Tensions in human-centred design

Abstract

In human-centred design (HCD), researchers and designers attempt to cooperate with and learn from potential users of the products or services which they are developing. Their goal is to develop products or services that match users’ practices, needs and preferences. In this position paper it is argued that HCD practitioners need to deal with two tensions that are inherent in HCD: they need to combine and balance users’ knowledge and ideas with their own knowledge and ideas; and they need to combine and balance a concern for understanding current or past practices with a concern for envisioning alternative or future practices. Six HCD approaches – participatory design, ethnography, the lead user approach, contextual design, codesign and empathic design – are discussed in order to argue that these different approaches are different ways to cope with the two tensions. In addition, several examples from practice are provided to illustrate these tensions. Moreover, it is advocated that HCD practitioners critically reflect on their practices, their methods and their own involvement, so that they can more consciously follow specific HCD approaches and more mindfully cope with the two tensions.

Keywords:

• human-centred design
• participatory design
• methods
• critical
• reflection
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and Pieter Jan Stappers for their comments on earlier versions of the paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments for revisions. I would also like to thank my fellow project-team members for working together in the project studied and for their kind permission to be portrayed (in Section 5), and my colleagues Lottie Kuijt-Evers, Jente Klok, Nicole de Koning, Sander Limonard and Sonoko Takahashi for inspiring discussions of HCD methods and practices. The study was conducted in the Freeband research programme, which was supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs under contract BSIK 03025.

Notes

1. See, e.g. the Aalborg University's programme for Human Centred Informatics, which brings together expertise and approaches from the humanities, communication, psychology, informatics and other fields, and draws from the Scandinavian tradition of Participatory Design.

2. An ‘emerging, interdisciplinary academic field broadly concerned with computing and computational artifacts as they relate to the human condition' (Wikipedia, accessed 15 September 2010). See also the US National Science Foundation programme for Human-Centred Computing.

3. These six approaches were selected using three criteria: they are commonly used in the ICT industry (e.g. in interaction design or service design); users are directly involved in them (excluding, e.g. approaches in which users participate indirectly, such as questionnaires); and they can be applied in the early phases of a project, where involving users can significantly influence the project (excluding, e.g. market trials, which are typically done in later phases).

4. This axis is similar to the (vertical) axis in a overview by Muller and Kuhn (1993) (‘Who participates with whom in what’, ranging from ‘Users directly participate in design activities’ to ‘Designers participate in users’ world(s)’), and to the (vertical) axis in a review by Kaulio (1998) (‘Type of customer involvement’, ranging from ‘Design by’ via ‘Design with’ to ‘Design for’).

5. This axis is similar to the (horizontal) axis ‘User centred vs. Designer-centred’ of the Methods Lab (Aldersey-Williams et al. 1999), and to the (horizontal) in an overview by Koskinen and Battarbee (2003) of design research methods, ranging from ‘designer-centred design (imagined users in imagined situations)’ to ‘user-centred design (real users in real situations)’.

6. For discussions of contemporary PD, see, e.g. the Participatory Design Conference series (e.g. Ehn 2008), the Critical Computing Aarhus 2005 conference (e.g. Shapiro 2005, Törpel 2005), or discussions of PD in relation to co-creation (Sanders and Stappers 2008), communication within project-teams (Sleeswijk Visser et al. 2007), service design (Holmlid 2009) or innovation processes (Buur and Matthews 2008).

7. A key issue that seems to be as yet undecided is how to develop empathy: should designers try to put aside their own experiences and focus on the other person’s experiences? Or should designers try to connect with their own experiences, informed or inspired by the other person's experiences? Sleeswijk Visser (2009) discussed different processes through which designers can develop empathy for users: through direct contact with users; through indirect contact, e.g. via user researchers who construct personas to represent users; or through role-playing of practices that are similar to users’ practices (without actual contact with users).

8. Probes can be used in different ways, for example, to prepare and sensitise users, researchers and designers before a creative discussion, so that their discussion and cooperation can be more effective (Mattelmäki 2006, Sleeswijk Visser 2009) (which can be considered a type of codesign), or to collect input for the creative process, in which case it is not thought necessary that the people who filled in the probes actually participate in the creative process (Gaver et al. 1999) (which can be considered a type of empathic design).