May 29, 2006
What is user centered design? How is it different than regular design? What is the end goal of user-centric design?
"The key to successful web applications is how much it puts the user in the center of the process". What this means is that any design, for any webpage or web-application needs to take into consideration the user, not the looks.
- webreakstuff.com
Art design: How does ths website reflect my or my clients aesthetic? Closer relationships to vanity publicshing or fine art.
User-centric design: What are we offering our users. How do we make it clear to our users how they can maximiaze ther experience of our website.
When is it important/neccesary
When you are offering a service or creating a website that requires users in order to accrue value (most websites).
When is less important/neccesary
When your website is primarily an aesthetic vehicle without the requirements of clarity, comprehensability, and usability that a site with a broad user base requires.
commonly misunderstood to be user-centric when they are not
tagging
Tags require the search query before we know what we’ll be searching for. Tags require people to create the map before they’ve traversed the territory; they suggest the map is the territory, a veritable impossibility considering the territory constantly changes.
In cases where we’re not sure where we’re going, we develop default categories, nebulous ‘other’ realms, gigantic formless piles with little use beyond remembering that we wanted to pile something somewhere. Tufte points to ancient mapmakers and their habit of proclaiming “here there be monsters”, and for librarians, certainly, these piles house the uncategorizable bugbears that refuse to acknowledge existing taxonomies.
It’s a much more natural human instinct to create a pile and name it later once we have a better idea about the pile’s boundaries. People prefer traversing the territory before drawing the map. If the map really came first, Lewis and Clarke would never have found the Northwest passage because Columbus would never have found America.
- thinking and making.com
User-centric doesn't mean that design disapears or is replaced by a blank slate on which the users collectively write their preferences. It means the needs of the user and their preferences are worked into the design and given equal consideration alongside the end-goals of the site manufacterer or the limitations of the technology.
Reflections on what background philosophic or social positions a design manifests phycially through it's user interface.
Power distance : How much can a user do, how much security does that site display directly, what are the directives for the first tme user, how clear is the help are their roles displayed next to a users name. Is there a recognizable leadership structure ( site moderator site admin) within the sites visible framework, can you tell how many people are online with you? can you hide or the fact that you are online or not
Continued from main page..
Individualism vs. Collectivism: W/R/T these two apparently opposed terms: (westerners) have a conflicted relationship to those ideas. We tend to celebrate the individual while fearing the breakdown of older comunal social ties,which demand a subordination of the indvidual will in order to function function effectively (taxation anyone?). Social software applications are a means to address the paradoxical nature of of desire for highly individuated communities in whihc n eis a member by choice, and can easily choose to leave if membership becomes incovenient or uneccesary.
Design in this situation performs an instrumental (as opposed to aesthetic) function, that of providing the user with their own personal freedom (myspace profiles) within a collective to which they bear very little social obligation, but which nonetheless provides the idea, of a communal membership. (Are you on myspace? Not, do you belong to myspace)
Quote from paper:
Hofstede found that individualistic ... societies and governments place individual social-economic interests over the group, maintain strong rights to privacy, nurture strong private opinions (expected from everyone), restrain the power of the state in the economy, emphasize the political power of voters, maintain strong freedom of the press, and profess the ideologies of self-actualization, self-realization, self-government, and freedom.
At work, collectivist ... societies and governments place collective social-economic interests over the individual, may invade private life and regulate opinions, favor laws and rights for groups over individuals, dominate the economy, control the press, and profess the ideologies of harmony, consensus, and equality.
Based on this definition, we believe individualism and collectivism may influence the following aspects of user-interface and Web design:
• Motivation based on personal achievement: maximized (expect the extra-ordinary) for individualist cultures vs. underplayed (in favor of group achievement) for collectivist cultures.
• Images of success: demonstrated through materialism and consumerism vs. achievement of social-political agendas.
• Rhetorical style: controversial/argumentative speech and tolerance or encouragement of extreme claims vs. official slogans and subdued hyperbole and controversy.
• Prominence given youth and action vs. aged, experienced, wise leaders and states of being
• Importance given individuals vs. products shown by themselves or with groups.
• Underlying sense of social morality: emphasis on truth vs. relationships.
• Emphasis on change: what is new and unique vs. tradition and history.
• Willingness to provide personal information vs. protection of personal data differentiating the individual from the group.
what limitations are placed on designs for the web from the outset. Without taking into consideration the end-users needs at all
- limitations of the back-end (for example all CMS's are typically 3 column displays because that is the easiest way to pull and push data to and from tables.
- limitations of the designer, all those rotating uitars must mean something? That most people don't hav eth eneccesary time and skills to produce apage that actually looks like what they want it to. In a negotiation with their own aesthetics and with usability and taste in general they end using crappy design in order to exert a measure of control over their web presence.
- conflicting goals/ or design by committee. Usually a web project is meant to respond toa wide variety of needs, and as those needs generally increase of over the lifespan of site choices en dup being mae that may privelage some aspect of design over another, ( standards vs active elements) for example
Thus even from the outset without even taking into account the end -user there are a number or reasons a website will not in fact respond to the needs of it'sa audiance and is in fact becoming subject to the technology/ the designers ability/ conflicted or diametrically opposed purposing.
User-centric design limitations
- language variables in design. You know that scene in lost in translation when Bill Murray is posing for a Japanse whisky ad, and the director comes up and says a bunch of stuff to him, and then the translator says; "The director says; 'more serious'" and Bill Murray taken aback replies; "Are you sure because it sounds like he said a lot more stuff than that?" Languages follow different logic in terms of how many phonemes it takes to convey a single idea. Unfortunately, a page laypout is often constructed to display words in English that are concise and do not require any attendant verbiage. When designing a multilingual site, the designer is constrained to designing a framework that will fit the bulkiest texts in all the languages available on the site. An additioal flaw is sniffing the ocation of a user and localizing the interface without demand, ie; if I am in portigal I get portgeuse google.If i want to switch to english I have to navigate to the portuguese language switcher and know the word for english in portuguese... not the easiest task in the world.
- Idiot-proofing often leads to genius escaping. Ie; the nicest elements will get the axe because' "maybe the novice user won't understand what you mean with those lovely lime-green icons on a dove grey background. Can't we just write contact us help and site-map?"
- location: for example; rich-media is only rich in rich countries. Everywhere else it'smostly inaccesible.
- users comfort level . If the site you are desiging is for a highly technophilic user group than you are bound by fewer limitations of interface sohistication. Then the designers main task is to convince th eusers that the interface you provide gels with what they're higghlyl articulated needs are. the interaction bewteen designer and end-user becomes a negotiation.
With a group that has been known to feel discomfort around technological tools or offerings than the bigger task is not convincing them that the technology is useful, it't providing an enticing and comfortable framework so if the technology does address a genuine need, than it will eventually be tested, used and maybe enjoyed.
notes/references:
< a href="http://www.amanda.com/resources/hfweb2000/hfweb00.marcus.html">Cultural Dimensions and Global Web User-Interface Design: What? So What? Now What?: A paper in which the work of a dutch social anthropologists (Geert Hofstede) reserach on the efffect of cultural difference in like work environments is transposed to web design for global communities.
Liveblogging Fundamentos Web 2005: Part Two
Web-applications: Speak the right language, please
Less templates more user experience
Piles versus tags
Posted by Miriam at May 29, 2006 12:55 PM
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