Human-Computer Interaction: Designing For “Users” Vs. Designing For Humans

Human-Centered Design of Organizational Information Systems

In the last few years, the terms human-centered and user-centered have become synonymous in HCI and IT design, with a focus on disciplines such as “user experience” and “interaction design.” But neither discipline really deals with the core issues of human-centered design.Design gives form to the technologies we use – and defines the purpose and role of that technology in how people do their work. User-centered design approaches seldom question these core attributes of the technology we use. Instead, they are focused on mitigating adverse impacts of technology systems with a predefined form, or optimizing their effectiveness for a predetermined purpose by tinkering with the design of the user-interface.

Human-centered design focuses on support for the work of organizational participants (people), who use technology to achieve multiple (and often complex) work purposes. Developers model systems of work processes, separating these into multiple, purposeful systems to support different work objectives. They then define IT systems requirements to support each subsystem. This allows them to understand how people work and why.

Vs.

User-centered design focuses on defining an IT system, based on a reductionist model of business processes and goals. Work tasks are defined around the use of IT, rather than based on the work that people actually need to do. Users are constantly adapting their use of the system to fit the work they need to do – and developers are constantly updating the system to support how people are using it, with little idea of what anyone really does.

Designing for humans rather than users is a choice:

  • Human-centered design explores the multiple, purposeful systems of human-activity that are required to achieve even simple work (or play) goals.
  • It treats the participants in a human activity system as autonomous individuals, not agents to be modeled, controlled, and curtailed.
  • Human-centered design respects and supports the local knowledge required to act skillfully, using local knowledge and various forms of tacit or implicit knowledge to perform work that is often not recognized as knowledge work.
  • It recognizes that a social system of information exchange exists, of which the designed technology artifact or software is only a part, and that humans need to exercise a deliberative choice about what to record and why. Any computer-based system of data is part of a wider, human-network-based system of information.
  • Because it appreciates work as part of a wider social system, human-centered design involves a conscious decision to support the informal communications and activities that keep the system of work connected and informed – for example, water-cooler conversations or phone calls. These informal channels produce more knowledgeable participants in the system of work, rather than resulting in recorded data records or written resources. They are often omitted from – or worse, designed out of – the formal system of “user experience design.”
  • Above all, human-centered design acknowledges that knowledge, understanding, and the meanings that we ascribe to work are emergent. We understand how to do things by doing them, then reflecting on what we did and how – after which we have a better understanding of how to do them next time. Designing any particular set of procedures into a computer-based system is not only a waste of time, but may be counterproductive, as we constantly improvise and improve on how we did things previously (learning-by-doing). Human-centered systems design allows the human to be in control of their work, rather than the IT system.

My work in this area explores how we can investigate, explore, and represent socially-situated and collaborative work in organizations — and how these representations can inform the design of technology systems to support the people performing this work. This approach involves the co-design of business-process and IT systems, distinguishing between a “served system” of human-activity and the “serving system” of information systems and technology (Winter et al. 1995). My interpretation of the distinction is shown in Figure 1.

Diagram showing difference between served systems of human activity and serving system of computer technology and human-interfaces

Figure 1. Distinction Between Served Systems and Serving Systems in Business Process Change
(adapted from Winter et al. (1995))

The distinction is important as IT designers often confuse data-processing models with an understanding of how people actually work. A focus on formal process models, produced to reflect data-processing architectures, excludes the multiple perspectives of work-system purpose espoused by work-system actors, and context-related requirements not captured by formal system requirements. To appreciate the support needs of human-activity-systems, we need to investigate and appreciate the multiple purposes and success criteria that that govern how people do their work, and how these complement or conflict with the purposes and success criteria of other actors. We need to facilitate discussions between those involved in the system of work, to understand what they prioritize and value. Only then can we engage in meaningful design of the serving system of IT. This is especially critical in collaborative work environments as these processes are more complex and interdependent than individual work environments.

I study the design, use, and impacts of digital technologies for boundary-spanning collaboration. My studies employ grounded theory, ethnography, and qualitative/mixed methods to investigate IT systems design. Design gives form to the technologies we use. The design methods and management approaches employed, the privileging of knowledge and expertise in defining user operations, and the ability to support stakeholder requirements diversity and emergence are all important constraints on achieving a human-centered design outcome. 

People are seldom alone in what they do, even when engaging in individual activity. They socialize with other people and exchange ideas, they seek advice on how to proceed, and they collaborate to achieve shared – or related – goals. When confronted with a novel problem, most people turn to a “small world” network of trusted social contacts for input – people who share their values and perspectives – rather than conducting a wider search that includes subject experts and knowledge resources (Chatman, 1991). Even when working alone, we are never truly alone. We are thrown into a working environment that existed before we joined – a self-contained world of work and social activity that we can only understand through participation (Weick, 2004). Professionalism and practice in one organization are completely different to the practices and standards applied in another. Because of this, we need to employ design approaches that fit technology support to the socially-situated work-activities in which people engage.

References

Chatman, E.A. 1991 “Life in a Small World: Applicability of Gratification Theory to Information-Seeking Behavior,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science (42:6), pp. 438–449.

Weick, K.E. 2004. “Designing For Throwness,” in: Managing as Designing, R. Boland, J and F. Collopy (eds.), Stanford CA: Stanford Uniersity Press, pp. 74-78.

Winter, M.C., Brown, D.H., and Checkland, P.B. 1995. “A Role for Soft Systems Methodology in Information Systems Development,” European Journal of Information Systems (4:3), pp. 130-142.

Related Publications

Gasson, S. (2008) ‘A Framework For The Co-Design of Business and IT Systems,’ Proceedings of Hawaii Intl. Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-41), 7-10 Jan. 2008. Knowledge Management for Creativity and Innovation minitrack, p348. 
http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2008.20.

Gasson, S. (2005) ‘Boundary-Spanning Knowledge-Sharing In E-Collaboration’ in Proceedings of Hawaii Intl. Conf. on System Sciences (HICSS-38), Jan. 2005. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2005.123

Gasson, S. (2003) ‘Human-Centered vs. User-Centered Approaches To Information System Design‘, Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA), 5 (2), pp. 29-46.

Gasson, S. (1999) ‘A Social Action Model of Information Systems Design’, The Data Base For Advances In Information Systems, 30 (2), pp. 82-97.

Gasson, S. (1999) ‘The Reality of User-Centered Design‘, Journal of End User Computing, 11 (4), pp. 3-13.