User vs. human centered design

[awfrancisco]

When 18F talks generally about it's design principles and practice, we often use either user-centered design or human-centered design. I think we should endorse one phrase as the preferred description for 18F's general design philosophy. This will keep our content consistent and make it less ambiguous. If specific instances or projects call for a more exact phrase, people are free to use and explain alternative design philosophies.

Would love to hear other people's thoughts and/or votes in the comments.

[tbaxter-18f]

+1 for human centered. I like that it's, well, humanistic. And "user-centered" always reminds me of the possibly-apocryphal Tufte quote "There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software"

[abbeykos]

+1 for human centered as well. Also, Google Trends supports HCD over UCD (with a growing gap):

[kategarklavs]

Hey! Repeated from yesterday's meeting (but commenting here so the thought isn't lost) – for the reasons other folks cited, I'm a +1 for HCD; it sounds friendlier, and it's inclusive of folks who aren't current users (but who might, someday, become users).

[jameshupp]

I am certainly sympathetic to human here, and I really like Kate's point about people who aren't currently users but might be. But I worry it also has implications we should, at least, be careful about.

1. user very clearly includes people using (there's that word again) assistive technologies to interact with a product. While I don't think human excludes them, I wonder if it can't tend to bias us toward prioritizing the smoothest or most frictionless solutions — the ones that hide the machine part of the machine — over of the most widely accessible ones. Is this something we can get a quick gut-check on?

2. human-centered design has an air of high-fallutin' to me. If nobody else thinks that, though, by all means ignore this. It's a very impressionistic thing.

3. The industry-specific use of user feels like it might be meaningful. Do we want to distinguish by implication that we're talking about software rather than, say, physical objects? I think "No" is a fine answer to this, just want to make sure we're saying so.

[jameshupp]

Oh, one more concern: stakeholders with decision-making power related to products we work on do sometimes say things like "Well, I'm a user, too" when we point out discrepancies between how they think about the product and how the audience for it thinks about it. That is an even bigger issue if we only call it "human-centered design." How do we use that term to explain the distinction in which humans we don't actually mean?

Again, I don't mean to say we shouldn't use HCD anyway, just want to make sure we're thinking about how it will come up within the context of 18F's and TTS's day-to-day work and whether that'll be a problem.

[andrewmaier]

I don't believe 18F benefits from prescribing roles to the people we serve vis. the software or services we design. Human needs must drive our work. It's why we practice plain language: if we can say something more simply, we should — even if "users" are more familiar with jargon (for example, "duty station" vs. "where do you work?")

Additionally, 18F authors our README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, etc. files to ensure that technically savvy people can deploy, maintain, and contribute to our open source software (or reuse our products, like the Methods). Developers aren't exactly the target "users" for Methods, but we care about their needs all the same.

[andrewmaier]

@jameshupp re: stakeholders and power in the design process, have you seen the Method we're working on on collaborative design and how we might encourage inclusivity in that process?

[wslack]

I'll +1 what James said. "Human-centered design" obfuscates the need to focus on the needs of the humans who are using vs making the service.

I think that HCD is a value that we can and should hold, but the specific transformative practice we are trying to introduce into the vast USG bureaucracy is more accurately and plainly described as "user centered."

[jeanninehunter]

Was looking for examples of journey maps I created as a template to help someone I've met doing D&I work in the community with their project, and revisited a VA PDF (particularly pages 3-6) containing info that seemed relevant to this thread: http://www.innovation.va.gov/docs/Toward_A_Veteran_Centered_VA_JULY2014.pdf

[annahsgraves]

After thinking about this and reading everybody's thoughts, I personally lean towards user over human. While I adore the Google Trends @abbeykos shared (yay for data!), the implications @jameshupp outlined in https://github.com/18F/content-guide/issues/212#issuecomment-391857561 stick out to me as pretty significant and a strong set of reasons to stick with user.

[andrewmaier]

Was discussing this thread with my friend Elissa this morning (who works with the USDS at the VA by way of Ad Hoc) and she shared an article with her rationale in favor of human-centeredness.

[awfrancisco]

I agree with everything @annahsebok said there. I vote for user.

[awfrancisco]

We discussed this in the g-content meeting and decided to go with user-centered design. We'll add a short not to the specific phrases section to indicate that we prefer user. Thanks for the lively discussion!