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I will do a twitter thread on reviewing the literature of human centered design principles, going back to EBN Sander's work in the 1980s, with a view to evaluating their relevance for systemic resilience in self organizing complex adaptive systems.
Sanders, E. B. N. (2002). From user-centered to participatory design approaches. In Design and the social sciences (pp. 18-25). CRC Press. http://u.osu.edu/sanders.82/files/2015/02/FromUsercenteredtoParticipatory_Sanders_-02-15wjbq1.pdf
This abstract was written by Liz Sanders in 2002, and is derived from an earlier conference paper given in Finland in 1999. I would ask where this change in design perspective got derailed? I will use my own memory of joining IIT-ID as Director, Grad. Admissions in Fall 2002.
By 2003, probably in the Fall, or was it in May 2003? I will have to look up the sequence of events and publications, but the marcom positioned concept of 'design thinking' was launched as a campaign by IDEO, a well known American design firm, founded by D.Kelley & B. Moggridge.
It was not yet public in the sense of a publication or book, but the conversation in the staff room of IIT's Institute of Design in Chicago about the establishment of the http://d.school (then called Institute of Design at Stanford) had our faculty in an uproar. Like WTF?
The term 'design thinking' as this airy fairy hand wavy concept, usually presented with a sales oriented presso by various ideo designers in every event and gathering, was loudly argued about, wrt a) ownership (hijack, said some), and b) appropriateness of functional application.
These are some of the people whom I heard arguing about this disciplinary strand as marketing tool approach being taken out west. Not shown are the late John Heskett & late Dale Fahnstrom + retired Sharon Poggenpohl and Larry Keeley on sabbatical.
Why did we move away so firmly from devolving agency to the end-users that these original research papers and conference talks from the turn of the century are so difficult to find and surface from the digital archives?
My hunch, based on so much experiential knowledge that I don't know where to start with citations, is that 'design thinking' was such a catchy phrase, and the communications specialist backgrounds were in marcom, that the combination of the two resulting in a swamping of process.
The late John Heskett was famous for deriding the concept of "the user" and "the designer" as though they were heroic archetypes in the innovation planning journey from conceptualization through to execution or implementation, depending on the tangibility of the solution proposed
I remember once he said to [redacted] in class, "there is no THE designer, [redacted] we're all in this together" meaning that in today's complex operating environment, any designed output was the outcome of co-creation by many disciplines and fields of activity.
and, the danger of thinking of *the* user rather than the diversity of multiplistic backgrounds that tools such as these (zoom, twitter etc) must cater for, if they're to scale globally.
Witness the example of prepaid driven browsing behaviour vs unlimited data on monthly rates.
Witness the example of prepaid driven browsing behaviour vs unlimited data on monthly rates.
Did the advent of big data kill the UCD department in tech giant companies?
Adobe's recent launch of a comic creation tool has been met by comic creators responding that they have no idea how comics are made, what is this thing you are pushing at us?
Adobe's recent launch of a comic creation tool has been met by comic creators responding that they have no idea how comics are made, what is this thing you are pushing at us?
And so, SV struggles with new technologies seeking to eradicate the need for their skills & approaches.
Meanwhile, world has been changed on its pivot, by the systemic shock of the global pandemic.
How has this disrupted the trajectory of the dominant design process paradigm?
Meanwhile, world has been changed on its pivot, by the systemic shock of the global pandemic.
How has this disrupted the trajectory of the dominant design process paradigm?
This is where the underlying design philosophy comes clear, and shows that this is an inflection point where one's philosophy of design must be clearly articulated once again, and this time from the perspective of value creation for the greater good, not just maximizing profits.
Because triple bottomline operating environments - the Nordics, for instance - cannot simply apply any particular design process without evaluating whether it privileges all three bottomlines in tension with each other - people; profits; planets - or whether it seeks to extract?
[Insert large body of contemporary evidence on the impacts of inequality and inequity on public health outcomes during a global pandemic, and the gaping chasm of disparity in wellbeing in rich country poor people versus poor country everybody except the rich, wrt designed values]
The long established (albeit parallel) development of the Scandinavia tradition of participatory design approach to the evolution of socio-technical systems and their daily work life users, is designed to craft outcomes that are fit for purpose in the context of Nordic cultures.
Voice from the birth of the user centered design process, which implies that Sanders worked with Nielsen and Norman.
or, at least, was part of the contemporary design thought zeitgeist of the era. Then, UCD was born due to the need to design personal computing hardware (PCs) for household use.
I was studying Computer 1 in Sept 1982. On the Radioshack TRS-80 + two 5 & 1/4" floppy disk drives.
I was studying Computer 1 in Sept 1982. On the Radioshack TRS-80 + two 5 & 1/4" floppy disk drives.
That generation would recall a handful of users on 4 of those machines, and one Apple 2e whose user patterns they would have had a chance to analyze. User 101.
5+1 in our computer lab plus a dot matrix printer with daisy wheel.
