption, it has tended to make us restless and unsatisfied. This is a paradox. In the 21st century, never have so many people had so much access to so much information. Yet, our species has become increasingly disconnected from the complex ecosystem that nourishes and sustains it. This is because, for the sake of convenience, we have manipulated, or dumbed-down our perceptions of what is immediately around us. What should worry designers, in particular, is that they played a major part in creating this artificial, user-centered world.The Customer is God Why do airlines offer free 'air miles' to the most privileged? Why do, even when their customers ask them not to, shopkeepers unthinkingly hand out plastic bags and cafes give away disposable napkins with their food and beverages? One reason is that it feels good to look after one's honored guests in a generous way, even if it means wasting resources.

Why is Apple now the most valuable company in the world? Yes, it is because their design standards are, compared to their rivals, pretty good. OK, it is also because, in business terms, a user-centered approach is a hell of a lot smarter than 'functionality-centered', 'engineer-centered', or 'producer-centered design'. This is why Samsung would love to be the world leaders in UCD.

But if we look beyond the unaffordable economic system and think about the future, things look very different. In the bigger scheme of things, user-centered logic implies that the user is right. It tacitly assumes that what individual consumers want will benefit the whole system. All over the world, people still say that the customer is either 'king,' 'queen,' 'emperor' or even, 'God.' This idea came from our feudal past, when servants were always less well-educated than their masters. This is no longer always the case. Mostly, in today's high-speed lifestyles, the idea that 'the customer is always right' is a cynical phrase. Deep down, most customers know that owning a cool product will not make him a cooler person. On the other hand, the smiling shopkeeper hopes, privately, that appealing to the vanity of the customer is enough to make her buy more than she needs.

Empowering the People? It is less than a century since the American Dream took root in the global imagination, and only a few decades since governments de-regulated the markets in order to maximise economic growth. These changes encouraged people from wealthy nations to see themselves more as consumers, rather than citizens. This was partly because economists and politicians could not see a way to distribute wealth evenly. They found it easier to stimulate over-production and to pay designers and marketing experts to harness envy, greed, acquisitiveness and a feeling of loss. On the positive side, the Enlightenment vision of a knowledge-based Utopia became increasingly thinkable, thanks to pioneers like Denis Diderot, Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, Xerox Parc, the Apple team, Nam Jun Paik and Tim Berners-Lee. This opened up the enormous potential for Open Source design and social networking. Nevertheless, gadgets like Facebook and Twitter have become as useful to the clandestine world of state surveillance and commercial manipulation as they are to a freer, more open society.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Does Consumption Dumb us Down? In 2012, while consumers are clearer about their rights, rather than their responsibilities, Utopia and Oblivion remain equally probable. In this increasingly commercial world, the citizen's economic duty is to shop until s/he drops. In the last five years, the mass media has used the word 'crisis' almost exclusively to describe a financial problem. It is seldom used to describe our prospects as a species. As politicians continue to argue for more, and yet more, economic growth the environment gently pushes us to the edge of oblivion. The melting rate of Arctic ice is now 50% faster than it was in 2007 the atmospheric CO2 levels have exceeded the much-feared 'tipping point' of 350ppm. The Rio+20 summit was a total disaster and the 2010 Nagoya Commission on Biodiversity failed to establish a workable remedy. Looks like it's going to be oblivion, rather than Utopia, then...Are we bothered? Not really. We have designed ourselves into a bubble of self-satisfaction. 'Solipsism' is a good word for it. It reminds us of the old story of Narcissus, who was became obsessively absorbed by his own reflection in the lake and failed to notice that a beautiful girl was trying to get his attention.

Does Design dumb us down? Many designers will, no doubt, object to this analysis. They will point out that UCD simply acknowledges the unique physical capabilities and needs of individual users, or types of user. While this may be a fair point, say, from a product designer's perspective, it overlooks the way that we urgently need more imaginative business models. We need to ditch worn-out economic theories and make our lifestyles less dependent upon cheap energy. In the current business climate a UCD is seen as a harmless conceit that will oil the wheels of commerce and help us all to feed our families. Ultimately, it may be the death of us all. One of the problems with this post-feudal, user-centered mindset is that it is a one-dimensional map in which only two places exist—master and servant. In the workplace, the designer is the servant and the client is the master. From a greater distance, the user is the master and the 'client plus designer' is the servant. Apple products may look cool on a small, consumer-centered map, but they might not look so smart on the big map, especially if we can see their true ecological footprint. This model is failing us all, because it ignores everything outside our myopic economic reality.

