Saturday, May 2, 2009

Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful

Commented On:
Brad Twitty
Jared Wright
(No one else has written on it)

Summary:
This paper takes shots at people who say that all things should be usability centered. They are not pushing that usability design should be stopped, but rather it has a time and place and that is not every time, everywhere. The author makes many points that Don Norman does in Human centered design harmful. He talks about things such as cars that were not originally designed for usability, but rather for someone's grand plan.

Discussion:
I liked this paper. I think the authors do a great job of pointed out times when usability centered design is not the best choice. He points out patters of when it won't be a good time instead of just pointing random cases out. As with the other 'harmful' papers the authors just push to use different approaches in different situations. He even goes so far as to point out different parts of the life cycle that could use different design approaches. I thought it was a good read.

6 comments:

  1. Glad someone liked it. I understood and valued it, but man, it was painful to read.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't think it was a painful read. I enjoyed it and saw the merit in it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think they may have made a decent point with the paper, but it could have been made just as well with a few sentences. I guess if people only read papers, then you got to turn those sentences into a paper so people will read it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It wasn't the greatest of papers, but I don't think that reading it is considered harmful. It made a good point about not to blindly follow your users, but don't go off and do your own thing either. Unless you already have a cult like group of worshipers that are blindly following you. A good middle ground is needed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree with the paper and the points it was trying to make.. however, this paper could be shortened by just including the part after "What to do." That section pretty much summarized the first few pages and mentions what needs to be done.

    ReplyDelete
  6. One of the better Norman readings in my opinion. I wouldn't minds seeing it replace one of his books in the course.

    ReplyDelete