Human Centered Design Considered Harmful

Human Centered Design Considered Harmful

Donald "Don" A. Norman

In this article, Don Norman discusses some of the problems of focusing on the "user" for design. In particular he feels that designing specifically for the user should perhaps be replaced with designing for an activity or task. In designing for the user we often overlook what it is the user is actually trying to achieve and what sort of inherent design issues are present in the activity, and instead focus on trying to make the interface human friendly. As he points out in the article, well used systems such as musical instruments and handwriting are well adapted to their specific activities but are on the whole not very "Human friendly".

I like the points Norman makes in this article. Personally I feel the best interface is the one that supports the quickest and most efficient way to perform an activity or task. Once the interface is constructed with this in mind we can then go back and use Human centered design techniques to refine the interface with human use in mind.