How Can We See the Bigger Picture? What kind of map would guide us to destinations that are beyond the 'user'? To answer this question we may need to think beyond design as we know it. At the end of the 19th century, the design professions emerged as a disparate set of specialist disciplines. Since then, universities have been lamentably slow at challenging these traditional boundaries of design specialism. Even in today's increasingly cross-disciplinary corporations, most designers are paid to deliver specialist solutions to narrow, profit-seeking problems, rather than as holistic thinkers who work for society as a whole. Our design research at Goldsmiths, University of London has led us to a more complex, less predictive approach that we call 'metadesign.' It assumes that, in order to reach Utopia, rather than Oblivion, we need a more joined-up way to design for living. This means rethinking everything, including the way humans feed, clothe, shelter, assemble, communicate and live together. It means designing at the level of behaviors, habits, beliefs and language. In short, it entails re-designing design itself.

Ruskin's Eco-centered Approach We have developed many theories that are enabling us to understand these issues. We have also developed quite a few practical tools that enable us to innovate at a more strategic, self-reflexive level. We call it 'metadesigning.' In trying to find a mapping system that goes beyond the well-worn UCD pathway between producer and consumer we looked at John Ruskin's model of craftsmanship. Although he did not describe it in these simplified terms, his description of the craftsman's pride in his work affords benefits at four locations (i.e. natural environment, client, craftsman and society).

Working with a 4-fold System This is not the whole map, but it takes us a long way beyond UCD. Instead of one pathway we have six, which is clearer when we visualise the system as a tetrahedron (see below). This four-fold technique has proved invaluable on a number of levels. It does not stop the designer from trying to imagine standing in the shoes of the user. But it also encourages her to empathise with the client, the environment and/or the design itself. Moreover, by visualising all of the (6) relations, it enables her to visualise the 12 perspectives within the whole, simplified system.

John Wood is currently Emeritus Professor of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he wrote the first 'green' design degrees (in 1988) to combine ethics with enterprise. Before that, he was Deputy Head of Fine Art. He co-founded the 'Attainable Utopias' think-tank and the 'Writing-PAD Network'. This led to the 'Journal of Creative Practice', which he co-edits with Julia Lockheart. Between 2005 and 2010 he was funded by EPSRC & AHRC to conduct research into metadesigning. A visiting professor in Nagoya, Seoul and Bangkok, Wood is also a founder member of the cult rock band 'Deaf School'. http://metadesigners.org

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Alexey Porubay

7 years ago

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Thanks for that article. Design is a big problem because the customer does not know the whole value of the design and relies on inspiration, orders according to his own understanding and desires, but he does not listen to professionals and their research in any part of what the person is looking at, how to entice him, and after all it all begins. You can at least look at these tips: https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/the-elements-of-user-experience-as-a-way-to-become-atrustworthy-in-customers--minds

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Juan Fandino

12 years ago

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Thanks to Karl Sabino for his comment, I think the articule has a validate position, but at the end, designers are not stupids, we have at lest 5 years studying what might be the best solution for the user, so I think the solution using UCD is a mixed of what the user needs and what designer knows its the best for the user.

Sorry for my english.
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J.Boehnert

12 years ago

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I really enjoyed this article John. Especially the paragraph containing this sentence: 'we have designed ourselves into a bubble of self-satisfaction'. Our culture now celebrates narcissistic behavior to such an extent that 'narcissism', traditionally considered a psychiatric disorder, will not appear in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (out in 2013). I appreciate the way that this article describes how changing social values have been encoded within design, reflecting neo-liberal ideologies that encourage individualism at the expense of the social and ecological context that makes prosperity possible for us all.
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Sergio

12 years ago

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Thank you for bring up this issue. You are absolutely correct in what you say but I think that just like designers should think holistically, so should this issue be taken holistically. I have no doubt there's many talented designers out there which can and want to achieve the vision described in the article. Which, by the way, is not really anything new (Papanek has formalized many corresponding views decades ago).

