Saturday, July 30, 2005
Activity vs. user-centered design
User-centered, human-centered, activity-centered design. Why have "centered" design at all?
When we argue for a style of designing, I wonder whether we are focusing too much on naming a method and not on the problems presented in the problem space of design.
In reading Don Norman's essay on Activity-Centered Design, my first response is "welcome to the party." Activity theory was being developed from Vygotsky (1926) to Leontev's work in the mid-70's. This golden age of activity-oriented cognitive psychology flourished when Lindsay and Norman published their well-known Human Information Processing text, one or two versions of which were used in my undergraduate human factors program. How different our HCI studies in the 1980's might have been had we taken the Soviet approach to cognitive science earlier.
My second response is "why debunk what came before?" I find the central tenet of activity theory is not necessarily the focus on activity as the unit of analysis. It is the notion that human activity arises from social-cultural-historical forces that bring context and meaning to the activity. These forces almost necessitate a certain style or culture of activities. In other words, our HCI culture, by social and cultural means, could not have grown from the Marxist worldview of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). Our field has reached our current position by developing the theories of human information processing, user-centered system design, GOMS, ontological design (Winograd), situated action, and so on. And throwing them out. These were our cultural-historical references for our development. Now perhaps we're ready for activity theory.
Because when Don Norman declares a trend in the field, it is here for real! Don helps us identify when an academic stream of thought is ready for prime-time. Even though others have written about activity-centered design, the trend is now official. We can talk about activity to clients without being considered too academic or far out.
But I caution turning this into a design method. Bonnie Nardi has always reserved caution in making activity theory into a methodology, which is something I could not resist doing myself, as a part-time methodologist. CHAT resists being a methodology, and it is much larger and looser than something you can design to. Althjough in 2001, Bonnie presages Don in this interview blurb:
And yet, my previous posts argue against the use of the word "user!" Yes, these are different constructs though. I can still perform UCD while identifying the users by their job titles, e.g. principal investigators or graduate students, which is a matter of understanding the "users" for whom I'm designing. But not every design space has a clear activity, at least not within researchable means. ACD may not always be the preferred approach to design - it is a specific appellation, it implies the understanding of activity as central to the design problem.
UCD or UX are much more general, and they do not disallow activity as a unit of analysis. But to conclude, my point comes back to the opening question: Why have "centered design" at all? It implies the design work is driven by a central commitment to the subject. Could we have activity-oriented design? Design for practice? Our naming of approach should help us communicate value to our clients and organizational customers.
We should open up our design frameworks, determine our commitments (information work in science), select the unit of analysis (e.g., activity) and methods (e.g., ethnography). Now what do I call that?
When we argue for a style of designing, I wonder whether we are focusing too much on naming a method and not on the problems presented in the problem space of design.
In reading Don Norman's essay on Activity-Centered Design, my first response is "welcome to the party." Activity theory was being developed from Vygotsky (1926) to Leontev's work in the mid-70's. This golden age of activity-oriented cognitive psychology flourished when Lindsay and Norman published their well-known Human Information Processing text, one or two versions of which were used in my undergraduate human factors program. How different our HCI studies in the 1980's might have been had we taken the Soviet approach to cognitive science earlier.
My second response is "why debunk what came before?" I find the central tenet of activity theory is not necessarily the focus on activity as the unit of analysis. It is the notion that human activity arises from social-cultural-historical forces that bring context and meaning to the activity. These forces almost necessitate a certain style or culture of activities. In other words, our HCI culture, by social and cultural means, could not have grown from the Marxist worldview of cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). Our field has reached our current position by developing the theories of human information processing, user-centered system design, GOMS, ontological design (Winograd), situated action, and so on. And throwing them out. These were our cultural-historical references for our development. Now perhaps we're ready for activity theory.
Because when Don Norman declares a trend in the field, it is here for real! Don helps us identify when an academic stream of thought is ready for prime-time. Even though others have written about activity-centered design, the trend is now official. We can talk about activity to clients without being considered too academic or far out.
But I caution turning this into a design method. Bonnie Nardi has always reserved caution in making activity theory into a methodology, which is something I could not resist doing myself, as a part-time methodologist. CHAT resists being a methodology, and it is much larger and looser than something you can design to. Althjough in 2001, Bonnie presages Don in this interview blurb:
I like to talk about activity-centered design instead of user-centered design, for exactly the reason you stated: UCD has come to be equated with usability. The essence of activity-centered design is a combination of usefulness and usability. Good applications should have both.But why should we throw out the hard-won concept of UCD when our clients and employers are just now understanding what that means? Having used activity-based research approaches since 1999, I advocate taking what we've learned from AT and working it into user-centered design. There are no hard and fast rules about what UCD or UX really mean. I agree with Bonnie's way of framing ACD, but I disagree with Don's implied notion that Human-Centered Design somehow misses activity. It depends on what we choose to study - when we study user behavior, what unit of analysis do we select? It's not like we are studying "the user" and designing to it. We study user tasks, user needs, user work practices, and user activity. To me, that can still fit within UCD - and in many cases (corporate website design, for example) there may be few clear activities in the AT sense of "series of integrated tasks." And yet, the website users have tasks, have "needs" for information use, and have goals in using the site. But to understand the activities people have when searching Google, for example - the search is not an activity, it is (usually) an operation. (Plug: See my article on this at Springer's site). How could we ever know the activity demanding the search by its terms? Only by studying the work activity people actually do (e.g., "experimental research" in my article). From their work as context, we can identify innovations and perform design for activity. In this sketch, scientists are still a type of "user" we might design for, with a primary activity of research projects.
And yet, my previous posts argue against the use of the word "user!" Yes, these are different constructs though. I can still perform UCD while identifying the users by their job titles, e.g. principal investigators or graduate students, which is a matter of understanding the "users" for whom I'm designing. But not every design space has a clear activity, at least not within researchable means. ACD may not always be the preferred approach to design - it is a specific appellation, it implies the understanding of activity as central to the design problem.
UCD or UX are much more general, and they do not disallow activity as a unit of analysis. But to conclude, my point comes back to the opening question: Why have "centered design" at all? It implies the design work is driven by a central commitment to the subject. Could we have activity-oriented design? Design for practice? Our naming of approach should help us communicate value to our clients and organizational customers.
We should open up our design frameworks, determine our commitments (information work in science), select the unit of analysis (e.g., activity) and methods (e.g., ethnography). Now what do I call that?
