4 - Baiyan Zhang

In my opinion, if designers want to make a good design, they need to understand what the users want and needs, that is the user-centered design. However, users are not always correct. Different users must have different needs and views. There is no design is perfect and can satisfied all the users. So, some of the users would want designers to add or change some features that others like them. Therefore, users are not always right.

I do not think designers should always provide new features because one or more users ask for them. Firstly, those users who ask for those features can not represent all the users. Some other users may not want the current design add those features. Also, I think if a design always add the features what users want, it will go to another direction and may lose its initial purpose which the designers want. In addition, as what Hoekman mentioned, different types of users would use an application. That means they would view the application in different ways and may have different needs about it. If add all the things they want, the application would miss its direction. Then we back to the first part and we can know that there are no designs can satisfied all the people. Therefore, I think designers should add the features depends on situations but not always add them because some users want.

I think the situation-centric design is what Hoekman advocates. The purpose of those designs are help the users to do things better and solve the problems. This is because when users using the application, they might meet different kinds of problems or need different features, what situation-centered design is is to lead users get what they want and solve their different problems by the design.

So, I think in Project 2, the situation-centric approach to research might be use questionniars to gather information from different types of users like beginners or seniors, and observe what they do in current way. Then interview some people and find the direction the new design might go. This would let us know what features users currently like and what they dislike, then we can keep the strength and improve the weakness.