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Usability News – CHI 2007 – Can User Centred Design be Harmful?:
CHI 2007 – Can User Centred Design be Harmful?

Source: UN, 6 May 2007
Submitted by Andy Dearden

Researchers and practitioners meeting at CHI 2007 produced the surprising argument that user-centred design is a bad idea! Instead, a range of alternative approaches were proposed for projects in developing countries such as “community centred design” and “deployment centred design”.

“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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the answer is yes. The second paragraph, I argue, is universal, not just for developing countries. It recognizes a part of human nature and human experience that is fundamentally collective.