IA Summit Keynote: Journey to the Center of Design
April 23rd, 2008
On April 12, I gave the keynote at the IA Summit. It was my second time keynoting this event and a real honor for me. The audience was great and it lead to some very interesting discussion, both at the conference and on blogs and discussion lists everywhere.
I’ve posted the slides above and have synched it up with audio from the conference. (Unfortunately, there was a mic-input problem during the recording and they ended up using the built-in mics instead of the sounds system. So, the recording is noisy and unintelligible in places. Sorry about that.)
Here’s the description of the talk:
Journey to the Center of Design
User-centered design was born in the 1980s, amidst a world filled with frustration with blinking VCR clocks and computer command lines. Up until this time, developers focused on making the devices work, giving little heed to how they’d be used. Terms like “user friendly” and “easy to use,” buzzwords for the UCD movement, soon became as common as “new and improved” on laundry soap.
Fast forward 25 years and it now seems the foundations of user-centered design are now disintegrating. Notable community members are suggesting UCD practice is burdensome and returns little value. There’s a growing sentiment that spending limited resources on user research takes away from essential design activities. Previously fundamental techniques, such as usability testing and persona development, are now regularly under attack. And let’s not forget that today’s shining stars, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the iPod, came to their success without UCD practices.
Is it time for user-centered design to evolve into something else? Or is there something else happening in our world of experience design that makes UCD obsolete? Should something else occupy the center of design?
These are just the questions that this year’s keynote presenter, Jared Spool, likes to answer. Especially after a few drinks. And while a Saturday morning keynote may seem early for the kind of heavy drinking these particular questions demand, Jared will have just arrived from Italy, a nation with a long tradition of philosophical intoxication. This will set the perfect stage for an entertaining and insightful presentation to open our conference.
We guarantee a journey that shouldn’t be missed.
You can download the slides (without audio). On the Slideshare site, you can view this presentation full screen to see the details.
What do you think of this presentation?
April 24th, 2008 at 5:52 am
[...] IA Summit Keynote: Journey to the Center of Design » UIE Brain Sparks it now seems the foundations of user-centered design are now disintegrating. Notable community members are suggesting UCD practice is burdensome and returns little value. There’s a growing sentiment that spending limited resources on user research takes (tags: usability process) [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 8:41 am
The talk says that UCD is undefineable, but I think practitioners roughly agree on what it is: UCD is designing things to be compatible with capabilities and goals of the users, which is accomplished through user research and iterative design. In others words, it’s informing design by observing users and learning from failures, two of the key elements that UIE’s research associates with the most effective design organizations. Far from never actually producing anything, UCD is associated with success. We learn, for example, that the iPhone design team conducted many hours of user observation.
The real message of UIE’s research is that, in conducting UCD, you shouldn’t get too rigid in your process (e.g., for each project you feel you must _always_ use personas which must _always_ be completed and delivered before scribbling down a potential design). Flexibility in the process is probably important for any effort at creative problem solving, even plumbing as Spool relates.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I tried listening the presentation but the audio appears to be in fast forward. Please don’t tell me I have to use IE (currently use firefox). Anyway, just posting this comment in case others are having the same problem. I did view the slides, too bad no audio would have loved to hear why people are laughing (I listened to the whole presentation in chipmunk mode thinking my brain would eventually catch up and start understanding.)
April 24th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Patricia, I just checked the audio here, and we’re not getting the chipmunk/fast-forward effect. The widget is flash-based, so browser choice shouldn’t be an issue (to be honest, we didn’t even check it in IE.) There is a nasty echo present, due to an unfortunate recording error, though. Headed to slideshare.net, the site seems to be down, so it was probably something broke on that end. Hopefully it’ll work for you soon!
April 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Unfortunately, Slideshare, who hosts the presentation is getting hit hard because of hacker attacks from China, according to this TechCrunch report.
That may explain the problem, which others have reported. Closing your browser and restarting the presentation may just fix the problem. (The few times I’ve tried, it has worked great in Firefox on my Mac.)
April 28th, 2008 at 9:43 am
[...] Journey to the Center of Design (Keynote) - Jared Spool What do innovative intranets look like? - James Robertson [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
[...] des IA Summit 2008 hat Jared Spool eine interessante Keynote zum Thema Design bzw. dem Wandel des User-Centered Design gegeben. Seit den 80er Jahren existiert UCD, entstanden in einer Welt aus blinkenden [...]
April 28th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Awesome.
I also commented on 37 signals after that Wired article ran.
http://www.chadvavra.com/blog/2008/02/27/cloudcity-to-basecamp-come-in-basecamp/
I like the notation of “informed design” but I’d rather call it “intelligent design” because that is really what we are all striving for. Loyalty, Confidence, Integrity, Passion are all ways I would describe an intelligent person, or subject.
http://www.chadvavra.com/blog/2008/02/18/design-for-intelligence/
April 30th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I’m using IE and also getting the “Chipmunk Effect”. Any ideas on how to correct it? I’ve tried closing/restarting my browser….I really want to hear it. Thanks!
May 1st, 2008 at 11:15 pm
For those IE folks still hearing the chipmunks, you can download the mp3 from our page on B&A:
http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-1
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Hi all,
My name is Jeff Parks. I’m the Podcast editor for Boxes and Arrows. My apologies to Jared about the sound quality. This was my first effort at such a massive initiative for recording and publishing the presentations from the IA Summit. Made some mistakes, learned a great deal for next year’s event.
I had never experienced issues with IE that have been described in this discussion - I will look into possible fixes for that with the tech team at Boxes and Arrows.
In the mean time, you can download Jared’s talk directly by following this link: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/files/banda/ia-summit-2008-day-1/2008_IA_Summit_Keynote_Address.mp3
If you’d like access to Jared’s and other presentations you can also subscribe in iTunes by clicking on this link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=275459507
I’ll post more over the coming days as I can find time between other contracts / projects.
Kindest Regards,
Jeff
May 4th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
[...] design that makes UCD obsolete? Should something else occupy the center of design? – Jared Spool’s IA Summit Keynote May 4, 2008 Link var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Hi,
The audio for this particular post seems like a high speed dubbing…can you share a clearer version?
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-2008-day-1
Thanks!!!
- C
May 12th, 2008 at 7:35 am
[...] points made in Jared Spool’s recent keynote speech at the 2008 IA Summit in Miami entitled “Journey to the Center of Design.” His company, User Interface Engineering (UIE), investigated what development teams that create [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Would it be possible to get a copy of the brand questionnaire posted somewhere online?
Thanks!
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:50 am
[...] midst of Jared Spool’s gadfly-esque “UCD never worked, maybe we should retire it” opening plenary at the IA Summit was a rope prop. The rope represented the number of visitors to a website. It had [...]