User centered design: quality or quackery?

Abstract

Clearly User-Centered Design (UCD) is an activity that has entered the collective CHI-consciousness to an extent that should make us confident that usable systems are just around the corner. Of 18 large software producing entities surveyed over the summer of 1995, all reported either to have at least one documented UCD process in use or under development, or not to need one because UCD activities were well understood by the people responsible for carrying them out. However, scratching the surface of this utopian state reveals that the revolution is far from complete. We do not have a clear consensus about the boundaries of UCD (what constitutes a UCD method and what does not). We are not in agreement about how central users should be in the development of usable systems (If users design, what use are designers?). We have not had enough experience with our processes, to tell that they really lead to development of usable systems. This panel explores what we don't yet know, and how we can try to know it.