Prodding at the Limits of User-centred Design

Lines were drawn at the UPA’s latest London meeting, as Martyn Perks presented his view that business is now emphasising the user at the expense of creativity and innovation. In his presentation ‘The Limitations of User-Centred Design’, Perks, who is design director at Spiked and also undertakes freelance usability work, gave example after example of poor user involvement practice, then concluded that if the present ratio of business research was ‘70% user needs and analysis to 30% business and market analysis’, what was needed was a ratio of 30:70 the other way. He accused business of hiding behind the user, offering findings about customers as a reason for conservative spending in research.

His talk was greeted with a hail of challenges, not least because many of his audience agreed with his underlying premiss that business is risk-averse and under-investing in innovative and creative practice at present, but did not agree with the arguments he used in support. Perks’ talk put much of the blame on usability, distinguishing poorly between the uses of market research, ethnography, product testing, standard-setting and user involvement in design. In this way he left himself open to attack on a number of counts: a majority felt that he had set up straw men to demolish and put on trial a range of effective methods instead of the people misapplying them.

Key assertions by Perks included:
- User research often treats the user with disdain: citing ‘Don’t make me think!’ as an example (the title of Steve Krug’s book on usability).
- There is a ‘them and us’ mentality in working with users: where users are treated not as subjects, but as objects.
- Ethnography treats people as if they are in a zoo.
- If you ask users, they will not tell you the whole story, they will tell you the banal, because users often act subconsciously.
- That to design in a top-down fashion is currently regarded as elitist and unresponsive and there is a trend to be ‘democratic and inclusive in product development’ resulting in attempting too much user input.
- Lack of investment means that the surface becomes all important, while design is hard if the product is no good.
- Standards are being advocated prematurely and welcomed by an industry that doesn’t want to spend: citing Jakob Nielsen’s guidelines as an example.
- Innovative ideas are being ‘tested away’.
- User research is about today, not the future, while innovation is a leap of the imagination.

By taking a swipe at the usability industry in this way, Perks provided an opportunity for the audience to reflect on the appropriate role for users in the design process. The audience responses can be summarised as follows:
- Innovation is very important, and may be outside the scope of user-centred design, but user-centred design also has a very important role.
- The need for greater spending in other areas does not require a move away from taking the user seriously – improving today’s products is a laudable goal.
- Asking someone what they want is different from observing what a person might need and there are different tools for doing so.
- If innovative products are not tested for users’ needs, they will not succeed.
- There is a difference between standards for involving users and standardisation of products.
- Designers cannot work in isolation; every product has some kind of interface.
- A lack of good practice does not make the process wrong.

Some discussion of the evolution of SMS took place, cited as an example of an unpredicted and untested success by Perks and as an undesirable interface by others. There was a general feeling that the importance of good user-centred design and user testing still needs stressing as it has not yet reached all producers. Perks’ talk could be seen as an argument to cut this element of design.

Perks’ message that a period of consolidation in industry is taking place at the expense of new developments and real product differentiation was lost in the indignation he inspired by firing at user targets indiscriminately.

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