Lightning - Maybe there's more to this than user-centred design
A talk by Francis Rowland
We have a tendency to focus on user-centred design (UCD), occasionally to the point of dogmatism. If you’re not doing UCD, then you’re not doing UX design? Of course not! Some 10 years ago, Don Norman wrote “Human-centered design considered harmful”. Was anyone listening? In some cases, particularly in complex domains, UCD might not be the most appropriate thing.
In some of the projects I work on, I don’t feel the UCD perspective is particularly useful. Increasingly, my feeling is that we should be flexible and consider other “lenses” that we can use to approach design problems.
Francis Rowland
http://francisrowland.flavors.me/
Francis Rowland is a UX Designer at the European Bioinformatics Institute. He started out as a web designer about 15 years ago. Francis was carrying out ad hoc usability testing and user interviews before he found out that there are people who really know about that stuff, that it could be a real job, and that maybe it would be a good idea to learn how they do things.
Since then, he has tried to bring a strong user-focus to projects he has worked on in the fields of science and informatics, and is always keen to find better ways to involve developers and domain experts in the design process. He is also interested in applying design principles to data visualisation challenges.
Francis organises talks and events to spread ideas about usability and design, and occasionally even speaks himself.
