Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci via Wikimedia Commons
Utopia or Oblivion?
Buckminster Fuller framed this question in his 1993 book of the same name, warning that mankind’s prospects would go decisively one way, or the other. Twenty years on, it is clear that nobody could have answered his question with any certainty. This is because we are all entangled in it. Fortunately, most of us have heard of the butterfly effect, so we are slowly realising that each one of us has some responsibility for what happens. What does this mean for ‘UCD’ (User-Centered Design)?
Putting The User at the Center
In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a computer program for diagnosing medical conditions. It conversed with patients directly, via screen-based questions in everyday language. But it did it so cunningly that most correspondents thought they were talking to a human being. The question and answer routine was based on the psychotherapeutic approach of Carl Rogers, best-known for developing an extremely patient-centered approach. Technologically speaking, the program was very simple. First, it addressed the respondent using her first name, asked open-ended questions about their state of health and incorporated some of their own words in its answer. The strategy worked so well that users were convinced they were talking to a sympathetic doctor, rather than a machine.
How Useful is Humanism?
One of the things we might deduce from Weizenbaum’s experiment is that educated people become very susceptible to suggestion, once they are placed at the center of their emotional universe. The idea of user-centered design grew out of ‘humanism’, which can be traced to ancient Greece and the early Christians, who came to value the differences between individuals. However, while humanism has many admirable qualities, it is a dangerously incomplete basis from which understand things.
If we were to make a caricature of the humanistic world in picture-book terms, Nature would be depicted as a faint grey backdrop, with people standing out in bright colours. The growth of humanism gave us a strong belief in free will. More recently, in the era of consumption, it has tended to make us restless and unsatisfied. This is a paradox. In the 21st century, never have so many people had so much access to so much information. Yet, our species has become increasingly disconnected from the complex ecosystem that nourishes and sustains it. This is because, for the sake of convenience, we have manipulated, or dumbed-down our perceptions of what is immediately around us. What should worry designers, in particular, is that they played a major part in creating this artificial, user-centered world.
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