Nick Swan (Blog 4)

Is the user always correct?

In my opinion, I do not think the user is always correct. They should instead be used as a guideline for whatever is being created. As we talked about in class today, the user does not always know what they need so it is our job to take their ideas in and create it for them. This also goes for providing new features for a product. New features can both be good and bad that is why it is our job to find the perfect balance of them and determine whether the user actually needs it or not. I think that a larger user-centered focus the Hoekman advocates would be that less is more. In doing this you can determine what is most important to the application and if you stick to building 20 percent of the features you will take care of 80 percent of users needs.

On our work out machine sketch, I think that one of the things that could be eliminated is the detailed list of the buttons. We spent a lot of time redesigning that part of our machine and did not focus as much on the rest of it. What may have been more important was creating a more simplistic display panel and instructions to then under the machine rather than making the display panel look good but not be entirely effective.