I have been thinking about this from a different direction as I have recently joined a great group of business-centric folks who are interested in UCD, but I think the ends are the same and the point is similar.

The way I put it is that UCD is really about giving users motivation to fulfill business goals. I think that is the same as achieving value for both side of this coin. It seems that my colleagues anyway have been able to appreciate this as they know they have no business if users aren’t motivated to come.

On a separate note I think it important that for decades before there was UCD businesses were supplying people w/ great stuff. They do have methods and tactics that are quite useful in engaging customers to come forth and realize business goals. We should engage in those practices and quite honestly learn from them.

– dave

Mary, you raise a critical point.
>Jesse James Garrett, in his seminal book Elements of the User Experience, includes business goals and constraints amongst those requirements that lay the foundation for a user-centered design process.

I helped tech review Jesse’s book, and absolutely agree that good UCD practitioners already understand that business goals are important and need to be balanced with user needs.

Value-centered design largely provides a platform for conversation with business – while we understand the importance of business goals, business sometimes doesn’t understand the importance of indivdual people’s goals. That’s where we typically start talking about user-centered design. Sometimes that works, but often business folks tune out when the focus is on the user. VCD puts the focus on something business can engage with – value – while bringing users into the picture. That simple reframing has helped several clients ‘get it’ rather than glazing over.

Your piece seems to advocate a balance between viability and desirability and I’m curious how you think technical feasibility should figure in the equation.

Incidentally, Hugh Dubberly wrote an interview with Alan Cooper that discussed this 3-axis balance in greater detail. The interview was published by the AIGA about 18 months ago. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the article has been published electronically.

I’m familiar with Doblin’s online material, though I haven’t seen the particular piece you mention. I actually think that talking about technical feasibility is secondary. The content or product offering is secondary too – that’s why Offering and Delivery reside ‘behind’ the intersection of individual and business goals. While Delivery includes technical feasibility, I see that as supporting goals, rather than determining them.

That said, I’d guess you (and Larry) would agree – both technology and the functionality or content offered should stem from goals, not drive them.

I’m not saying that technology should drive the product and certainly not that it should drive users but the unavoidable truth is that these products require a conversation between users AND technology and any such conversation has to start with a healthy respect for both parties. Sometimes the technology can come a long way toward the user, e.g. voice recognition, and sometimes it can’t, e.g. hand-writing recognition. The trick is to find those opportunities for moving them closer together so that the conversation can be more effective.

At a higher-level I’m concerned whenever I see designers avoid, ignore, or downplay the technical realities of the situation because in doing so they alienate themselves from the process of building and developing the products, ultimately losing what little power they may have had in influencing and controlling the means of production.

Great article! I hope to read more from you in this topic.

Thanks for the thoughts. I completely agree about speaking the language of business – I ran a panel on that exact topic at the 2005 IA Summit in Montreal. I’ve also written about business and design (particularly design maturity and business fluency) on my blog at http://www.bplusd.org and at Ambidextrous Magazine.

best,

Jess