> I am glad to see all of this traffic regarding user-centered design.
>
> In libraries user-centered design is all too often associated with
> giving the patron what they want on a silver platter. This is
> difficult for many of us to accept, especially in academic libraries,
> because we believe it is our responsibility to teach people how to
> fish as opposed to giving them the fish. (How many metaphors can I
> mix here.) At the same time, I believe making our users' tasks
> increasingly easier to accomplish will only make it look like the
> library is increasingly helpful. As libraries are seen as
> increasingly helpful, users will says, "That was nice. It saved my
> time. I liked that. Give them more resources to they can do more of
> that."
Yes. I think it's our responsibility to promote the design of systems that
require a minimum of intervention. We pat ourselves on the back for the
wrong reasons: we think that teaching a small percentage of our users how to
use arcane, complex systems is our mission (and that goes hand-in-hand with
a sense of superiority to our poor dumb users, who want to know why our
systems aren't as simple as Google). There's nothing wrong with user
education per se-except where it serves as an excuse for poor system design.
It would be like Google's engineers excusing a design gaffe by saying that
they would offer classes at the Googleplex to teach people how to use their
site.
Like Erik et al are suggesting, design that is user-centric is also
problem-focused. Dewey didn't look at alphabetical catalogs and try to
figure out how to improve them; he started from the problem and worked
backwards. (Maybe that is what I really mean by focusing on the user:
figuring out the core problem and solving for X.)
K.G. Schneider
kgs_at_bluehighways.com
Received on Thu May 03 2007 - 08:15:08 EDT