[Irl-dean] A wee conundrum

[Barry McMullin]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007, Mark Magennis wrote:

> I was just doing a bit of reading about interaction design and I
> repeatedly came across the following statement about the value of
> using personas:
>
> "defining and designing for a set of specific personas helps to avoid
> the common practice of trying to design for all users".
>
> So is there a fundamental conflict between Design for All and good
> interaction design practice? Or is Design for All not the same thing
> as designing for all users?
>
> Discuss.

Well ... for what it's worth, here are a few comments I made in
response to a similar kind of query from a student recently (I'll
omit the query itself, which was a bit cryptic!):

... I'm not quite sure I follow the point you were trying to make;
but maybe it is that there is a tension between "universal
design" and "individual accommodation"?  If so, I can understand
how you might think that.  However, the way I think about it is
that the two are actually complementary: "universal design" is a
stance from the producer, or designer, or (in the web case)
"server" side; and "individual accommodation" is a stance from
the user or client side. Think of them as two overlapping
circles, where the intersection shows successful access.  The
intersection can be made bigger by increasing the size of either
circle; but in both cases there will be a "diminishing returns"
effect, where it gets progressively more difficult (and
concretely more expensive) to improve access. So that the "best"
outcome is usually achieved not by concentrating on either
exclusively, but by making both as big as possible.

Thus: make "mainstream" cars usable for the widest possible range
of drivers, with "standard" adjustments (seat position, steering
wheel angle etc.); build in "hooks" for special adaptations
(interfaces for alternate controls, anchor points for adapted
seating etc.); and *also* be prepared to modify cars and fit
special adaptations to accommodate unique, individual users.

In the web case, "universal design" means that web sites should
be designed in accordance with (say) the W3C web content
accessibility guidelines (WCAG); but "individual accommodation"
is still absolutely necessary, and achieved through provision of
browsers, media players, plugins etc. which conform to the W3C
user agent accessibility guidelines (UAAG).  There is no actual
conflict here: these are different parts of a single jigsaw (to
hopelessly mix my metaphors).  Certainly, in advocating that web
sites should conform to WCAG (or, in the US case, perhaps section
508) there is no suggestion that this somehow magically means
that individual users will not still often need special,
individualised, accommodations.  But it does mean that those
accommodations are much better facilitated and generally much
more functional.

Just my (re-cycled) tuppence worth!

Best - Barry.



--
Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
  phone: +353-1-700-5432
  web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/