‘Dogmatism’ and User Centered Design

The ‘intention’ of every ‘process/methodology’ is to ‘enable’ something/some people to ‘achieve’ a bigger/higher goal.


However, becoming ‘dogmatic’ about any ‘process/methodology’ has the reverse effect.

Having listened to; engaged in intense discussions with practitioners of ‘User Centered Design’ particularly in ‘software’ industry, I get the feeling that the User Experience community has become too dogmatic about its processes and methodologies.

At first we in this community were struggling to make our presence felt, and now that there is a general recognition of this field, we are going overboard and preaching that User Centered Design is the ONLY way forward – to innovation; to increase customer satisfaction…answer to all our problems. Other professionals within the ‘eco-system’ of a typical software company perceive this message as telling them, “the way you do things is wrong, we will teach you how to do things right.”

With such a ‘message,’ one cannot expect the desired ‘co-operation’ and ‘collaboration’ that we seek.

Secondly, we have failed to adapt and/or evolve to changes around us. Business goals are becoming more aggressive – ‘more for less,’ but we stick to our methods and practices. “Sure, we can get end user feedback; however, it takes 4 weeks.”

As things become more and more ‘agile’ – this is simply not acceptable. We have to reflect on our methods and practices and be innovative to meet new demands.

We must remember, in most software companies, ‘UX’ has only been ‘recognized’ as a competency to have. We have not yet reached the stage where we can dictate terms (hope we don’t) and be dogmatic about our methods. It will only turn people off and reassure them that this aspect of product development is not feasible. We have to step down from our ivory towers and engage with the entire community in order to ‘change mindsets’ in an ‘organic’ and ‘sustainable’ manner.

(I have firsthand experience and reason enough to believe this slow but organic approach works)

Thirdly, we have to understand the fact that a product has various dimensions to it. These keep growing – sustainability being the latest one. Perspectives from the ‘end users’ are just ONE such dimension and is by no means the MOST IMPORTANT one. Being philanthropic about ‘end user’ needs alone will not find a place in the world of ‘business.’

Just as we in the community become activists to demand ‘respect’ for our competencies from others, we need to walk the talk too. We need to respect the perspectives and priorities from others too.

They are all equally important. We need to respect the fact that other competencies have equally valuable inputs to provide to the cycle of product development.

Collaboration, synthesis and shared understanding of the goal among multi-disciplinary team members are the KEY to successful product definition.

Fourthly, I have often heard the debate about ‘need to improve designer: developer ratio’ in order to improve the ‘user experience’ of products effectively. Sadly, ‘more people’ does not necessarily result in ‘better.’ The population within UX communities are growing progressively, however, in the field of software, there are not too many game changing products out there from a user experience perspective. One might say, “Oh because we are so few people, we have not had the chance to do so.”

In my opinion, we just have not pushed the boundaries enough.

We have not bothered to learn from our peers – product designers/ fashion designers / game designers /automobile designers … are we too egoistic to do so?

In most of the above mentioned areas of design, the ‘designer: engineer’ ration is much more imbalanced than the utopia we are striving for in software companies.

The key is, in these other areas of design, the ‘designer’ is one AMONG other disciplines and people talk to each other a lot more than we do.


We need to ‘earn’ a seat by the table and not ‘demand’ it.
It’s time we evolved.