IOSPress

The Fragility of Human-Centered Design is written for a specific audience: people who attempt to organize or conduct human-centered design (HCD). The principles of HCD appear to be simple: researchers and designers cooperate with users in their project, and organize iterative phases of research, design and evaluation, and multidisciplinary teamwork. The idea is to involve users from the start of a project and throughout its iterative cycles. However, in practice it appears to be difficult to put these principles into practice. Often, users are only involved at the end of a project or little is done with what they say. The main question is: what happens in human-centred design practice and how does this differ from the theory and principles of human-centred design? The author’s attempt was to open the ‘black box’ of HCD; to study what practitioners, including himself, actually do in practice. This publication is an attempt to ‘deconstruct’ HCD; to draw attention to some of its qualities that are usually hidden, and to propose alternative practices.