This is an interesting article, but I have to agree with Harry… mostly.

The problem that I have with this as both a practitioner and ID academic (I prefer interaction design to UX design for a number of reasons) is that it seems to support the tradition of mythologising ID that many practitioners are trying to dispel. You appear to be suggesting (and correct me if I’m wrong) that expert analysis is more useful than empirical analysis, when the truth is that they both have their place. I would never purport to suggest that I know more about how a user is likely to interact with a product than observation of the user doing just this would tell me, and I’d be interested to hear why you think this should be the case.

I agree wholly that expert analysis (including heuristic modelling and discount usability engineering) is hugely beneficial and can save a lot of time and cost early in the design process, but experts often don’t agree with each other on what will and won’t work, so it’s certainly not fool-proof (no suggestion there that experts are fools!). My suggestion, probably 90% of the time, would be to perform expert analysis early on and then observe the users with a low-fidelity prototype that supports the findings of that analysis.

Likewise, your discussion of scientific method (and I don’t really think of Millers magic number 7 and Fitt’s Law to comprise scientific method, more that they’re poorly cited and employed rules, or heuristics as far as the former is concerned) assumes a singular approach rather than giving any consideration to a more holistic approach or triangulation.

I do think this type of discussion is important. ID / UXD can’t stand still, but neither is the constant invention of new buzz-words and processes helpful.

Would you be able to go in to more detail about the default thinking you’re talking about here? As a junior designing it’d be great to avoid common mistakes with the goal to move our industry forward.

Cheers

I don’t think UCD is dead, past its best or harmful. It’s the default thinking within that UX industry that I want to challenge. UCD in the right places at the right time is a fantastic method. In other places, it’s significantly inferior to other approaches. The blind adherence to UCD as the One True Way is what I think is limiting our field.