Ideas on moving beyond user-centred
The first problem I have with user-centred is just simple peevishness at it’s overuse. Stick a picture of a person in the centre of all your diagrams and you’re there. No more work required.
The second gets a little deeper at the reason for my annoyance. Why should cramming all our services and processes in a circle around our user be so necessary? What is it about all those parts of an organisation that they need to be reformed around a user. Truly user-centred design would do away with a lot of the producer-centric elements of organisations but of course, most of those producer needs are essential to their survival or at the very least to their mission. When these forces are in conflict, user-centred gives way pretty quickly.
So we need a way to understand the value that focusing on the user brings, without discounting the competing needs of other stakeholders. More collaborative perhaps. How do we do this without losing the program and liminality that user-centred provides?
A third aspect is the role of spokesperson that the researcher plays. I’d like an adjustment to this. It’s not that I’m uncomfortable with the role, but more that I’m uncomfortable with the claims of the role. I’d like a modifier, a way to mitigate the claim without denying the role. This is particularly true where the demands of time mean that we must speak for people, not with them.
I’m thinking a reformed concept of the ‘field’ might be productive. I’m more comfortable arguing that I can speak for the field. The field is easier to place disclaimers on (based on 1 day in the field). It’s a means of balancing people, objects, places, processes. And it means avoiding a ‘black box’ conversion from speaking for people to speaking for the needs of the project.
Of course, this is all scaffolding. Thinking aloud. The program of user-centred is too important to let us off thinking about people first. It’s just I’m not always sure that user-centric does equal people-centric.
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