The problem is that there's an urgent need for designers to be taken more seriously within corporations. Business people and/or decision makers are at the root of the problem. Designers tend to not have enough power to bring holistic thinking across because stakeholders do not understand its need or do not want to understand it. Couple that to the current interpretation of Capitalism we're living with and the road block is installed.

What we really need now is the redefinition of business(es) as we know it and the emergence of new businesses that challenge the status quo with designers on board the assault cavalry.

Thanks

P.S.: it disturbs me a bit that Apple is the usual suspect in all things explaining or talking about design. It's time to move on and be a bit more flexible in examples and cases studies.

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Karl Sabino

12 years ago

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I have to take issue. This is using a narrow and incorrect definition of UCD.

UCD is not consumerism, nor is it the sole preserve of companies making stuff that we don't really need.

UCD is about designing and making stuff for people - taking the premise that in order to do so successfully you need to find out about the people you are designing for.

This absolutely must include their context and environment, if it doesn't it's not UCD.

Secondly the stuff doesn't have to be a consumable,; it could be a playground, a skate park, a GPs booking system, local transport services, libraries...

Thirdly it can (as you can see from the second point) be employed successfully by public organisations and even governments. Take a look at the excellent work by the publicly funded Finnish Innovation Fund http://www.sitra.fi/en. They employ "People oriented development".

From their site:
"Human focus means understanding the needs and everyday lives of people and being aware of cultural needs. Service development means getting better results with less effort. But the meaningful application of sustainable solutions also requires sensitivity."

This is an excellent definition of UCD from a service design point of view.

P.S. I love Deaf School
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Cat

12 years ago

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I really appreciate the historicism present in this argument -- too often designers imagine their profession as without basic ideological, philosophical / historical roots that give their practice and perspectives (means and ends) their shape and direction. I thought it was a great and timely article. You lost me though in what appears to be a moment of reductionist technophilia that reveals a weakness in the overall argument. You cite the man who brought us the atom bomb (along with, I agree, some other fairly great and notable accomplishments ) as the poster boy for heralding in a new "knowledge-based utopia"-- but seeing that the manhattan project ensured the total erasure of the "human" in the calculus of war this seems troubling. Why not take a Donna Haraway as a point of departure instead, for the ways in which she reveals that the techno-social moment has begun to break down traditional binaries between the human / and the "other" (animal, machine, environment, etc...). It seems that in a desire to escape the category of human altogether - you gloss over the very contested definition of what we call "human" in the first place. Your list of heroes are also all male technophilliacs-- it just seems to me that it might be easy to overlook the problematics of human diversity, power relations, and connections to "meta" networks when you are arguing from the dominant, privileged position without first grappling with it. Perhaps I am conflating your rejection of the philosophical legacy of "humanism" with something more generalistic. But I am still bothered by the idea that "knowledge" is somehow without a body in some free floating utopia where everyone has somehow become magically equal. This is also not an implicit critique, but rather a nagging feeling I have after reading this piece-- perhaps it can engender more discussion?
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Rob Irwin

12 years ago

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What a fantastic article! Thanks, John! I'll be in touch soon, as I am writing a book on this very evolution of thought and application.

It is a difficult road to navigate when one is using titles to describe ones profession, or approach for that matter. After all, every other trained person has been dubbed with some descriptive noun as their professional identity within society. I have been formally trained as an industrial designer, HOWEVER, in my modest ten years as such, I have designed, residential homes, analyzed environmental impacts, via LCA databases, designed toys, solar charging stations, landscapes, biomimetic wind turbines, educational exhibits, displays and fixtures, electronics, furniture, lighting, and so on. That said, I have had trouble answering others when asked what it is I DO. My default is usually, "I'm a designer."

To get at the point of "title" for such a diverse profession, I most appreciate the simplest and would offer the thought that it should not be a game of specificity (catering to the idea that a good designer should be a "specialist"), as I have found that being broad in my spectrum of interest and curiosity with designing paradigms, smacks of only one title; Designer.

Eloquent, it is not, but the generalist who designs, designs with a swath of possible lenses than can be more readily accessed for any given challenge. Further, their scope of problem solving and reasoning for civilization at large as a shaper of living allows for greater leaps in innovation and thus prosperity.

