4 - Alisha Coon

Chapter 3: Designing the Obvious

Although Hoekman believes that user-centered design is a great approach to "help designers better understand the needs and wishes of users," he also believes that activity-centered design is just as effective for creating innovative designs (Hoekman 40). He agrees with Norman's article, "Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful," that "some technologies and products became great not as a result of a deep understanding of users, but because of a deep understanding of the activities that were to be performed" (Hoekman 45). By using a heavy amount of personas to help decide what features to include in a design, it can become distracting and take away from the actual activity that the application needs to support. In addition, although personas and users input helpful tips for new technologies and products, they are not always trustful because there are multiple kinds of users and opinions for what designs need to pertain to.

For project two, I can see how it relates to a situation-centric approach to research. Project two instructed students to "walk a mile in the users' shoes" by requiring us to produce a usability test and react to how the user used the design or product with the test. This would help the designer simplify what needs to be redesigned about a particular feature.