Austin Henderson
Title:
The 100% Solution: What is a user to do, and how are we helping?
Abstract:
We deploy our systems for use in worlds that change, and in places not anticipated in their designers. As a result, our systems do not - and, in principle, cannot - anticipate the needs to which they are put. Yet the user must address every single circumstance that they confront. This talk explores some thoughts and challenges concerning the resulting inevitable mis-alignment between the user's needs and the system's capabilities. One solution is to make our systems adjustable, with all the attendant richness and difficulties that this leads to. As designers of systems we should challenge ourselves to create technology that can aid in helping people evolve their systems to track the world that they find themselves in. But even with such "evolvable" systems, I argue that we will inevitably fail to address everything, if for no other reason than users may not choose to evolve the system in the heat of the daily activity. This leads the user to a second approach: do a "work-around", leaving the alignment to be handled by the user outside the system. Here again, as designers of systems, knowing that users will have to go beyond the systems we design, we should challenge ourselves to address the larger socio-technical system within which those user-created work-arounds exist, and create socio-technical systems to support them. Finally, whether inside or outside the system, these alignments are not made by users in isolation; a chosen change will impact others. And here again, as designers of systems, we should challenge ourselves to address the users' work of negotiating their multiple perspectives, and create systems to support the production of alignments that achieve not only responsiveness, but also coherence.
Bio:
Austin Henderson's 45-year career in Human-Computer Interaction includes user interface research and architecture at Bolt Beranek and Newman, Xerox research (both PARC and EuroPARC) and Apple Computer, and strategic industrial design with Fitch, and his own consultancy. Currently, Austin is Director of Knowledge Management in the Advanced Concepts & Technology group of Pitney Bowes, where he is helping AC&T build on what it already knows, an applicatioin on his long-term interest in creating systems that can be evolved by their users to meet their aggregated needs.