4- Brett Greenberg

Simply put, I believe that the user is always right.  Designers/creators do what they do for the user, not for themselves.  While there may be variables involved such as generating revenue, reducing costs, and so on, designers design features for the purpose of them being used by the users.  If users dislike features, the designers should listen, rather than believing that they should keep the features they way they initially designed them.  If users are insistent on new/improved features, the designers should act accordingly and design new and improved features to make their users happy.  If they don't, somebody else will, and their userbase will migrate (such as the migration from MySpace to Facebook).  While it may cost money and time for companies to design new features and make improvements, ultimately, doing so will keep their users happy and ensuring they continue to use their site.  However, designers should be mindful of these redesigns and improvements because while they may improve the user experience for some, there is always a possibility that it could complicate things for others.

I believe that Hoekman's "situation-centric approach to research" means he believes designers should be placing themselves in the users shoes (or their desk chairs...) so they can see the problem from the users end, not the designers end.  Hoekman also made it clear that using a biased view, or a persona, should not be used, and that designers should focus specifically on the area with an issue.  When doing Project #2, my team chose a random individual to participate in the usability test, and while that gave us an unbiased opinion, it could have been done in a better way to give us better results/conclusions.  I believe that if I could redo my research, I would have chosen to perform the usability tests on myself first so I would already have questions in my head, as well as other thoughts and ideas that I could use to better analyze whoever else we decided to ask to perform the usability test.