Thanks!
R
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john rogers

12 years ago

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Good article. Basically we have to go back to a Native American lifestyle to avoid oblivion. And forget European style competition, consumption and exploitation.
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Derek C

12 years ago

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I'm still taking this in. But, for some reason, the movie Wall-E keeps popping in my head. Cosmetically bad designed robot left to clean up our mess, while our Pretty apple-esqe robot picks our fat butts up on a consumer driven inter-stellar space ship. I'll get back to you all, while I take another look at this.Great article, because it get's you thinking big.
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larry rosenthal

12 years ago

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what the hell are they teaching in something called "Social Design?"

Humans aren't the center of the world? lets hope this is garbled student speak. Otherwise we either have a generation who will attempt- like misguided generations before them- to design for utopian machine societies or utopian tribal islands.

Which History Books/or News reels(pdfs-geez) are required reading/viewing? Its like the 20th century never happened.;)
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Anders Hoejris

12 years ago

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Great article! Nice to see someone who can describe what I (and hopefully others) are thinking.

With the combination of a consumer-based society, companies that wants to earn more money and UCD (the whole "the customer is God" society). We end in a scenario of a child that gets everything its pointing at. Just as a child would eat only candy, if his mother was not there to teach what is best for him and his body. Our consumer-based society needs to take a step back from the ego-centered lifestyle and look not only at what is best for me, but also for society and above all, the environment!
But who can/ who dare take on such a role...? :)

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Sharon Kong

12 years ago

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I really appreciated this article... as a college student in Social Design, I'd felt something was wrong with the user-centered design mindset since I first heard of it. This article articulated all my nagging thoughts and more.

Humans aren't the center of the world. The quicker we realize this and change the way we design, the better we can shape our future as a planet. I'm not sure if John Ruskin's model is necessarily the answer, but it's a better model than UCD.

Thank you!
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Dan Littler

12 years ago

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Great article.

"Even in today's increasingly cross-disciplinary corporations, most designers are paid to deliver specialist solutions to narrow, profit-seeking problems, rather than as holistic thinkers who work for society as a whole."

That's true, but those designers have to earn a living somehow! Reimagining design will need to include thinking about how designers can pay the rent whilst becoming more responsible, holistic thinkers. The age-old problem.
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Matt Edwards

12 years ago

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The problem I have with this interpretation of UCD is in its narrowness. It takes agency away from the designer and gives it to the user. It creates a sort of straw man, in which the designer is simply a conduit for bringing the user's request to life, be it well-articulated or not.

In actual practice, designers are (most likely) not doing this. They are negotiating the needs of many parties: clients, customers, their own company, as well as their personal sensibilities. Within each of these groups, many subgroups with sometimes conflicting interests exist. They must all be negotiated in some way in order to bring a concept into fruition.

I think the more current naming convention, "human-centered design," captures this larger view of the design as something that serves the larger scope of needs present in any human ecosystem. It's easy to get dragged down by petty semantics, but I believe this difference is an important one that should be acknowledged.
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larry rosenthal

12 years ago

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20 years ago i wrote an article for ID magazine -- it was entitled the POST MATERIAL product.... and was heavily edited and defanged by the editors before they published it.. One contention they freaked out at was the call to rename "industrial design" to what i thought then would be the right name."interface design" since almost all design work was no longer pointed to the "industrial age".. and the future was more graphic bits with code, then metal knobs on plastic molded boxes.... anyhow.. "international design" came a few years later.. and today? well good luck finding an issue....

after 20 years its clear i was wrong.. the name should not have been changed to "interface design" since that held the promise of design FOR humans... Today we are in the age of "Interference Design" where every "like" and "plus" and twitt hit IS NOT designed for the viewser/human s benefit... but for the machine platform and its owner.

note how ebay today forces long time 100% positive sellers into bankruptcy daily, ever since they chnaged their "game" interface.. to 4 stars = satisfied= fail... and 5 stars=very satsisfied = pass... by USING the common movie interface rating or zagat rating where 4= GOOD... and of course most buyers react to that... give a 4 out of 5-- express good intentsions to the seller..all the time putting them out of business to foster ebays new biz plans...which thay cant pu\blicaly speak of,,,( cheap chinese drop shipper -- amazon lite) or face class action suits.... nmeanwhile just this month, ebays design changed its TOS to forbid usages access to your money,..... business... unless you sign away all rights to class actions....

interference design.. KNOW what your do.. designers. know what you now are asked to serve.;)
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