4 - James Farley

After reading chapter three my view on the phrase "the user is always correct" has become a bit skewed. If you are designing software you'll never be able to impress everyone, as Donald Norman says "One concern is that the focus upon individual people (or groups) might improve things for them at the cost of making it worse for others. The more something is tailored for the particular likes, dislikes, skills, and needs of a particular target population, the less likely it will be appropriate for others" (page 45). If a designer were to add every feature that people request for, the design would quickly fail, as the interface would be too cluttered and would be too difficult to use. Hoakman goes on to talk about how UCD is too broad, and ACD is too narrow when finding a design approach that is successful. He also talks about a "self-design" approach where the designers simply design for themselves. This strategy is usually shot down, but has proven to be successful in the past.

After Hoakman says that he was wrong for being a strong believer in ACD, he goes on to introduce situation-centered design. This strategy looks at the users in whatever situation they are in, and designs for that specific context. Hoakman states "the iPod is not a success because it does a better job of supporting the activity of listening to music on the go, but because it does a better job of supporting the situations people are in when they use it" (page 49). This means that users of the iPod are often in a situation where they are on the go, and the simplistic design of the iPod works well for the users in that particular situation. I could have used this same method for project 2 when redesigning a workout machine. When people want to workout, they don't want to spend more than 20 seconds pressing buttons. For that reason I think I could have made less steps in order to start your workout, leaving the user with less time pressing buttons, and more time burning calories.