COMPUTER SCIENCE
In the field of computer science, the last 20 years have seen two main modes of production - the companies and open source. There is also a third semi-producer - the academic research. Although academic world has traditionally been closer to the open source -approach than proprietary software -approach, the current financing and contracting frameworks in the research are actually driving towards proprietary research.
Lately, open source has become serious contender for the traditional proprietary (closed-source) business model. The advantages are high collaboration and contribution between individuals and companies in the field and the possibility to freely distribute and modify the product both in final and source code form. Because digitally created products are easy to duplicate, they are easy target for open source -inspired approaches. Physical products are much harder challenge.
USER-CENTRED RESEARCH
User-centred approach has been successful in enabling companies to reach out for users, in order to create more relevant and less risky products. Typically users in this kind of research are informants - they are a subject to be studied, understood and empathized with. It is the researchers and designers who interprete/translate the findings into the features/requirements for the product/service.
PARTICIPATIVE DESIGN
Parallel to the user-centred approach, participative design has sought to create methods and tools for users (e.g. Sanders's Make Tools), so that the users (who are non-professionals) can participate to the development and design activities in companies. Despite the higher level of participation from users, this approach allows companies to define the direction and flow of the development.
ACTIVE, EMPOWERED USERS
Lately users are increasingly capable of creating their own products (especially in the digital realm, see "prosumers") and content (like photos, video), thanks to new easy-to-use tools (e.g. Apple iLife) and services (e.g. Gmail and Flickr). In this ecosystem, the companies ultimately transform from creators of products to creators of tools (meta products), with which the users create the (final) products. Some of the meta products can translate into services, which encourages subscription based business models, instead of the traditional pay-to-own models.
It is possible to translate part of the physical product economy to this ecosystem by offering smartly designed interfaces and building blocks (remember LEGO -bricks?, see "mass-customization") to users who can then build their own product. The Apple's iPod -economy is a one kind of approach to this.
USERS AS PATH SHAPERS
Open source development has shown its potential to accelerate the creation and distribution of meaningful, well working products. It can scale beyond the abilities and resources of any single company. How this approach could be expanded outside the realm of software code?
Here are my thoughts:
1) Many of the (digital) tools of expressing and communicating ideas and thoughts already exists. Although they could be even better.
2) The re-use and re-cycling of existing products and ideas is a excellent facilitator to this process.
3) Users should have methods and techniques with which they are able to find out, articulate, describe and refine what is important and relevant to them. They should be empowered to create concepts that others (companies, organizations or individuals) can then productize. Professionals have this knowledge, but their ways of work do not directly help users.
Showing posts with label user-centered design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label user-centered design. Show all posts
Monday, November 20, 2006
The relationship between users and companies
USERS - COMPANY divide
One of the key issues that user-centered research and design aim to solve is the lack of communication and feedback between the users (of products/services) and the companies (who create those products/services). Even nowadays it is typical for a company to create new products, based on a new/existing technology, without a real understanding of who will actually use the product and if it is actually useful. Most of the time there are already existing tools/behaviors with which users use in their daily life, and the use of the new product would either replace the existing tools or change the way of the flow of the activity (i.e. behavior). So question is not really about whether the new product works per se, but rather, is it better than the existing tool (in the sense that the user prefers it), or worth learning the new way of the activity.
Traditionally technology companies have been content in just creating new products and "letting the market" create the understanding of what the product is actually useful for. The text messaging (SMS) in mobile phones is an example of this approach. This is however a wasteful process - there are no guarantees that any single product will have success in the market, it's quite darwinian approach, really.
USER-CENTRED, PARTICIPATORY and DIY (do it yourself)
In an effort to lessen the risk of failure in the market, companies have started to embrace the usability and user-centred approaches. These approaches help the companies to have some guarantees and checks that the new products/services actually are usable and meaningful to the users (and consequently more successful in the market). These approaches advocate companies to hire professional researchers and designers who contact actual or potential users of the product-in-development and try to understand and empathize the users in order to have the knowledge to create more meaningful and usable products. This could be described as an approach where companies reach out for the users.
Another parallel is the participatory approach, where companies invite users to participate in development and design of the products. The company allows the users to participate into its own processes. Typically it is the company, however, that specifies the context of development and chooses which proposals will be further developed.
