Innovation in User-Centered Design

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1.) "Innovation in User-Centered Design" - Presented at the St. Louis User Experience Conference, February 25, 2011, by Jake Truemper. Related article: "Where Innovation Belongs in User-Centered Design" http://johnnyholland.org/2011/03/09/where-innovation-belongs-in-user-centered-design/ 2.) "Right now there seems to be a perception that Usability is inherently opposed to innovation, and the reason why people feel that way is not entirely unjustified." 3.) "There is certainly a cocky Steve Jobs kind of attitude that 'we shouldn't listen to what users want, we should tell them what they want,' but also the fact that Usability testing tends to focus on first use with relatively little opportunity to learn a new interface. Of course if you pit a very commonly used design technique against something new and different and then ask for a snap judgement from your users, then you're no doubt biasing towards the familiar." 4.) "User Experience is also often very pro-consistency. We strive for that external consistency with other systems through standards and design patterns - So if innovation is then by definition something different than the norm, then isn't UX in direct opposition to innovative concepts?" 5.) "All of these arguments have some truth to them, as User-Centered Design is practiced today, but this has more to do with how we're applying our trade than the core argument that innovation and Usability are inherently opposed." 6.) "The first thing that we need to do in order to become innovative is to simply change our self-image. There is more to an experience than ease of use." 7.) "Don't pigeon-hole yourself as a person who evaluates design - there's much more to it than that. We need to generate design and understand the big picture. UX professionals can be the architects of a holistic user experience that engages, entertains, and still accomplishes ease of use." 8.) "We're really in a unique position today where we should *all* be focused on creating positive user experiences. We need to make that shift collaboratively by creating a user-centered culture within our companies and project teams." 9.) "Because the whole notion that a Usability professional is the advocate for the user, defending them from those dastardly developers is bad for the overall experience, and not good for creative thinking." 10.) "Apple has had great innovative success not because they're ignoring users and doing whatever they want to, but because they have created a culture of innovation where everyone is responsible for creativity and user-centered thinking." 11.) "So it's everyone's responsibility to be user-centered, but it's especially an opportunity for UX practitioners to stop being combatants and start being facilitators of holistic design." 12.) "It's one thing to want to be innovative and change our mode of thinking, but we need to evaluate our processes as well and recognize when we can be innovative and how we should go about encouraging rather than discouraging innovation." 13.) "So part of our job is to determine when to innovate. Innovation should always be a goal to one degree or another, but certainly there are going to be times when innovation should be a priority and times when it should not." 14.) "We also need to be willing to adapt to be able to innovate. There are certainly common UX techniques that benefit innovation, and others that don't." 15.) "Steve Jobs has slammed focus groups, and for good reason. Focus groups are going to give you information on what your users *want*, but how often do users directly contradict what they're saying with what they're doing - all the time." 16.) "So focus groups aren't great when innovation is the goal. Surveys suffer from the same problem - Again you're asking the user to tell you what they want with no real understanding of their behavior." 17.) "On the positive side, ethnographic studies like conducting a contextual inquiry really do allow us to see in-depth how user

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