BOG3
Human-Centered Design

BOG3 Themes and Issues

Human-Centered Design

Given the topic of developing human-centered intelligent systems, it seems
that part of our goal is changing the focus of technology development to
put human actors and the field of practice in which they function at the
center.  Doing this should lead to better utilization of the power of
technological change.

The label of this working group is intended to point at a broad cluster of
issues created by the design goal resident in our topic (i.e., developing
more operationally effective systems) and particularly the relationship
between research and design.

While there are many goals for this workshop, we consider two in particular
as we thought about the focus for this working group:
(1) the goal of a synthetic statement for non-specialists about
human-centered intelligent systems:  the problems that motivate a
human-centered approach; how a human-centered approach will make a
significant difference.
(2) the goal of advising NSF on how to go about generating coherent useful
work related to the theme including a technically motivated funding
structure and specific program areas and evaluation criteria.

At the broadest level the starting point for our discussions (and perhaps
the other groups as well) is:  why human-centered?
*       what does it mean to take a human-centered approach?
*       what is different when one does this?
*       what problems, disappointments drive NSF and others to say that the
solution is to take a human-centered approach?

We think answers to the above questions introduce some very different
issues, challenges and criteria than is typical in general, for NSF and for
this directorate since it usually focuses on developing the technology
itself.

The relationship of design and research: how does a design focus change
what research is meaningful?  Or how do we go about "... developing a
theoretical base for creating meaningful artifacts and for understanding
their use and effects" (Winograd, 1987, p.10)?  Or in another way, how do
we advance our understanding of the relationship between technology change
and cognition/collaboration (how does technology change shape cognition and
collaboration; how do people adapt technology to serve their ends).  These
kinds of questions arises in part because of the desire is to influence
what systems are developed and to make those systems more effective in
terms of supporting people acting in some field of practice.

We can then frame two angles depending on whether one starts from a
research or a design perspective.

(1) The "experimenter as designer"
Cognitive tools are ubiquitous.  Technology change implicitly changes
cognitive systems through the introduction of agent-like machines and
through the introduction of artifacts that constrain cognitive work.  We
are trying to understand how artifacts shape cognition and collaboration
given the organizational context and problem demands in that field of
practice and how practitioners, individually and as groups, informally and
formally, shape artifacts to meet the demands of the field of activity
within the pressures and resources provided by larger organizations

This means that changing technology is a kind of experimental manipulation
that can be exploited to help understand the dynamics of task demands,
artifacts, cognition, collaboration across agents, and organizational
context.

(2) The "designer as experimenter"
The possibilities of technology seem to afford designers great degrees of
freedom. The possibilities seem less constrained by questions of
feasibility and more by concepts about how to use the possibilities
skillfully to meet operational and other goals.

This means that designs embody hypotheses about what would be useful, i.e.,
hypotheses about how technology change shapes cognition and collaboration.
The adaptive response of people and organizations to systems tests the
hypotheses about what would be useful embodied by particular prototypes or
systems.  As a result, when the goal is operationally effective systems,
designers need to adopt the attitude of an experimenter trying to
understand and model of the interactions of task demands, artifacts,
cognition, collaboration across agents, and organizational context.

The experimenter as designer perspective leads us to questions like:
*       How to study the interaction of complex tools, cognition,
collaboration and context in the field setting or workplace?
*       How can one be context bound yet still produce generic results?
*       How do we identify the deeper factors at work behind the unending
variety of individual settings and particular systems and technologies?
*       How can one achieve a balance between short term pressures and long
term learning, between the needs of particular projects and the broader
goals of building up a research base?
*       How does design activity function as research about the
relationship between technology change, cognition and collaboration?
*       How do we use artifact-based methods where prototypes function as a
kind of experimental probe?
*       Is a new complimentarity possible between what is traditionally
applied activity and traditionally research activity.

The designer as experimenter perspective leads us to questions like:
*       How do we close the gap between user-centered intentions and
technology-centered actual design practice?
*       How do we to link field and other research to design? How do we get
research that is relevant to design?
*       The role of innovation:
        Human-centered design is paradoxically creative but technical.  How
do we focus more on discovering requirements, what would be useful, and
innovating new support concepts and less on polishing usability?

A particular problem arises at the intersection of design and research --
the "envisioned world problem."
Many are convinced that field research that examines the field of practice
is a critical component of effective practice-centered design.  But how do
the results of field work characterizing the current domain inform or apply
to the design process SINCE THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY WILL
TRANSFORM THE NATURE OF PRACTICE.  New technology introduces new error
forms; new representations change the cognitive activities needed to
accomplish tasks and enable the development of new strategies; new
technology creates new tasks and roles for people at different levels of a
system.  In other words, new technology is a kind of experimental
intervention into fields of ongoing activity.  Changing systems change what
it means for someone to be an expert and change the kinds of errors that
will occur.

*       How do we cope with the "envisioned world problem?"
*       How can data collected at one time be applicable to design
activities that will produce a world different from the one studied?
*       How does one envision or predict the relation of technology,
cognition and collaboration in a domain that doesn't yet exist or is in a
process of becoming?
*       How can we predict the changing nature of expertise and new forms
of failure as the workplace changes?

The juxtaposition of these two perspectives reminds us that a
human-centered approach to technology overlaps and connects problems and
concepts from:
*       technological and behavioral sciences,
*       individual and social perspectives,
*       the laboratory and the field,
*       design activity and empirical investigation
*       theory and application.
Perhaps through thinking about these intersections we can define why a
human-centered approach is needed, what it will do that is different, and
what is different that we need to do to advance that agenda.