Third parallel is the DIY approach, where users simply create the products and services by themselves, without direct involvement of the companies. The suitability and quality of the product is directly dependent on the skills and knowledge of the user who creates.
OPENSOURCE
During the last twenty years, open source movement has emerged as a new approach for companies and users to approach the development and design of the products. What makes it different is the emphasis in networked collaboration and the blurring of the distiction between the users and creators. In open source, a single company is not necessarily controlling the development of the product, but a trusted individual or group of individuals. Those individuals may be employed by different companies, or they may be working for free. The trusted individuals are implicitly able to maintain their leadership as long as they are sensitive to the desires and needs of the users of the products and other developers. A balance has to be struck between the desires of different participants and the trusted individuals are essentially evaluated on their ability to keep a good balance.
One of the key issues that user-centered research and design aim to solve is the lack of communication and feedback between the users (of products/services) and the companies (who create those products/services). Even nowadays it is typical for a company to create new products, based on a new/existing technology, without a real understanding of who will actually use the product and if it is actually useful. Most of the time there are already existing tools/behaviors with which users use in their daily life, and the use of the new product would either replace the existing tools or change the way of the flow of the activity (i.e. behavior). So question is not really about whether the new product works per se, but rather, is it better than the existing tool (in the sense that the user prefers it), or worth learning the new way of the activity.
Traditionally technology companies have been content in just creating new products and "letting the market" create the understanding of what the product is actually useful for. The text messaging (SMS) in mobile phones is an example of this approach. This is however a wasteful process - there are no guarantees that any single product will have success in the market, it's quite darwinian approach, really.
USER-CENTRED, PARTICIPATORY and DIY (do it yourself)
In an effort to lessen the risk of failure in the market, companies have started to embrace the usability and user-centred approaches. These approaches help the companies to have some guarantees and checks that the new products/services actually are usable and meaningful to the users (and consequently more successful in the market). These approaches advocate companies to hire professional researchers and designers who contact actual or potential users of the product-in-development and try to understand and empathize the users in order to have the knowledge to create more meaningful and usable products. This could be described as an approach where companies reach out for the users.
Another parallel is the participatory approach, where companies invite users to participate in development and design of the products. The company allows the users to participate into its own processes. Typically it is the company, however, that specifies the context of development and chooses which proposals will be further developed.
Third parallel is the DIY approach, where users simply create the products and services by themselves, without direct involvement of the companies. The suitability and quality of the product is directly dependent on the skills and knowledge of the user who creates.
OPENSOURCE
During the last twenty years, open source movement has emerged as a new approach for companies and users to approach the development and design of the products. What makes it different is the emphasis in networked collaboration and the blurring of the distiction between the users and creators. In open source, a single company is not necessarily controlling the development of the product, but a trusted individual or group of individuals. Those individuals may be employed by different companies, or they may be working for free. The trusted individuals are implicitly able to maintain their leadership as long as they are sensitive to the desires and needs of the users of the products and other developers. A balance has to be struck between the desires of different participants and the trusted individuals are essentially evaluated on their ability to keep a good balance.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
On Research
The academic world has again entered into my field of vision. Interesting.
After having taken a slight pause with that world, I think I need to make-up my mind on what it is (in high level) that I will be doing there. And I'm not speaking about the content. Yet.
I got inspired by a relatively recent article, boldly called "The Future of Human-Computer Interaction" (2006) by John Canny of UC Berkeley. Despite its grandious name, it's quite sane article, with refreshingly good historical review of where HCI comes from and why things are the way they are now. That part could be also called "The story of WIMP" (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointing).
For future, Canny puts forward two areas of UI development: Context-Awareness and Perceptual Interfaces. Now, these are not new ideas. But what Canny wants to happen with those areas, will not happen overnight. More like in 5-10 years, or even later.
Parallel to the UI development, Canny also touches the topic of roles in a development/research project. Nowadays HCI can be seen as being involved in all the stages of (iterative) (product) development process. As Canny points out, this doesn't mean that HCI people are the (only) ones that can do the development process, but, rather, that the understanding of the HCI needs to be involved/integrated in all the phases.
Ok, so if I were in a Company, this would all be pretty clear by now. No matter what phase of the process, there is work for a user-centred person, at least as a teacher/consultant, if not as active participant.
