Once More, Into the Soup

Abstract

essay was to demonstrate a broad framework within which to understand human-centered computing (HCC), and also to show the various convergences and divergences of the communities of practice that have introduced their own x-centered-design designations. Among them are learner-centered design, client-centered design, designer-centered design, decision-centered design, and work-oriented design.Using a concept map, that essay converged on the things that the x-centered-design designations have in common: It comes as little surprise that since the publication of that essay, even more acronyms have been put forth, as individuals and organizations struggle to make their ideas and contributions have an impact. 4 Our purpose in this follow-up essay is to present an alternative view. To extend the soup metaphor from that earlier essay, what we seek to do here is clarify the broth and pick out the meaty bits. In this alternative view, we don't focus on historical origins of the x-centered-design designations in disciplines, or on the counterclaims and clashes of communities of practice. Rather, we take a functional approach, 5,6 in which we don't regard designing monolithically as a single activity. As in the fi rst of the soup essays, we use a diagram. DesignThe research group at the Industrial DesignStudioLab (ID-StudioLab) of Delft University of Technology studies designers and design activities. It develops new methods, techniques, and tools to support design, including its own design processes. The researchers sometimes found it diffi cult to express what the ID-StudioLab was all about. In caricature, an unguarded moment could deliver, "We study how designers design in order to design methods to improve design." Responses included: "So, is what you do research, or is it design?" "Are you just designing for yourself?" and "Huh?"These confusions arise often in discussions in this fi eld. Short words such as "designer," "user," and "research" carry too many common connotations and denotations to be suffi cient in themselves. Thus, ID-StudioLab created a diagram to depict the functional process of design and the lab's particular approach. The diagram iterated from a simple one into a larger one, as more and