I have decided to give you some extra opportunities to participate on the blogs. This will be based on material that I wanted to, but didn’t get an opportunity to cover in class. You are not required to participate, but remember that at the end of the semester participation will be 10% of your grade, so if you find it easier to participate on the blog then in class, this is an easy way to get credit.
Here’s my first question. As I have mentioned before, HCI is becoming very popular in organizations for the reasons we discussed this past Wednesday including costs, user acceptance, competitiveness, and innovation to list a few. For a long time though, companies were very hesitant to take on HCI into their design process. Can you speculate as to why people in industry were so hesitant to incorporate an HCI perspective?
May 12, 2008 at 8:23 pm
I think the reason that companies didn’t take on a HCI perspective initially was due to the cost. A business’ primary goal is to make money. Spending extra money to higher designers to poll customers to figure out what looks the best and has the highest usability was probably not a high concern. Rather, developing products that achieved a certain level of functionality, and then improving that functionality was the highest goal. Only when the market place is saturated and companies have to compete with each other is a rise in the importance of HCI observed.
May 13, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I think the reason that HCI wasn’t incorporated into the design process was probably because of the cost/time. It’s takes a lot of effort to make a system that works with the user. It’s easier to make a system then train the user to use the system. However this is the reason why HCI important now. Systems that are designed around the user work better, and makes happy users.
May 14, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Cost is definitely an important factor (maybe the most important factor), but is certainly not the only factor. Often times though, it was used as the main argument for many, many years to stave off discussion of user involvement.
I think you hit on an important point Cory when you mentioned market saturation. There was a point at which competition forced issues of brand, identity, appearance, and user experience as important aspects to make ones own product more marketable.
May 15, 2008 at 7:55 am
So, I guess the big question is, how much time and effort do you spend on HCI then? It isn’t necessariliy when the interface is perfect and exactly what the customer wants. Some times, modifying a product to that extent is not cost effective and the designers/implementers cannot afford it. Yet, if you do not do enough research and come up with a reasonable design, then you may not meet the goals and expectations of the customer. How important is the funtionality compared to how the program “feels” to the customer?
It all seems very subjective to me.
May 18, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Cory,
It requires a lot of experience and judgment on the part of the designer. Usually the metric by which you judge when its time to move on is the budget and timeline. You move on when you need a deliverable.
It is hard to arrive at something that is perfect. It’s never perfect, but we can create things that are no longer cost effective as you mention. The more you get used to designing though, the better that you’ll get used to how much time and how much money is necessary to provide the right cost. I can’t give you a number because it really just depends on the context. Design works in the constraints it has, like the problem this week, you had 40 minutes but you all came up with really thoughtful designs.