4-Sarah Curlin

Chapter 3 Reflection

For the majority of this class we have focused on designing technology from a user-based approach, using techniques like developing personas.  Personas are created for fictional people who would be the primary user of whatever technology you are designing, in order to better understand what features to include in the design.  Even though these designs are then done with the user as the focus, it does not mean that the user is always right.  For example, the more features a technology has the more complicated it becomes for users.  Using that logic, it should be understood that just because a user asks for a new feature that does not mean you immediately add it.  The feature should be taken it into consideration and the designer should determine whether the feature is inline with the larger goal of the company.

Along with user-centered design, Hoekman also introduces us to activity-centered design and self-design.  Activity-centered design is simply designing a product for people in a specific situation.  Self-Design is where you design a product for yourself and your team, after you are immersed in the situation and do research like a contextual inquiry.

Thinking about project #2, situation-centric approach research would have helped in the design of a new interface because my team would have been able to see the problems that people have, so that our solution wasn't as tailored to a specific user and their situation.  To do this we could have seen different types of people in the same situation in order to determine a solution for the majority of users in that situation.