What about Reseach? It cannot be primarily about creating unique product ideas, because a researcher cannot truly be a concept designer; He lacks the resources of a company (peers, design/implementation team, ability to make real-life products). This approach is still used through joint projects between (several) research organisations and companies. However, with the NDAs, patents and closed development often looming in the horizon, this is not the ideal way of discovering and disseminating science to all of the world.
What a researcher is good at, is sensing/finding out what is happening around the world. And also (especially in user-centred research), interacting with people via research methods such as interviewing, workshops and just getting involved in what users do. Through these activities, it is natural that ideas emerge (rather than researcher just inventing ideas out of the blue). But what to do with the ideas?
The radical (product) ideas can of course take the route of product development in a company, as I described earlier. However, in researchers role, I am more interested in the evolving ideas, because, as Canny says, humans evolve actually very slowly and there's no point in reinventing the UI paradigm every year (in contrast to new mobile phone products every quartal of the year). Moreover, there is awfully lot of technology and tools already available, it is more about discovering how to use/combine existing stuff than actually needing to create totally new and different stuff (e.g. products).
If one is aiming for discovering how to use existing stuff by sensing the world and interacting with people, it is pretty straightforward to engage with communities of people. The community specifies the nature of activities that are carried out and the goal for the activity. Also, communities often have a natural tendency to want to improve themselves, so experimentation is a welcome behaviour. Both the creation of ideas and validation become easier, because they have a clear context: The community itself can also come up with ideas and it either adopts the new ways of activities or it prefers the existing ones.
After having taken a slight pause with that world, I think I need to make-up my mind on what it is (in high level) that I will be doing there. And I'm not speaking about the content. Yet.
I got inspired by a relatively recent article, boldly called "The Future of Human-Computer Interaction" (2006) by John Canny of UC Berkeley. Despite its grandious name, it's quite sane article, with refreshingly good historical review of where HCI comes from and why things are the way they are now. That part could be also called "The story of WIMP" (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointing).
For future, Canny puts forward two areas of UI development: Context-Awareness and Perceptual Interfaces. Now, these are not new ideas. But what Canny wants to happen with those areas, will not happen overnight. More like in 5-10 years, or even later.
Parallel to the UI development, Canny also touches the topic of roles in a development/research project. Nowadays HCI can be seen as being involved in all the stages of (iterative) (product) development process. As Canny points out, this doesn't mean that HCI people are the (only) ones that can do the development process, but, rather, that the understanding of the HCI needs to be involved/integrated in all the phases.
Ok, so if I were in a Company, this would all be pretty clear by now. No matter what phase of the process, there is work for a user-centred person, at least as a teacher/consultant, if not as active participant.
What about Reseach? It cannot be primarily about creating unique product ideas, because a researcher cannot truly be a concept designer; He lacks the resources of a company (peers, design/implementation team, ability to make real-life products). This approach is still used through joint projects between (several) research organisations and companies. However, with the NDAs, patents and closed development often looming in the horizon, this is not the ideal way of discovering and disseminating science to all of the world.
What a researcher is good at, is sensing/finding out what is happening around the world. And also (especially in user-centred research), interacting with people via research methods such as interviewing, workshops and just getting involved in what users do. Through these activities, it is natural that ideas emerge (rather than researcher just inventing ideas out of the blue). But what to do with the ideas?
The radical (product) ideas can of course take the route of product development in a company, as I described earlier. However, in researchers role, I am more interested in the evolving ideas, because, as Canny says, humans evolve actually very slowly and there's no point in reinventing the UI paradigm every year (in contrast to new mobile phone products every quartal of the year). Moreover, there is awfully lot of technology and tools already available, it is more about discovering how to use/combine existing stuff than actually needing to create totally new and different stuff (e.g. products).
If one is aiming for discovering how to use existing stuff by sensing the world and interacting with people, it is pretty straightforward to engage with communities of people. The community specifies the nature of activities that are carried out and the goal for the activity. Also, communities often have a natural tendency to want to improve themselves, so experimentation is a welcome behaviour. Both the creation of ideas and validation become easier, because they have a clear context: The community itself can also come up with ideas and it either adopts the new ways of activities or it prefers the existing ones.
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