Can User Centred Design be Harmful?
A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007. http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp "A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community." Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron
Perhaps instead of thinking of "user centred" and individual centric - we need to conceptualize a community and context based understanding of "userS"? r On May 7, 2007, at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007. http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp
"A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community."
Well there are many issues of understanding here. Fundamentally, I think we have real issues with the difference between the commercial constructions of subjectivity and the family and community, political constructions of subjectivity. Those constructions are what yield the tensions between the collectivity and individuality and are arguments usually constructed in terms of the relationship between the nature of humanity (homo ludens, homo economicus, homo politicus, etc. etc.) and the culture of humanity (homo ludens, homo economicus, homo politicus, etc. etc.) (heh). There is an ideology of computing and computer interfaces, but I think the conception of instrumentality, that of 'user' is also an issue. On May 7, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Radhika Gajjala wrote:
Perhaps instead of thinking of "user centred" and individual centric - we need to conceptualize a community and context based understanding of "userS"?
r On May 7, 2007, at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007. http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp
"A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community."
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Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron
Jeremy, There is indeed an ongoing critique of the instrumentality of the user which I think is extremely important. I actually attended that CHI workshop, and it was interesting to see the CHI community have one of its first larger-scale conversations on this issue of international development; the ICT for international development work has been interdisicplinary for several years (c.f. the MIT journal _ITID_), and I know you and I talked briefly at one or other of the WSIS' about this generally. There's an interesting short of shift going on in people's terminology in the CS and UCD world. At the workshop some people actually started kicking around terms like Deployment-Centered Design (making stuff that you know will actually work given the infrastructure of a given context), and, well...others I forget. There is also a shift among funding organizations and some larger computer science programs (esp those with strong interdisc connections) to talk about Human Centered Computing. I for one often/inevitably manage to get into a somewhat heated debate on this issue ("I am not a consumer!" which UCD often seems to assume), but I'd argue that the vocabulary debate really is largely a reflection of different theoretical perspectives coming into contact. We've been doing some really fun research looking at UCD as an approach or thereoretical perspective and its relationship to Participatory Design, Value-Sensitive Design, Learner-Centered Design and, believe it or not, the Appropriate Technology literature. The people who have been trying to design technology for developing world contexts (actually, what my research group calls resource-constrained environments -- self-serving plug: depts.washington.edu/ddi) have run exactly into some of the issues you mention below -- that the people who pick up the stuff and integrate it into their lives are not monolithic, nor are their communities identical. On the other hand, introducing, say, cultural studies, feminist theory, and ethnographic method into the technology design process is, er...complex. But that's a whole other story/post/career. Best, Beth Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote: Well there are many issues of understanding here. Fundamentally, I think we have real issues with the difference between the commercial constructions of subjectivity and the family and community, political constructions of subjectivity. Those constructions are what yield the tensions between the collectivity and individuality and are arguments usually constructed in terms of the relationship between the nature of humanity (homo ludens, homo economicus, homo politicus, etc. etc.) and the culture of humanity (homo ludens, homo economicus, homo politicus, etc. etc.) (heh). There is an ideology of computing and computer interfaces, but I think the conception of instrumentality, that of 'user' is also an issue. On May 7, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Radhika Gajjala wrote:
Perhaps instead of thinking of "user centred" and individual centric - we need to conceptualize a community and context based understanding of "userS"?
r On May 7, 2007, at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007. http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp
"A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community."
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Jeremy Hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Hi Radhika, Jeremy, et al Jeremy wrote:
A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007. http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp
"A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives are also geared to development and growth of the community."
Um, yes - at least in more community-oriented cultures (including subcultures in the U.S.): for a helpful initial list, see Hermeking, Marc. (2005). Culture and Internet Consumption: Contributions from Cross-Cultural Marketing and Advertising Research. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(1), October, 2005. <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/hermeking.html> And Radhika wrote:
Perhaps instead of thinking of "user centred" and individual centric - we need to conceptualize a community and context based understanding of "userS"?
As Radhika knows I would say - that would also be yes, in my view. But all of this has left me wondering how far this - perhaps burgeoning? - awareness of social context of use recognizes the further need to take culture more broadly into account? Background: I've done a number of lectures over the past few years, based almost entirely on work presented at the CATaC conferences, on the need to consider cultural dimensions in HCI. It seems to me that there is now a well-established body of literature on these matters - i.e., well beyond the CATaC Proceedings and certainly not restricted to the work of those who participate in CATaC. (As an example: beyond Marc Hermeking's article, see more broadly the Special Theme issue on Culture and Computer-Mediated Communication - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (1), October 2005. <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/>) Even better, beyond CATaC-related publications, I can now point to some recent publications that focus very nicely indeed on cultural issues and HCI, e.g. Dyson, Laurel E., Max Hendriks & Stephen Grant (eds.). (2007) _Information Technology and Indigenous People_. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing P. Zaphiris and S. Kurniawan (eds.). (2006). _Advances in Universal Web Design and Evaluation: Research, Trends and Opportunities_. Hershey, PA: Idea Publishing, 2006 Emma Rooksby and John Weckert (eds.). (2006). _Information Technology and Social Justice_. Hershey, PA: Idea Publishing. Kirk St. Amant (ed). 2007. _Linguistic and Cultural Online Communication Issues in the Global Age. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Along these lines I'd also recommend a number of chapters from a recent anthology co-edited with Soraj Hongladarom, including - Paterson, Barbara. (2007). "We Cannot Eat Data: The Need for Computer Ethics to Address the Cultural and Ecological Impacts of Computing." In S. Hongladarom and C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives, 153-168. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference. van der Velden, Maja. (2007). Invisibility and the Ethics of Digitalization: Designing so as not to Hurt Others. In S. Hongladarom & C. Ess (eds.), Information Technology Ethics: Cultural Perspectives, 81-93. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference And, beyond the CATaC mailing list, there is now a mailing list devoted especially to these issues: <SOCIOTECH-INTERACTIONDESIGN@JISCMAIL.AC.UK>, founded and moderated by Jose Abdelnour-Nocera <Jose.Abdelnour-Nocera@TVU.AC.UK>. Impression (leading to a question): I recognize the dangers of making generalizations from limited data points - but based on the data points I have, it seems to me that colleagues in the U.S. who are exposed to this sort of information - i.e., demonstrating very clearly the _failures_ of ICT design and implementations that ignore even the most basic cultural dimensions, vis-à-vis the (at least somewhat more frequent) success of those designs and implementations that work from the outset with cultural dimensions in mind - tend to react in one of two ways: a) very interesting, and we should take it into account when building our interface for ____. b) that's nice, but the rest of the world will just have to get used to the way we do things. Perhaps I'm just a poor lecturer, but my experience - admittedly, quite limited, which is why I'm asking - so far suggests that the "b" camp usually overrides the "a" camp. (Of course, there are important and interesting exceptions - not surprisingly, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, for example.) By contrast, my European, Asian, and African colleagues are already well aware of "a" and generally quite interested in pursuing "a" on a variety of levels. (Of course, there are exceptions here as well.) Question: does it seem to you - and/or, anyone else with interest and experience in these domains on list - that "a" may be growing among HCI folk (both within and beyond the boundaries of the U.S.)? and/or declining (e.g., insofar as globalization _does_ lead to homogenization, usually based on Western, if not indeed U.S.-centric models) and/or holding about even? Just curious. back to grading ... - c.
participants (4)
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Beth Kolko -
Charles Ess -
Jeremy Hunsinger -
Radhika Gajjala