Designing for a Moving Target

Abstract

User centered design is a relatively young design approach. Over the years, user centered design changed its scope. However, the concept of usability does not just expand by broadening the view on ease of use and learning. Experience is added in the nineties and in 2006 we find Apple suggest its iPod users to “Enjoy Uncertainty.” The history of user centered design (or human-computer interaction, or cognitive ergonomics) shows the development of the design approach as a movement in different dimensions: from the reign of functionality to attention to individual users in context;from user control to experience and entertainment; andfrom a culturally defined cost-benefit goal to perspective on a multitude of design cultures and cultures of use.