The Sword of Data: Does Human-Centered Design Fulfill Its Rhetorical Responsibility? Page: 40
This article is part of the collection entitled: UNT Scholarly Works and was provided to UNT Digital Library by the UNT College of Arts and Sciences.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
The Sword of Data:
Does Human-Centered Design Fulfill
Its Rhetorical Responsibility?
Erin Friess1 J. Karat, M. E. Atwood, S. M. Dray, M.
Rantzar, & D. R. Wixon (1996). User-
Centered Design: Quality or Quackery?
Paper presented at the CHI 96. J. Karat,
"Evolving the Scope of User-Centered
Design." Communications of the ACM,
40:7 (1997): 33-38.
2 Douglas Bowman, "Goodbye, Google."
Stopdesign blog. http://stopdesign.com.
Posted March 20, 2009 (accessed July 7,
2009).
3 Laura M. Holson, "Putting a Bolder Face
on Google." The New York Times (March
1,2009): BU1.
4 Bowman, "Goodnight Google."
5 Interestingly, number 5 on Google's list
of "commands" for User Experience is
"Dare to innovate."
6 Bowman, "Goodnight Google."
MFor more than two decades, user-centered design (UCD) has been
the guiding philosophy and process in the field of design from both
practice and pedagogy perspectives. Although there is no singular
agreement on just what constitutes UCD and many different names
for and "flavors" of UCD have emerged-human-centered design,
participatory design, activity-centered design, and contextual design,
just to name a few-nearly every version relies on an early and
continual interaction with people who will actually use the product.1
Designers then use findings from the interactions (e.g., surveys, focus
groups, card sorting exercises, document reviews, scenario-based
testing, and plus-minus testing) to guide the design solutions.
User-centered design-or the more popular human-centered
design (HCD)-has served the discipline of design well, giving
design a purpose, a structure, and, perhaps most importantly, a
story to tell. However, HCD, as it is often practiced today, is no
longer just human centered but empirically centered. Rather than
being guided by interactions with end users, designers are being
forced into the role of engineer, making decisions based solely on
quantifiable and easily relatable data gathered from the end users.
To illustrate, in early 2009, Google's lead visual designer, Douglas
Bowman, left the company because of the company's perhaps
over-reliance on empirical data.2 According to the New York Times,
when a Google team couldn't decide between two shades of blue, a
test was ordered on 41 intermediate shades to determine which one
"performs better."3 Bowman himself was asked to empirically defend
whether a border should be 3, 4, or 5 pixels wide.4 Ultimately for
Bowman, data became "a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the
company and preventing it from making any daring decisions,"" and
his disdain for a "design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the
sword of data" eventually caused him to leave Google.6
Such a reliance on empirical data is, in many ways, human-
centered design at its most extreme. While there is nothing inherently
"wrong" in such an approach to design, focusing solely on user input
to drive output betrays design's rhetorical roots. In what follows,
I explore the history and practice of HCD, consider the rhetorical
issues that arise with the practice of extreme empirical HCD, and
suggest that a move away from empirically driven design and
2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Design Issues: Volume 26, Number 3 Summer 2010
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This article can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Article.
Friess, Erin. The Sword of Data: Does Human-Centered Design Fulfill Its Rhetorical Responsibility?, article, July 2010; [Cambridge, Massachusetts]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc38883/m1/1/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT College of Arts and Sciences.