Media: Clickz comes up with Persuasion Architecture

"The User-Centric Design Trap" by Bryan Eisenberg is a controversial piece indeed. Links have appeared on many blogs, some merely reporting; some ranting at this authoritatively written though seemingly wrong-headed article.

UCD is not enough, argues Eisenberg. His alternative is persuasion architecture:

'Like UCD, persuasion architecture places the visitor at the design initiative's center, but with a fundamental difference: The focus isn't on one primary persona. Persuasion architecture, from the process's first step, begins to solve the problem of voluntary participation. It accounts for the subtleties of divergent visitor motivations and maps them to the company's site and overall goals. Personas extrapolated from customer research account for unique desires, motivations, and needs, even where each may be in the buying process.'

What was that again? Please, just go through how persuasion architecture and UCD differ one more time... Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy, but persuasion architecture sounds like a minor subset of good UCD.

Associated Link: Clickz: The User-Centric Design Trap

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