Chris Turitzin

User centered vs. Self centered design

After working now in the design industry for 3 years and having studied it for 4 years, I’m going to start publishing some of my findings.

Here is one:

In the Stanford Product design program, user centered design is key. This involved deeply understanding who you are designing for, finding their quirks, needs, and then making prototypes and getting feedback. It was all about express, test, cycle. You express your idea in physical or virtual prototype, test with users, get feedback, and reiterate until you have something pretty damn good. This process is very useful if you are designing for a market far from your own life or a user different from yourself.

But what if you are one of your users? This is where the fallacy of user centered design emerges. The user-centered design process implies that “I don’t know what my users would like.” It implies a fuzzy unknown between what you would design without research and what you would design with it. In my personal experience this has allowed me to create products with the assumption that “users would like it” while I, myself, would not use the product.

So, luckily many people know nothing about user centered design. The second, and more common, type of design is self-centered design. You can recognize this process with problem statements like “I want a better _____” or “I wish I could do ____”.

Self-centered design is simple. I see something that I want, and I make it. Along the way, I can continually pass my product through my own bullshit filter which is simple: Am I using it yet!? Unless you can’t wait to start using your product, you are running down the wrong path. I am currently designing a web based music player, and as an avid Pandora listener, I will only be pleased  once I use mine instead of Pandora.

Paul Buchheit told a story at Startup School in 2008 of how he created Gmail. He basically created Gmail by thinking of all the problems he had with current email clients. He then found 100 people at Google and asked them “What are your problems with your email app?” This gave him a big list of features, and he began to make an application. Every so often, he would poll these 100 if they would use his current version of the Gmail. Once a majority said yes, he was done. Gmail is one of the best examples where good design is the main product differentiator.

Gmail is a good example of mixing self-centered and user-centered design. Paul was basically designing for himself, but using “users” to supply him with more problems to fix and giving him final thumbs up or thumbs down feedback.

The third type of design is nobody-centered design, and this is a dead end where many people find themselves. Technologist fall in love with a new technology and “do something cool with it”, big corporations create applications because “everyone else is doing it”, or designers or artists make something that is “intellectually interesting.” This is why so many hours and projects go to waste. The creators of a product are so impressed by the coolness or interestingness of their product, they forget to check if anyone actually wants to use it. Don’t get stuck in this pit.


Takeaways

1. For mass audience products, you are most likely a user, design for yourself.

2. Designing for yourself is much easier and quicker. But make sure to pass your product through the bullshit test every week to make sure you are heading down the right path.

3. User centered design can do two things:

4.You must design for someone.