As I mentioned in my last post on Tracing Genres, author Clay Spinuzzi levels two critiques at the user-centered design community:

1. Designers, in their efforts to incorporate users into the design process, end up treating users like victims, oppressed by technology.
2. Typical design processes diagnose and analyze organizations from one perspective, offering solutions at only that perspective.

As Livia pointed out, the timing of my post coincided with a recent article published by UX luminary Donald Norman on his site jnd.org. Peter Merholz and Andrew Otwell responded on their respective blogs. Both come-backs, if I may paraphrase, draw back the curtain to reveal very little behind Norman’s approach. Merholz indicates that Activity-Centered Design is nothing new, and points to Spinuzzi’s Tracing Genres itself as an example of activity theory applied to design. Activity theory, says Merholz, “has emerged as perhaps the second most important theoretical platform in human-computer interaction research, after cognitive psychology.” And though he doesn’t like the approach, he does like Norman’s escalation of questioning UCD “dogma.”

Otwell takes this a step further, saying that ANY dogma (whether user-centered or activity-centered) harms design and that both UCD and ACD are dated approaches — arriving at requirements through deliberate and measured analysis. Otwell instead praises 37signals’ “get real” method, a down-and-dirty approach that leverages the speed of technology change to allow rapid iteration of products which exist in a state of constant improvement.

In light of Spinuzzi’s work, however, I would offer a different interpretation of Norman’s essay. On the one hand, Norman’s tone and conclusions imply he still considers users to be victims and that designers are there to functionally empower (to use Spinuzzi’s words) them. Rather than being lost in a sea of “system-centered” products — as most UCD literature would have us believe — customers and audiences are treading water in a sea of over-analyzed user-centered products, according to Norman. At the same time, he sings the praises of evolved products — those that over the course of time have improved their design by virtue of ongoing tweaks. In these cases, the design team — whether formalized or not — as internalized the needs of users and how they use the product.

I’m not sure if Norman is saying that evolved products are results of activity-centered design, or the informal design processes that led to these products are related to activity-centered design. Either way, his notion of ACD will fail in the same way that UCD fails, according to Spinuzzi, in that Norman-branded ACD focuses on one level of the organization — the activity level. Therefore, Spinuzzi’s second criticism still holds true. It doesn’t matter which level of the organization we focus on, it still skews our understanding of the organization and the solutions. By contrast, Spinuzzi says that the only worthwhile analysis is one that accounts for every level of the organization: from activity on down to individual gestures.

By limiting his analysis, Norman draws some incorrect and dangerous conclusions about design. In Norman’s “new” design method, he says that users must adapt to the tools. Creating a tool around an activity may force users to change their behaviors to adapt to the tools. “Learn the tools,” says Norman, “and the activity is understood.”

This, too, is a limited view of how things actually work. Spinuzzi’s focus on genre better explains the interaction between people and artifacts. It accounts for the use of informal tools — like Post-It notes attached to manuals — and the combination of artifacts to create new ones that are still recognizable — like the translation of a paper-based report to an on-screen report. Informal artifacts and evolved artifacts are not humans adapting to tools. Instead, there’s a dialectic arrangement between people and their activities, reflected in their tools.

Different tools have different half-lifes. They evolve at different rates, and have different expected lifespans. A cup needs to last forever. A hammer until we have some other way to fasten wood together. A Web traffic report will live until such things are meaningless. The printed television grid, which evolved over time to pace our cultural involvement with television programming, is nearing the end of its useful life, as suggested by the transformation of TV Guide — fewer and smaller grids and greater emphasis on Hollywood gossip. This is not a tool that humans adapted to: it’s adapting to our changing behavior and identity.

There’s not one single right way to design a web site (or any product, but I’ll stick to what I know). Every site is a different genre that’s used in a different and unique way. This isn’t to say there aren’t lessons to be learned by working on different sites, but every project is going to require a unique approach depending on stakeholders, team members, and resources. Most of all the current state of the relationship between user and artifact should define the best approach to improve upon (or supplement or complement or replace, or whatever) that artifact.