4 - Nicholas Fields

The user is NOT always correct.  Hoekman even says that a product is often more successful when driven by an authoritative, take-charge designer who completely ignores its specific users.  The few users or the 'loudest' user is not necessarily representative of the average population that uses a specific application or product.  There will always be a few people that want certain features emphasized or included, but for the majority of people these features will just confuse them and clutter the interface of the design. 

The designer should not always provide new features because one or more users ask for them.  Hoekman says that most people only learn 20 percent of an applications capabilities or uses/features while the remaining 80 percent typically get ignored which just leads to a more cluttered and confusing application or product (57).  Thus, new features should not be provided just because a user asks for them. (60)

I believe that the larger "user-centered" focus that Hoekman advocates is a situation-centered approach to design.  It isn't a type of person who uses an application, its a person in a type of situation (48).  The applications we design are solution to problems; problems are situational whereas people are not situational (49). 

A situation-centric approach can be done in three ways: observation, immersion, and all of the above.  One form of this research is called contextual inquiry which is an abbreviated version of ethnographic research, which comes in the form of short, observation-driven interview sessions (63).  Contextual inquiry is similar to shadowing which is very useful for research purposes.  Shadowing involves hovering around someone on the job who is using the application or product that you are designing/redesigning.  It involves taking notes and asking questions throughout the job shadow.  Immersion is the process of actually doing the job that your application is supposed to support.  Other possibilities include:  remote user research, surveys, and etc. 

In project #2, I could have used the method of contextual-inquiry to gather research by conducting a few short, observation-driven interview sessions.  This could have been done by watching a few people use the elliptical and asking them questions throughout their use of the machine.